I feel like they are like corpses. They used to be filled with life, movement, and potential. Now they are just a dead body left behind as the life moves on.
the creepy and uncomfortable part about that is you'd expect dead things to decay and rot, and when they dont, a place like a school or hospital with bright lights, shiny clean floors, and no stains on the walls but looks like its been completely empty for a long time.. its reminiscent of looking at a person you once knew and talked to in a coma. Still alive but there isnt anything there.
Jass Lang I feel like this is fog. Just foggy. This makes me feel fog in the brain. It used to be a amazing cool fair! Now the fog has come in and the fun has gone.
Yeah but from my experience that only works if you expect the place to be filled with people. For example I live in the spanish countryside in a town with less than 3000 inhabitants so in winter nights at 2 am there is no one in the streets, for me this is totally normal but for my cousin who is from Madrid it's pretty unsettling to the point that he finds scary to go out alone.
the photos of old houses with no furniture feel like if you went into an abandoned house that was last lived in during the 1940s and everything was in perfect condition with no signs thats its been empty for more than a few hours
The fact that they're in good condition is what makes them even more bizarre If they were damaged and destroyed, it wouldn't be as big of a mystery why there aren't any people there
"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is a film that uses liminal spaces like empty schools, convenience stores at night, and childhood homes to great unsettling atmospheric effect.
These photos make me feel like I was left behind in an evacuation. Everyone is gone, only for me to still be here in places I shouldn’t. I was abandoned and while I may explore, I don’t want to.
It reminds me of a post-nuclear apocalypse story, you've survived in some bunker, and you come back out- everything is the same but not and also empty.
@@White_Recluse you feel like you are being chased by unknown creature, you try to hide as far as you can. Until then, you realize... There is nothing there, only you and your brain try to make you still conscious as a human being by telling you that there is enemy even though there is nothing, and no one to harm you...
i work construction and have to walk into spaces like this all the time, but they do kind of remind me of one time I was sent to meet someone in their office and was given the wrong address and came into an empty office floor (I later found out the elevator button was disabled but i assumed it wasn't working and took the stairs) and it had all the furniture, computers, and everything but was completely abandoned since they were moving to another office and alot of the stuff was at the old location. I felt like I'd been left behind during the rapture or something.
Speaking of Kubrik, these spaces also remind me of the ending to 2001. It's surprising that it's not mentioned as it's a direct depiction of what liminal spaces are.
liminal spaces actually give me a rather librating and relaxed feeling. free from peoples jugments and the worries of the world. u got nothing to do but to look at the space, explore it and play in it
A liminal space that really creeps me out is when you stop at a stoplight in the middle of the night. Nobody is there except you, it's very quiet. However, the lights keep cycling as if they're pretending the intersection is still busy.
I once came across a car accident site at night, with the accident have been happening hours before, so everything was abandoned except for the destroyed car. But of course, I did not know this in this moment. It was quite a creepy situation.
I'm kinda sad that I don't feel a thing looking at them... must be because building structures in Brazil don't look any similar to those in the US. It's actually kinda weird when people say things like "you can't deny you've seen a place like this!" and it's a classic american house. We rarely get to have front yards or modeled homes here.
Gema being a man of culture shouldn't be surprising, but it was unexpected to find ya here! I feel like our country's aesthetics are so underrated... things like those barebrick walls, plantlife growing along the walls of more humid states, old architecture and vast concrete plains, at least in the south... having visited some of PoA, I imagine that kind of aesthetic better fits the bill. Also, works like Seu Jorge's Life Aquatic too!
i was abt to write the same thing, these are all well built places, even thoe they seem abandoned or "failed", they dont look anything like the actually decaying streets of not so well off places ive grown up with tons and tons of people. these all scream alien to me even if their designed context is achieved by people around them, etc because these are literally over the oceans for me.
I remember once being the first kid at school on a super foggy morning. It was most of an hour before people really started showing up. It was so quiet.
I think something else is to consider is that when you were younger, rooms felt a lot larger and open. So when we see them this way in liminal spaces it can remind us of that feeling
This is a good point, actually there's something intensely magical about those very, very faint memories we have of carpet stretching out to infinity or an impossibly faraway cliff with an outlet on it. This guy is too cynical about liminal spaces and personally I don't think he get's it at all, though that seems to be common. There's actually a Japanese word for the very specific feeling of wondering what's behind the crest of a hill that doesn't exist in any language, which is a powerful feeling I sometimes get looking at those treeless grassy horizons with blue sky.... it's not just remembering Windows 95.
@@erawanpencil That and there's another Japanese phrase for the ephemeral nostalgia we feels that is potentially captured by these liminal images. Mono no aware which refers to something like the impernance of things. The acknowledgment that everything passes away. Likewise, liminal horror plays off the idea of eternal stagnation. There's also an element of dreamlike surrealism to this stuff, especially things like the backrooms where architecture and placements are distorted. This subject is fascinating artistically and psychologically. I think the guy who made the video was way too reductive. Cynicism isn't a substitute for insight.
