Wandering the Backrooms in Search of Nightmare Fuel
Exploring empty hallways, dim rooms, and dark water
One of the first stumbling blocks I encountered while writing the first draft of my book was in chapter four, when I decided to give my main character recurring nightmares. Unfortunately, the dreams started to seem overly repetitive and a little boring pretty quick. I needed some inspiration to inject the sense of dread I was looking for.
So I turned to the internet and started scrolling through reels looking for inspiration. Sandwiched between videos of cold, empty forest scenes was an ad for the pc game Pools. I was intrigued. I loved point and click escape games in college, but hadn’t played in years. Reading the description on Steam, I was excited to see that it was similar to the games I used to play, a walking simulator with no monsters or puzzles. Just exploration of a vast maze of eerie tiled hallways and pools. A review assured readers they would be able to smell the chorine through the screen. I was sold.
While playing the game, I tried to make note of everything that made me feel uneasy. Getting stuck in a loop of the same rooms felt claustrophobic. I felt immense relief every time I was able to progress to a new space or level. I found myself hunching my shoulders and tensing up every time I had to squeeze through a small space. Navigating dim mazes and pushing through almost pitch black tunnels were anxiety inducing. I felt compelled to leave my unseen avatar in a safe, well lit place every time I quit playing.
The Pools creators credited several artists and games as their inspiration, and as I looked into those, I realized I had fallen into a deep rabbit hole. Pools was a part of a huge internet subculture, The Backrooms, with lore that rivaled Slender Man. Immersed in art and videos by creators like Jarad Pike and Matt Studio, I found myself exploring a labyrinth of surreal pools, empty rooms, spiral staircases, yellow wallpaper and hallways covered in brilliant white tile, half submerged in water.
I was amazed at how these creators could infuse so much detail and creativity into keeping a simple concept, wandering empty hallways, from becoming monotonous. A change from tile to brick walls, a sudden buzz from an HVAC system, or a flood of light from a skylight would transform the environment. Attention to detail was crucial to an immersive experience. The squish of a footstep on a wet surface. How movement slowed when walking through a submerged space verses a dry one. Temperatures conveyed with steam and sizzle.
Most importantly, the thing that makes the uncanny liminal spaces of The Backrooms culture so unsettling is their odd familiarity. Every scene, no matter how surreal, contains familiar elements found in ordinary spaces. This got me thinking about some of the liminal spaces I’ve encountered in my own life.
When I was attending college at the peak of Y2K diet culture, all my new friends signed up for a membership at the gym on campus. Not wanting to be left out, I paid for one as well, but soon realized I really disliked working out there. It was always crowded and noisy, no matter the time of day. I was used to exercising in the quiet of rural roads and my backyard, and felt self conscious competing for treadmills and doing crunches on a mat in a crowded room.
When I asked one of the students manning the check in desk when the quietest time to work out was, he mentioned there was a raised track above the basketball courts housed in the same building as the gym that was hardly ever used. It was also free to access. I cancelled my gym membership and started running there instead.
It was much more relaxing after a busy day navigating a crowded campus, but a little eerie at times. Only half the lights were on after 7pm, when I preferred to run. It felt really surreal at times to be in this large, cavernous space and only hear the quiet thump of my own sneakers. I didn’t have access to the locker rooms after I cancelled my gym membership, so I changed in a restroom that was always empty. There was a series of sexual assaults on campus my freshman year, so the empty spaces and dark walk back to the dorms could be unnerving.
Almost twenty years later, I become one of the few employees in my office building working in person during the start of the pandemic in 2020. Every morning my car was one of 15 that dotted a parking lot designed to hold 500. I took the stairs to the fourth floor to avoid other people and get some exercise. I rarely interacted with anyone. The long hallways were quiet, and the days were filled with a monotony occasionally punctured by strange occurances.
One day, a man with no credentials was escorted from my floor after lurking the halls and being discovered sitting outside a restroom stall with his laptop plugged into an outlet. Another day, I arrive to find crime scene tape sectioning off a portion of the parking lot. A homicide victim had been dumped near the front of the building.
As fall turned to winter and the sun began to set earlier, my office would fill with an orange glow as I packed up to leave at the end of each day. It seeped through the frosted glass in the doorway and traced patterns on the hallway walls. It was a strange time, beautiful and terrible.
The takeaways from this deep dive into the world of The Backrooms that I’ll bring to my writing were these:
A surreal space can be constructed out of familiar, everyday elements
Subtle changes to an environment can break up monotony and prevent repetition.
Sensations are key. Sounds, textures, and temperature are details that add depth to the character’s experience.
Where have you found writing inspiration lately?
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I can see this being really effective! You also just reminded me of the scariest scene (for me) in the original 1942 “Cat People” when Jane Randolph goes swimming alone in that gym pool at night and realizes Simone Simon is stalking her. The sound and the lighting in that scene, and the whole film… to say nothing of Simone… exquisite!