[nkrisc]

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one.

I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy.

The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works if you’ve only ever seen these kinds of spaces from a still photograph on the internet (which is why the audience for this sort of thing is too young to have ever experienced it themselves).

Yes, it looks exactly like the stifling, sprawling suburban office complex I once worked in, but then I also remember the feeling of walking out the exit into a beautiful spring day.

For me, the feeling these “back rooms” evokes is more akin to being in school waiting for the bell to ring so you can go outside and play.

It’s strange when your own mundane experiences are fodder for a new generation’s horror fiction. Sort of takes the bite away from it.

[wishfish]

Day vs. Night are what makes the difference. The sprawling suburban office complex from the 70s was, like you said, just boring and a bit oppressive during the day. At night though, a sea of cubicles. Endless hallways. Nothing but blackness outside the windows. Lights are all on motion detectors so only your area is lit. And only lit for a time. Eventually you'd have to stand up to make the lights switch back on. And when you do, you look over the fields of cubes to see a shadowy figure slowly slump its way across the room. Headed vaguely in your direction but never quite reaching you. You think it's Mark from Accounting, but you'll never know for certain.

For me, I've always called it the "school at night" phenomenon. The horror, or unsettling feeling, one gets from seeing a place at night that's usually only seen in the day. Had that constantly as a kid when going to school at night for performances or teacher meetings. A place bright and loud that's now quiet and dark. You know where everything is, but it all seems like it's just an inch or two out of place.

[alex_c]

>For me, I've always called it the "school at night" phenomenon.

It's funny, I've always loved that kind of environment. Quiet high school hallways after everyone's left, empty university buildings late at night, offices after hours, even empty offices that haven't been moved into yet. For me it evokes feelings associated more with watching a rainy day from inside, or lofi-girl with headphones studying.

I understand why it can evoke horror or unsettling feelings for people, but for me the first word that comes to mind is just "peaceful".

Even the environments in the Backrooms trailer - minus the obvious horror elements - look like they would be a lot of fun to explore!

[121789]

I totally agree. When I was going to school while working, I'd often stay late, or come in on weekends (and stay late). I loved that feeling of peacefulness. Same feeling I got when I would take a walk for a break while staying up for an all nighter coding in the computer lab in university. I think those horror-ish feelings (and same with the dystoptian pictures of american suburbs), really only work if you haven't actually experienced those places.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

This thread is giving me flashbacks from my university. I lived on campus so i got to explore at night whenever.

I don't know how to explain the feeling. I wouldn't call it peaceful. A little eerie but also kind of exciting. My campus was a bit odd. Some 'brutalist' architecture and dungeonesque parts. I miss it now.

There was a vending machine that would randomly add 10 cents to itself every couple minutes. If you waited long enough you could get something for free. Lights that would turn on by themselves. Doors that would open randomly. Might have been haunted.

[CatMustard]

> Might have been haunted.

'Might have been'? You say 'might have been' after you bought a Twix with all the money that ghost slowly put in the vending machine? For shame.

[HauntingPin]

I agree, it's the night-time that makes places, particularly urban ones unnerving and/or creepy. I once worked as a courier, which sometimes involved delivering things to stores or weird ass storage buildings in the middle of the night. I hated those night-time deliveries. Even worse when I had to go through rooms with mannequins, made my skin crawl.

[jiggawatts]

The zombie game Left 4 Dead had a great art direction where you’re outside in a city at night but because it is post-apocalyptic evening is lit from below instead of above as normal.

So instead of street lights you get fires in trash cans are whatever casting light upwards.

It’s creepy in the same way as someone lighting their face by holding a torch near their chin.

[bigbuppo]

The smell of old cigarettes, stale coffee, Certs, and urinal cakes wafting through the air.

[tinyplanets]

I disagree. I too have worked in these environments. As mentioned in the article, and in numerous other references about the Backrooms - the creepiness stems partially from the "liminal" feeling of walking around large, man-made spaces that are totally empty. Think walking around a shopping mall after hours. I had several odd jobs before I was in college where I had to work overnight shifts, sweeping the floors of large department stores. That feeling of "empty watchfullness" was definitely a thing, and it's captured well by a lot of the Backrooms content.