When I was a kid, my dad and I went to see a movie, but everyone's tickets were printed with the wrong theatre number, and it turned out the theatre number was in a part of the building that was being renovated. So me, my dad, and about 20 people sat in this small half-finished theatre with insulation and wires hanging out of the ceiling, torn up carpet, and nasty seats. It looked like a cold war bomb shelter. We were early for the showing, so we expected to sit for a good 20 minutes, but it was a total of 40 minutes that we sat there before we figured out something was wrong, feeling weirdly out of place like we're the last people in existence. I half expected to walk out and the whole city would be abandoned.
A couple of years ago I went to a movie theater with my mom at like 8 pm or something, the parking lot was empty, the lobby was mostly empty, and since we arrived earlier the theater was empty except for just me and my mom, the ads weren't even playing yet. And then ofc my mom has to go to the bathroom so I was left there alone for a bit (I think I remember). I felt like anyone could walk in at any moment and murder me.
About like, 9 months ago, a movie theater in my city was closed. 2 New movie theaters were opened and so the old one went out of business, and I felt nostalgic because it has been there ever since I was a kid, I mean, the memory of my first ever horror movie happened in that theater, I was a toddler and we went to see coraline, ya know, with the botton eyes, and out of everything I got freaked out by the arm that was chasing coraline at the end of the movie while she was alone at a forest, not knowing something was crawling towards her, so my dad took me out of the room and into the hallway full of people so that I could breathe some fresh air. Some time after its closing, I went up to the movie theater with my friends, and although the place itself was unaccessible, we could see the inside through the glass, and everything was standing still, like its about to die, or like it has always been that way, meant to close. That same movie theater company still operates in other cities, but not in mine anymore.
until they renovated it, there was a cinema in one of the town centres near me that literally had stuffing coming out of the seats... it was as if people were actually using an abandoned cinema...
You’re making jokes about a guy who gets oppressed. He speaks his mind, and then he gets tortured. This is serious, and you should be ashamed. Join the Rebellion
17:34 it's great to see a once unpopular unrecognized photo like this being used in your video. I was recently watching a Wendigoon stream in which him, Kane Pixels, and Alex Kister were watching different analog horrors. When Kane said "he got the image of the rolling giant from a Solar Sands video". I think it's cool that I was able to find this out and see how other creators can influence eachother.
I'd need to go back and check, but I think it was the other way around. He knew he and a lot of other had *seen* it in this video, but he found it somewhere else first.
i remember freaking out when i saw the Kane Pixels video pop up in my recommended and seeing that thing again, considering it’s one of my favorite liminal space images, it made me really happy to see it used by Kane Pixels!
Tale foundry! love your work, I would love if you did a video on Liminal space maybe one day. I've always wondered ways to spark the same feel in writing.
I think a lot of this "strange familiarity" comes from how many things in our lives are generic and mass-produced. School hallways all look alike because they're built with the exact same linoleum floors, painted cinderblock walls, and drop ceilings with flourescent lights. Fast food places have standardized architecture to make them instantly recognizable. And many houses (particularly those built in the last century) are cookie-cutter copies of a standard plan used by the neighborhood's developers to streamline construction. These places have no identity of their own, but we've all seen something exactly like them at some point in the past, so they look familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time.
But they're also places we don't pay much close attention to, because we're not there to admire the architecture or decor, but we take it in via osmosis, which is why so many of them seem so vaguely familiar, but we can't pinpoint where.
The uglification of America, converting every town into bustling cities with the exact same shopping centers, stores, houses, the erasure of any previous unique identity will continue as we enter the end stages of capitalism.
I feel like The Shining perfectly captures the eeriness of liminal spaces: an abandoned hotel that, even before the danger shows itself, feels very creepy because the lack of people.
@@luiseduardofontes33 You should check out the video 'Can you name one object in this photo' by Solar Sands if you are intrigued by the music of The Shining. He talks about a music project by an artist called 'The Caretaker' (notice the obvious reference) which takes this feeling to a further level in a very.. effective way
And the tacky late seventies decoration of the Kubrick film actually helps with that effect. The Victorian gothic style of the Stanley, as seen in the Stephen King version, is too "traditional." It's what haunted houses are "supposed" to look like. Kubrick was an avid student of psychology, and he was probably well acquainted with this idea. While we're on the subject of horror movies that make good use of this idea, the original Japanese versions of _The Ring, The Grudge,_ and _The Depths of Dark Water_ all do a fair job of it, as well as the experimental short _My House Walk-Through._ That last one is actually available for free right here on UA-cam, and it's by far the purest application of the "liminality" concept.
