Liminal space

Online use of the term is broader and more loosely defined than the anthropological concept of liminality. Some liminal-space images depict places associated with passage or temporary use, such as stairwells, roads, corridors, hotels, waiting rooms, or shopping malls; others show familiar settings without the people, activity, or context normally expected in them. Commentators have described the imagery as eerie, surreal, nostalgic, or sad, and as capable of eliciting both comfort and unease.

Peter Heft of Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture has attributed the eeriness of some liminal-space imagery to familiar settings appearing outside their expected context. Drawing on the work of Mark Fisher, Heft describes the unexpected emptiness of a schoolhouse as a "failure of presence" characteristic of the eerie.

In a 2022 study, psychologists Alexander Diel and Michael Lewis found that deviations from familiar structural patterns can produce an uncanny-valley response to built environments.

Commentators have also linked the aesthetic's appeal to nostalgia and personal memory, as familiar visual cues invite viewers to recall or project comparable experiences onto otherwise contextless scenes.

Arnold van Gennep introduced the anthropological notion of a liminal phase in Les rites de passage (1909). Van Gennep divided rites of passage into three phases: separation, liminality, and reaggregation or incorporation. Anthropologist Victor Turner later expanded the study of liminality, characterizing the liminal phase as being "betwixt and between" socially recognized positions.

In 2019, users on 4chan, Reddit, Tumblr, and other online platforms shared imagery associated with the liminal-space aesthetic. The Backrooms, an online urban legend that appeared on 4chan in May 2019, became closely associated with the aesthetic. In the thread, one user posted an image of an apparently vacant, yellow-carpeted interior lit by fluorescent lights; another added a description of an immense maze of empty rooms that could be entered by noclipping out of reality.

Interest increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, when photographs of unusually empty public spaces became widespread. A spike in the popularity of liminal-space imagery was reported in March 2020 as lockdowns began.

By November 2022, a subreddit called r/LiminalSpace had over 500,000 members, the liminal-space photo-posting account @SpaceLiminalBot on Twitter had accrued over 1.2 million followers, and the TikTok hashtag #liminalspaces had over two billion views.

Kane Parsons's found-footage Backrooms web series was adapted into an A24 feature film, released in 2026. The 2025 film Exit 8, directed by Genki Kawamura and based on the 2023 video game The Exit 8, has been discussed as an example of liminal-space horror.

Director Kyle Edward Ball said that, while developing his 2022 horror film Skinamarink, he looked at online communities including r/liminalspaces and r/weirdcore. Severance creator Dan Erickson cited the Backrooms among the series' influences.

Use of liminal space in film predates the internet. The Overlook Hotel in The Shining, co-written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, is empty in the closed season and links the past to the present.