The other aspect of "creepiness" stems from the idea that the Backrooms represent an endless, malevolent labyrinth. One of the scarier aspects of being trapped in the Backrooms (for me) is that you would just wander around until you died for lack of water and food, in a bland corporate office corridor with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

[palmotea]

I've worked in these environments too, and I think the modern "open" office without assigned desks give a far greater creepy "liminal" feeling that old suburban cube farms.

When you have assigned desks, people personalize their spaces. It feels lived in (at least a bit). A more contemporary open office feels more liminal, even when it's full of people. And after hours it's even worse: there's no trace of human habitation.

[TeMPOraL]

Like a Borg cube - if there's one thing more scary than a cube full of drones, it's one that's mysteriously empty.

[pavel_lishin]

> The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works if you’ve only ever seen these kinds of spaces from a still photograph on the internet (which is why the audience for this sort of thing is too young to have ever experienced it themselves).

I'm not sure if that's true. I've definitely been to places that feel intentionally confusing; the basement of my college, several hospitals, etc. Where you walk between two buildings, and suddenly go from Floor 4 to Floor 6, or where you're sure you entered facing north, but after making three right-hand turns, you exit a building facing south.

[acuozzo]

> I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one.

I developed a fondness for 1970s interior decor/styling even though I was born in 1988 because most of the places in my town, such as the library, were last renovated during that time.

Also, many people in my life, such as uncles & aunts, were still living in the homes they purchased in the 1970s and some design choices just can't be easily/cheaply changed.

I grew up within and around a ghost of 1970s architecture and design. As an adult I wound up moving into a suburb built in 1968 for this reason.

It's less nostalgia and more like a vague sense of familiarity that you can only scratch the surface of in your mind.

[beezlebroxxxxxx]

> I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy.

That's kinda more what the german concept of "unheimlich" is like. Even though it usually gets translated to English as "uncanny", it's more literally "un-homelike", when the familiar (home) turns unfamiliar (un-homelike) in an unexpected way. A common idea in that would be something like the discovery of a hidden room in your house, especially in some weird non-euclidean way ("it's bigger on the inside" for example, like a tardis).

[layer8]

“Eerie” would be a good translation in the quoted context.

[saltcured]

I think this whole genre flirts with Capgras Syndrome, the basic identity perception malfunction behind concepts like changelings and many other "exact duplicates" or "tampering" scenarios which have malice as an optional component.

I think it is something that people are aware of, perhaps subconsciously, from cultural exposure. But, I also think many (most?) people have at least some personal experience of a similar sort. Not the full-blown delusional state, but an anxious moment of having feelings of recognition or safety turn inside-out as they realize things are not as they first appeared.

[frmersdog]

I dunno about that. At a previous job, we temporarily relocated to a building that featured a series of identical classrooms that were accessible by connecting doors in the back (it was really one long room with heavy dividers that did a good job of looking like regular walls).

You could look from one end to the other, seeing a series of doorways, and then walk through them all; every time I walked from one room to another, by brain would do a little power cycle as it tried to deal with the sensation of having walked into the room I'd just exited.

The deeper-in I got, the more I couldn't shake the feeling that something was "off" about the whole set-up; there were windows, but looking out them, the view felt... fake? It's hard to describe.

This was a few years after SCP became popular, but before the Backrooms - which was why I immediately understood the appeal.

[munificent]

> it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one.

My teenage daughter is really into this genre but has never actually been in a mostly abandoned 90s mall or fluorescent-lit business park office space herself.

But don't underestimate how much history bleeds forwards in time in various bits of cultural ephemera that can still be absorbed by younger people. She doesn't have much first-had experience with spaces with this vibe, but there is ample second-hand media of it and enough bits and pieces of it still in the real world for it to be both somewhat familiar and enticingly exotic to her.

[bee_rider]

I never got really super into this subculture thing, or whatever it is, but I vaguely recall skimming things like a subreddit devoted to it, ages ago. I want to say when it was “starting” but then nothing ever really starts or ends. Definitely Pre-Covid though. Anyway, IIRC the focus was not on the horror, maybe a slight unease, but mostly the uncanniness.

I think this is just how things evolve. Creepy is a very strong sentiment that is somewhat aligned with uncanny, so it isn’t that surprising to see uncanny collapse into it over time.