I had this dream where my house looked identical as it is irl but completely made of wood and had deer heads mounted on the walls. It was isolated in some grey Midwest winter setting, and I was completely alone. I would wander around everyday to find that there was nothing but plains and trees for miles and miles. Weeks went by and finally some dude came wearing a deer head and shot me in the face. Never had a dream so eerie before.
This is basically psychological horror, there's no real threat or a monster attacking you, but you are scared by the atmosphere itself and the environments that surround you.
Whenever games try to replicate this feeling of being lost in another unpredictable dimension they never get it right because it only works in images, but there’s something else about it that isn’t right that I can’t describe
If you've ever had an eye test and have seen that red-roof house surrounded by the greenest green field and the most standard blue sky, you'd probably have had an early experience in Liminal spaces.
It's weird to think that, while these places are "taken out of context", they will inevitably become those places. An office will get shutdown, and you get places like the backrooms. Arcades will shut down and you get these images. Leaves me overwhelmed personally.
I definitely agree that it's overwhelming to think about. Everything is in a constant state of transition, even our own places of comfort and joy. It's a bit scary to think that these places become a sort of liminal space once the human aspect dissolves.
In Track and Field, I would always see my school empty. It's not so weird when you walk so fast to get it over with quickly. Post Soviet era buildings have the best sense of abandonment that I've seen. Most buildings were left alone since the 1980's. Nothing has changed. As a young kid, I went to a camp, there was multiple versions of cabins. Old and new. The oldest cabin was a wooden, unpainted with moss all around. 5 crooked steps to go inside. The light bulb still worked. Metal-rusted frames for bunkbeds with 3 inch bedsheets. It was so freaky to me when I was a kid, I wish I had the balls to actually explore inside it. The old bathrooms were the scariest. The plumbing didn't work. 😆 How did that scare me?
To me, it feels like there should be people there, but you can't see anyone, but that doesn't mean there isn't anyone. It's a space that feels like it was filled with people right before you walked in the room, like a surprise birthday party, but instead of them popping out and cheering they just stay hidden, leaving this unresolved tension behind. When will they pop out?
Okay wait my brain was just like, that doesnt create confused weird feeling thing that's just patchy's house and I literally thought my brain was just relating a childhood thing to the photo but I fkn could never have forgotten it cause I have a phobia related to him and his house is engraved in my brain I THOUGHT MY BRAIN WAS LYING THANK YOU FOR THIS COMMENT
I worked at a major theme park, Universal Orlando, and I had the privilege of being able to see the park almost totally empty at times. Walking into the park in early morning or late at night was always fascinating to me, I loved the peacefulness. Quiet empty paths, rides moving in their cycles without riders to fill them, no one standing in the queue lines, clear music wafting through the air. Such a stark contrast to the impossibly busy times when guests would crowd up the lines, stampede down the walkways and fill up the air with voices.
It’s so interesting, I’m glad I now have the vocabulary to describe how that movie made me feel. All the same feelings that liminal spaces evoke as described in this video! I just didn’t know what exactly it was that I was feeling at the time. I’m so glad I stumbled across this video and channel!
Exactly, when I stumbled upon these images one of the first things that crossed my mind was the scene from The Shining where a massive amount of blood was pouring out of the elevator in front.
That was kind of the point of the film. They're in a usually bustling hotel during the off season. Something that should be full of guests, staff, and various hotel items, but is missing everything that makes it alive. It's missing the context. It's supposed to be so uncomfortable that people kill their families.
That's what I was thinking when I watched this video. Like Solar Sands described, these liminal space photos give attention to things that are mundane. There's several scenes in the movie that are like this. When Wendy checks on Jack while he's writing, when her and Danny were walking around the hedge maze, and when Jack was talking to Danny on his lap. All of these are seemingly normal, uneventful scenes, yet the music swells and causes us to think that something more is at play. It's that sort of juxtaposition that makes us uncomfortable
The reason I find the backrooms so terrifying is that there's this endless sense of anticipation. SOMETHING is going to happen, SOMETHING is going to jump out at you, but it never does. It's just this infinite horror that you are about to be terrified, but you never are.
Hi this is the artist from the beginning of the video, Chris Barrett, I just wanted to say thank you for featuring me, I recently lost my father and have put art away for the past few months and this video reminded me of the pursuit of the craft, and that I am definitely feeling the absence of it, among other things. I also found the subject to be rather intriguing, I have always "felt" the effect of liminal spaces, but never fully grasped the concept. I feel movies like Napolean Dynamite, Gentleman Bronco's, and Beverly Luff Lynn are made out of these such spaces. Brilliant work!
I used to work the graveyard shift at a mall... It was one of the most uncanny feelings in the world... Empty back corridors, empty shops with mannequins that seemed like they wanted to move since no one was watching, food courts that were empty, and an encapsulating smell that lingered throughout the premise.. not to mention the echos of your boots was you walked throughout.. yeah.. it was uncanny
I feel like "The Shining" also uses this creepy feel of liminal spaces for its atmosphere. The almost entirely empty hotel lobby or the long hallways could also be described as liminal spaces.
That's a super good point! A big emphasis Kubrick tried to put on the film was how vast the hotel is and how alone the family is in that space and how that increased their paranoia throughout the film.
Not just the size of it, the decor is hideous in just the right way. Look at room 237, those God awful carpets, the curtains pattern clashing with the walls pattern, the feeling that the room goes on for a bit too long... it's such a well designed set
@@MCDreng Not only that, but the layout doesn't make any sense. Some hallways aren't supposed to lead anywhere, but somehow they do, etc. There are a lot of videos covering this topic.
I worked night shifts at a gas station for years. There were times when I felt like the only person awake within miles. I used to just stand outside and look at the empty world. I lived in liminal spaces... It was a weird feeling but eventually it kind of became comforting. Safe.
I used to work the graveyard shift at a mall... It was one of the most uncanny feelings in the world... Empty back corridors, empty shops with mannequins that seemed like they wanted to move since no one was watching, food courts that were empty, and an encapsulating smell that lingered throughout the premise.. not to mention the echos of your boots was you walked throughout.. yeah.. it was uncanny
ever since i was a kid, i loved the feeling gas stations at night gave me. the lights reflecting on the dark pavement, the artifical lighting inside... immaculate.
@@quasiBooter Honestly, any room in that show had a weird feeling. All the rooms seem to lack something, like the furniture was placed in such a manner that there was loads of empty space for no reason
An artist who I love and you might consider the “originator” this is style is Edward hopper. Although his paintings do occasionally contain humans, they maintain the haunting, uneasy, lonely, aesthetic that is trademark of luminal spaces. I recommend his 1942 painting “nighthawks”.
Something in common to all these "spaces" in my mind is silence. All of the photos are silent. I hear maybe the Air conditioning humming and thats it. Other than that is only crushing silence.
To be honest, silence, in my opinion, is the most horrifying thing in existance. Just... the abscense of such an important sense, one that is so connected to our survival instinct. Not being able to hear anything at these spaces gives you the feeling that there MIGHT be something dangerous that can be sneaking right behind you without your knowledge.
The most common and early example of this feeling I can think of is when you were in school, and you had to leave the classroom for whatever reason in the middle of class. (bathroom, nurse, etc.) And everything was too empty and your footsteps were too loud.
Definitely. I remember I'd try to be as quiet as I possibly could. But because I was the only one in the hallway, my footsteps would still sound too loud to me.
{UwU}Lord{ wow I thought I was the only one who did this except I would usually sprint full speed out of bathrooms because it was just too quiet and I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there
The new game "Stray" about a cat in a post catastrophe space that humans once dwelled in gives you this feeling a lot. You've probably touched on this before in another video but it's the empty city itself that gives me the creeps.
Oh my. Is this what happened to me? I have perfectly clear memories of all of these images. I can see things, remember people talking, subjects, smells, sights, even feelings.ican remember it when seeing g these images. What happened?
I have these dreams, nightmares as you call them, often. I can remember dreaming examples such as, “the inaccessible waiting room-turned into two bedrooms with a wall that you wouldn’t want to fall off of,” and, “The vacant inside malls-turned swimming pools and diving platforms while still accommodating shoppers,” etc. Could be because I moved constantly while growing up and had lived in some of these places/spaces. It can be unnerving and/or adaptable what, “uprooting and transplanting,” can do to the psyche.
The whole point of these backgrounds is to allow the product to pop and to not call attention to themselves, while still providing a mood, so when we hone in on them, they can be strange. For something I made with the idea of it "not being noticed" it's definitely getting a bit of attention now.
I guess Stanley Kubrick really knew what he was doing when he made The Shining. Or that scene in Titanic where Rose is wandering empty hallways looking for help. Other artists who play with liminal spaces are Ed Ruscha, Lynne Cohen, Uta Barth, William Eggleston, Edward Hopper, some Tiina Heiska, certain scenes in David Lynch movies, Henk Van Rensbergen, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Martin Parr's 'Home Sweet Home' series, 'The Splash' by David Hockney, Toshihiro Yashiro... I'm an artist myself and have always been drawn to this sort of stuff without ever knowing it had a name 'til now, so I love finding new artists that work with this often unnamed weird vibe in their work! Thanks for making this video and putting a word to my favourite spaces and aesthetics! :)
When I was attending university, I'd go to hallways late at night sometimes, and even though I didn't know the term "liminal spaces" at the time, I understood the profound feeling it would give me. The feeling of empty yet, brightly lit hallways normally filled with people now empty without any sounds. It was truly some of the most dreadful yet fascinating feelings I've ever had.