But having spent a lot of time in empty classrooms, auditoriums, and hallways, waiting for students to show up, it’s more of a nostalgic feeling to me.

[layer8]

Feelings of nostalgia can be evoked by things you never experienced first-hand, and that were before your time. It’s not uncommon. There’s also a connection to melancholy that I can’t quite find the right words for.

[siavosh]

I interned at a few places like this when I was younger, and in my current role I used to visit a fair number customer sites like these. I agree, it was less creepy than it was oppressive. I think the kids might call it an NPC vibe you just got. Definitely an urge to want to get out as soon as possible to get some fresh air and natural light.

[amiga386]

Most people haven't been in an abandoned mansion, abandoned mental asylum or abandoned mall either, but they've seen enough from people who have to get the idea. Never mind the urbexers bringing them footage of hidden infrastructure.

[calf]

"Memoryless" nostalgia is a real effect, and the word for it is anemoia:

https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/anemoia-nostalgi...

I watched the film Asteroid City last night, and the setting gave me this exact emotion.

[hax0ron3]

I'm old enough to have been in spaces like that, but the aesthetic illusion still works for me if I look at an image that is supposed to depict one.

Also, the infinite corridors is only part of the appeal. There are other ways in which such spaces can become eerie. I remember how I used to often be the only person still working in an open floor plan office in the evening. There was no sense of infinite corridors, but the dimness with one area alone illuminated by motion-detected light was spooky, and so were the sounds of the HVAC system and of doors and elevators somewhere in a different part of the building. There was also an uncanny empty feeling of seeing all the chairs and desks with no humans at them.

[HappMacDonald]

I absolutely grew up in the correct time period, and I've been in a ton of abandoned or not-currently-occupied 1970s decor structures, both day and night in my life. Malls, factories, office buildings, schools, churches, workshops, houses, barns, alleyways, warehouses, storage areas, the list goes on.

I have never been creeped out by these kinds of areas or vibes, instead finding them endlessly comforting and wicked fun to explore :D

I think one possible difference about how I view such an area vs the youth of today, is I think they view walls as "the boundaries of a video game map, so sturdy that gunfire and C4 can't even dent them, thus ineffable". But I had seen enough damaged and unfinished drywall and poorly constructed buildings in my youth to instead view the wall as another piece of furniture. Beyond it is something else, possibly "outside". I don't have to bust it down, but I built faith that if you walk around it you will arrive there all the same.

And as far as an environment constructed for humans: chairs, tables, doorways, but no humans present to occupy said environment, I just wind up personifying the furniture or imagining ways to use a space for which it might not have been originally intended. After all I explored these spaces since I was a child, you damn well know my first instinct is "climb up and over all of the things" and "establish a fort" and things like that! :D

[stronglikedan]

Even a regular, non-sprawling office building is creepy as fuck when you're the only one in it, no matter the time of day.

[asdff]

It isn't just offices. Easy to find this stuff exploring hotels, finding the unbooked conference area for example.

[fer]

Where I grew up, it happened to me with (primary/middle/high) schools.

During the 60s and 70s, in order to accommodate baby boomers, new buildings were built on existing school grounds, and while they were not cookie cutter copies of each other, they followed the same architectural and civil engineering principles: identical ceiling height, same fixtures, same walls, same classroom door arches, same bathroom stalls, toilets, similar fire exit paths, identical heavy steel and steel wired glass external doors, staircase layouts...

But given every location had its own available surface and urban/terrain/attendance needs, they were anywhere from 1 to 4 floors, straight corridors, or in L, or rectangular with inner courtyard, with and without basement, and overall significant practical deviations from some common standard blueprint (though I never found the common denominator) but keeping everything else the same. It was extremely eerie and disorienting visiting a different school, or getting used to another school when you moved, especially after hours when they're empty.

It's probably similar to the khrushchyovki/stalinki residential buildings in post-Soviet countries, though I've only visited them well after the collapse and they've evolved on their own. Meanwhile these schools I mention, look actually frozen in time.

[colordrops]

Naw, I'm older and the reason I'm into this sort of thing is that I have nostalgia about being in these sorts of spaces as a young child.