I had that feeling with the airport of my city, is not a big one so when i went at night some places there were like that and at this time I'm only realizing about this concept and yet I feel amazed by those sensations
Imo, the wierdest ones are the rooms that are lit in a way that everything is the exact same brightness. Those ones make my brain say, "Whoa, this shouldn't be possible." Those ones are _it._
I was born in Scandinavia back in the 80's before we left. Back then it was a lot like the Soviet Union. Murals, very specific art and so on. Today I have a nostalgic, but sickening feeling seeing pictures of my old schools etc. Left and forgotten, with murals that "promised" us a better future. The Liminal spaces give me this feeling.
Familiar and unsettling, I think there is a series of videos in UA-cam about that, with pictures taken from completely random places to try at making you think that you already have been there when you where younger or something...
Probably the creepiest liminal space I’ve been in was a hospital lobby in the dead of night. No one around not even someone at the front desk just a massive open room
Highways at night when you're the only one on the road, watching as signs go into unnatural focus from the headlights while the rest of the world remains dim, hearing nothing but the gentle drone of the car engine. Now there's a good liminal space
The thing with this images is that they don't have the things that are meant to be in there. Not just humans, the parking lot with no cars, the store shelves with no products, even the receptions with a clean desk. If there was no recepcionist but a bit of dissorder, then there would be a trace of someone being there. By extracting all the elements you just get the idea that you should not be there or that the place is dangerous. But it goes further. By not seeing any visual danger you imagine an invisible threat, like poison in the air, radioactivity, the building is meant to be demolished or it's a bomb testing site. Everyone and everything left for a reason, but you don't know wich is it. Heck, even chernobyl is less unnerving cause people left things behind
"By extracting all the elements you just get the idea that you should not be there or that the place is dangerous. But it goes further. By not seeing any visual danger you imagine an invisible threat, like poison in the air, radioactivity, the building is meant to be demolished or it's a bomb testing site. Everyone and everything left for a reason, but you don't know wich is it. Heck, even chernobyl is less unnerving cause people left things behind." Wow, what an excellent point! That does ring kinda true for me! Interesting!
sometimes my brain doesn't even think of realistic things, like for some reason when I see pictures of empty offices I just think they are some kind of Minotaur's labyrinth.
My thoughts exactly. The LEGO set backgrounds feel so liminal because there is a massive empty space in the central part of the photo (where the set photo is supposed to go). The backrooms photos are all creepy because there's no FURNITURE, but there is wear. If there was furniture, desks and chairs and fake plants all over, you'd just feel like it was after-hours, or you'd get that feeling of being late/early. If there was no wear, with pristine new paint on the walls, it would just feel new, yet to be filled, like a realtor is showing you around to buy it. But with wear AND no furniture, you can immediately tell it used to be normal, but the main subject of the photo has been removed. Like you said, all the fear and anxiety are in not knowing HOW or WHY they were removed.
i completely agree, like in a school or mall, you only ever go there when there are things there.. have you ever been to a mall that is completely empty exactly, because you shouldnt be there, and if you have, than you know, you shouldnt be there, so these images just make you feel that you shouldnt be there. Because nothing else is either, theres nothing to do nothing to really explore because its empty
Something made by humans but abandoned. Orphans of masons. They are without purpose. They have no trace of human presence but are still completely artificial. It's this feeling of conscious design without any spirit. Everything is sterile, everything is generic. A relentless and boundless mundanity, like seeing the stock assets in a game. Everything feels fake.
I love this video! Your's and The Librarian's content on liminal spaces are my go-to videos when I want to get into that altered reality mood. I remember the first time I came across this video, almost 3/4 through 2020, suffering from both an abscessed tooth and COVID at the same time, out of work for three weeks, isolated in my room, exploring YT in the early morning hours. Watching this again, and thinking back to that time, just floating along, not really doing anything (not that I could at that time anyway), just "existing", elicits some strong nostalgia right about now.
i love when solar uploads, his takes on art are so unique and listening to him is calming and interesting. his videos are quite different from other youtubers, they have a type of class. it’s also really nice to have unique topics to be talked about than just boring videos about tracers.
gahh, yesss, for most videos I'm always in such a rush, even for like 7 minute videos, I just have to put on 2x speed, because idk, I have more videos to watch before I have to do stuff. However, when it comes to watching Solar's stuff, honestly he's pretty detailed, gives a good amount of thought, and his stuff like this is quite relaxing to watch, I can watch the whole 25 minutes, and it's a pleasure, it doesn't feel like i'm waiting for it to finish. Then there's the livestreams. (lol jk I like those too)
I once got lost at laser tag when I was a kid. The buzzer went off, everyone left the game room and I heard the doors slam shut. For five minutes I walked around in the dimly lit, foggy, silent room and continued to search for an exit. What was once full of life and noice was now dead. It was the most "liminal space" feeling that I've ever gotten. Someone eventually realized I was missing and they came in for me
You experienced the literal version of exploring an empty multiplayer map from Halo or Gmod or something like that. That must have been something truly surreal.
Liminal spaces are so eerie because they’re familiar which reminds me of an adventure time quote “something weird might just be something familiar viewed from a different angle, and that’s not scary, right?”
I definitely feel a large percentage of the nostalgia sensation lies with the closing statement. It captures a moment in time for us when we were very young, seeing the world with new eyes and desperate to learn more, unsure of what is should be frightening and what shouldn’t be, living in an entire world without context, and hoping to someday learn, and truly know and understand what that context is. Eerie sights, strange devices, bizarre arrangements of man-made design that we do not yet comprehend, that is still new and alien to us. To be a child, gazing out the windows of the car on a ride, late December and looking at all of those lights, those homes, the little play things, and feeling this sudden realization that every single person out there is living a life as complex as your own, as you say. Those children are waiting to wake up on Christmas day just like you. Their parents argue, their tvs go static, their food comes from the little grocery store on the corner, their toys sit under the snow, forgotten until spring; A first view of something that will become so common an idea you may never think of it again. Until you see these images.
I agree and would like to contribute with my personal examples; abandoned construction sites and hastyly designed building hallways. I am a Turkish national born in 1991 in Istanbul. I spent most of my time inside vast, crowded urban settings which oddly comforts me with every vibration of it's life. However some parts of the city includes really cheap and bad (often newly made by sketchy contractors) apartment buildings, sporting white halls that are often afterthought and narrow, has single bulb lighting and sometimes small windows to save energy on daylight. Tile floors with no shapes on walls amplifiy footsteps incredibly, with the lack of elevators accompanied with steep steps gives you a sudden rush of misery and helplessness in the belly of a concrete hell which often concludes with a shot of happiness for finally reaching to your loved ones or increased misery for finally arriving homes of less desirable people. Abandoned constructions were less miserable yet highly eerie spaces. They were 'exotic' to me because they were pretty rare for all the right reasons and yet there were always even sketchier contractors existed and they scammed or bankrupted whole projects time to time. I can't recall a specific site but i have some scattered memories about them, mysteries of their origins and the uncomfortable feeling of death. Now that i am 29 years old i am no stranger to news like mobs burying peaople to 'unused' sites but 20 years back then it felt like those spaces were dead. There were no windows, no insulation, no doors, no furniture, just empty and dusty concrete shells, towering in the middle of vast grounds of dirt that had planned walkways, carparks, vegetation that never build and placed. Those places always had natural light but that didn't give any feeling of assurance, instead sunlight reminds you further decay by making current ones appear to your eye and warming you relentlessly to remind you that it is superior than your fleshy being. Getting to places always took time and effort since there were almost always no guide info existed. While traversing exterior grounds is exhausting to body with heat and distances, traversing interiors were exhausting to soul as abandoned concrete and steel mourns for the days that never came and noises of the footsteps (again) and rubble just pushes your soul further away from itself. I once witnessed one of those constructions being purchased and repurposed, a multi-storey parking lot (how the hell could you unfinish that? it's just floors and a wooden gate) stayed astray for years when i was a middleschooler and highschooler. It's ground floor was 'usable' so it's 'defacto' owners worked it as a shady parking lot for years while we witnessed that thing's nets and covers decay. A while after i graduated some bigshot bought it and made it into a tiny 5 star-ish hotel, the 'CVK Park Bosphorus Hotel' at Taksim, Istanbul. Look it up, you'll find it oddly out of place and highly cubic because it always was out of place and highly cubic. Edit: spacing and side note: Half-Life multiplayer deathmach map named as 'Crossfire' hits pretty close to that abandoned construction feeling. Turn on 'footsteps' option and fire up a LAN game without anybody to play and hang around a bit, you'll feel the loneliness, misery and ultimately death, probably without even killing yourself. I really loved playing on that map, jumping around and fragging people but if you're against 3 or less people, trust me, that place will get to you.
Okay.. I'm am in disbelief. I was about to make a comment about how these photos are really not that effective for me because I'm Finnish. Until you showed the photo at 16:17. That is a photo from a finnish spa/waterpark. It is quite small, and not a very popular tourist attraction. The fact that you showed that very photo is so eerie because it is very rare to see anything related to Finland in any video that does not especially talk about something Finnish. Let alone a random waterpark that I went to as a kid. I have so many memories from that specific place that it's hard to describe how I feel about it. At first I thought that there is no way that my small local waterpark from finland would ever end up in a compilation showcasing american architecture. I thought that the logical answer was that there is a common template for indoor waterparks, that was used in the one near me. And this is just a extremely similar one. But when I searched "Flamingo vesipuisto" the name of this place, sure enough you can find this very photo. I am in shock right now, I feel like the fourth wall of life was just broken and reality is a lie.
Trippy. I've gotta say that photo fits in pretty well with water parks I've seen in Canada. The high ceilings and exposed support beams, the weird patchy lighting... I guess the style is consistent enough to have international appeal as a liminal space. I just wonder who took the photo and how it ended up in this context.
That’s absolutely wild! That image is one that really got me! It looks so much like a dream I had a lot when I was a kid, or at least it feels the same! That’s so kind blowing to me that it’s a real place!!
I feel like any building that Spirit Halloween sets up shop is a liminal space. Or old KMart /Zellers stores if you’re from Ontario. I rewatch this video every few months. The images unlock nostalgia (and what feel like hard wired memories, but probably aren’t). I’ve continue to use windows XP Bliss background to this day. Love your channel, consistently thought provoking; videos I come back to regularly
My belief as to why they are so familiar is for three main reasons: 1: The pictures are low quality. The graininess allows you to connect with it more comfortably due to certain details being lost to the grain of the image, therefore making it more generic. 2: The images have no people, or at the very most, an incredibly obscured person. This makes them more easy to relate to subconsciously, because your brain has an easier time placing yourself there when there is no one present. 3: The images are very, very generic places. Notice how you can't pinpoint a single brand, location, or otherwise memorable objects anywhere. Their generic qualities makes them much easier to find yourself in, due to it being more easy for your brain to believe you were there at one point. (Hell, half of them don't have furniture or obvious plant life [trees]. This makes them even more generic, for the very basic shapes of buildings or interiors can trigger memory.) TL;DR: The pictures are so dang generic and non-detailed that your brain can't help but try to remember where they're from, despite not being there.
They're mostly office buildings, warehouses, or back rooms for stores all of which are owned by international companies that tend to use the same basic layouts and use the same things like paint, carpet, linoleum, etc across their stores, and they're all designed to be as generic and inoffensive as possible and as cheaply as possible. I've built plenty of them and you'd be surpised to learn that a store in France will use the exact same carpet, ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and nearly everything else as one in America if they're owned by the same company.
Besides clinics (generic) and a few other common buildings, they don't feel familiar at all to me. It's probably region based too, since buildings in different states/countries would probably trigger different feelings.
Also adding to this. Architecture, wallpapers, furniture etc. go by that time's fashion. So many places and houses can look similar, even if they aren't the exact same place. Which can create a sense of familiarity and uncanniness. And if you didn't live through those trends, you probably have seen them in older movies or pictures.
Another explanation: dreams. Your dreams are just a large conglomeration of your experiences. You've probably dreamed of some hodgepodge environment put together with mental snapshots of places you've seen. A lot of them have a huge dreamlike quality, even the Soviet ones. Low exposure fuzzy images add to that dreamlike quality, since dreams feel more fuzzy and out of focus when you think back to them.
7:50 this one. Just a few days ago I had one of the most vivid dreams ive had in a long time. Of course I couldn't remember everything as some stuff was still fuzzy but in my head a very faint and distant image of a room that looked similar to this one kept popping up. Now, I don't know if it was actually part of the dream but it was still there in the back of my mind that morning (also I write my vivid dreams down when I wake up and I wrote this memory down as "strangely familiar place" so it's quite cool to see it in a liminal space video) On a different note I've had dreams where it feels like I've already dreamed that before and I know the plot and that night was one of those dreams haha
Every single one of these makes me feel like a monster is gonna peek around one of the many corners. Why would I watch these before bed? I’m actually getting kinda scared just looking at these
Just today, while at work I was browsing UA-cam when I found this video about liminal spaces. It describes my feelings so incredible well! I have very vivid dreams of visiting my primary school as it is empty and thinking of all the memories I have with my friends back then. I do have these dreams as well of my dormitory when I was a student. The building has now been stripped and the fact that I will never visit those places again, while having the most precious memories there gives me a strong melancholic feeling. The photos you show in this video have the same vibe: they used to be happy places, but are now abandoned. I never knew that this subject was so wide spread. I really think none of my friends experience this the same level as I do, so I'm really glad I found these videos. It makes me feel less alone and more understood. Thank you!
17:24 The origins of that pool have been found, actually. It's pretty mundane. The pool is located at the Sanatorium Ingul in Nikolaev, Ukraine. A sanatorium is a facility native to the USSR, and is essentially a spa. The green water is most likely not because of algae caused by poor maintenance, but just the lighting making the water appear green. If you go to Google Images, and search for "sanatorium ingul pool", you'll find plenty of pictures of people happily swimming in the pool despite the green water, and also ones with better lighting that show that the water is perfectly clean. As for the mouth pillars (or, as thier website calls it, a "cascading waterfall"), it's just a design choice. They're no different from any other pool fixtures whose sole purpose is to constantly spray water into the pool.
I feel like this is sort of universal of all liminal spaces--put them back in their context, and they're just normal places, with at worst just a bit of mildly weird structure. It's by removing that context that become strange and off-putting. Fascinating stuff.
My theory is that "gut feelings" are just observations we haven't yet been able to process rationally. Sometimes it's something really obvious - if a place that's normally full of people appears to be empty, there's a strong sign that *something* is wrong, even if you can't tell what it is. Your brain tells you there must be a reason people are avoiding it, then tells you to get away.
@@lilylopnco yeah, it's totally possible. I don't know if there's been any research into it (seems like a difficult thing TO research, by definition), but I'd be interested to read more about it if so
That makes good rational sense and seems like the most likely answer. There's that saying "it's better to mistake a stick for a snake, than a snake for a stick". It kind of explains why reactions aren't perfect and would tend to swing towards unsettling/creepy feelings of things that aren't explicitly dangerous.
@@applebutter4036 Yeah, absolutely. We're excellent at recognising patterns. I just think about times people had a gut feeling about e.g. avoiding a gas station, then later finding out people inside were being held at gunpoint, and wonder what would be different there - well, people would be on the ground, and nobody would be leaving. So you wouldn't see anybody moving around inside, and even with cars parked outside, people wouldn't be leaving to get back into them. So your brain pattern matches with every other time you've seen this, notices some kind of big discrepancy, and says "leave right now" before you stick around and figure out what seems off. I could be wrong of course, but the theory appeals to me - what can I say, just a gut feeling.
@@jamiedoesthings This is exactly it for a lot of these photos. And indeed the reason behind a significant number of "haunted houses" AND INDEED, can save people's lives when experiencing a gas leak. Something's off. You don't know what. You trust your gut. You leave. It turns out something was actually wrong, it was just hard to perceive. ... Oops I wrote some rhymes... Anyway... Water damage can make us afraid, because walking on rotting floors can make us fall into a hole. Wind howling is creepy, because storms can cause fallen trees, lifted rooftops, or lighting strikes. A skeleton is scary because we don't want to be next. That's why,,, "Facts over feelings" is bullshit and dangerous for many reason. Feelings are there for a reason, they are the more nuanced and complex forms of thought, that store not hard data that can be referenced and compared, but vast fuzzy data that forms patterns and suggestions. In my walk of life, this phrase comes up a lot: "If it feels wrong, don't do it." It's only when you have successfully concluded that the alarm is for a reason that is fully addressed, that you should ignore it and move forward. And these photos are full of alarms of unconfirmed danger.
I think the real meaning of liminal spaces is actually people missing the consumerism and economic prosperity of the 1980s and 90s, the shopping malls, the kids play places, all of it. Most of the places showcased in liminal spaces are either in a late 20th century styling, or take place in a place that's part of an industry that has considerably declined over the last few decades, with the rise in online shopping diminishing the need for many of these things. Take the backrooms, for instance. The mono-yellow walls and the fluorescent lights were most common in this time period, and the emptiness of all of these photos indicates how this era and the architecture from it is slowly fading away. This also explains why many of these images are seemingly in random indoor locations, as when we are young, our minds are fascinated by everything around us, including walls or buildings. These memories might also not always be very clear, which can also sometimes be seen in liminal spaces. During such a turbulent time like this one, sometimes we wish that we could be back during a time when we were safe, when were comfortable, when we were a kid. And that's what I think liminal spaces represent. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Yeah, I tend to agree more with this interpretation. I don't think it's just nostalgia. It's more a sense of loneliness and decline. These were once places that were very active socially and economically - in fact, for much of the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, some of these malls and other public spaces were really the center of social life in a lot of these communities. Now they're just forgotten and empty, and serve no discernible social or cultural purpose. I think you would definitely get the same kind of feeling, for example, in a recently built suburban housing development from the 2010s that had been abandoned before completion. It's less about nostalgia and more about the lack of social activity and economic prosperity.
perhaps the 80s/90s nostalgia is specifically targeting teens from that generation who’d be in their forties, experiencing midlife crises and yearning for the nostalgia of a time that was relatively carefree and fun
To build on this (although I kinda disagree - I think the pics hit different because being alone in an empty space inherently feels kinda funny), there is another layer to it nowadays when there aren’t public places where people just hang out anymore. If you don’t go to bars, clubs, or some kind of church then the liminal space imagery is often pictures of places you USED to go in order to hang out - but those places would be empty if you visited now. The arcades are closed. The malls are emptying out. Nobody’s stopping to eat inside the fast food place. The diners are closing down. The strip mall chains are disappearing, except the really big names. If you wanted to go back to someplace from your childhood, how many of those places even exist anymore?
Same. I feel like a combination of late night travels, going to empty houses with my real estate agent father, working as a custodian, and Covid leaving nearly every building empty, none of these are uncanny because my brain automatically places them in at least one of those contexts
I have spent nearly all my life living on different ‘patches’. A ‘patch’ is an artificially created village or neighbourhood, usually constructed by the government to house military families. They were almost never full, and there were always at least two empty houses on every street. I remember as a child I would peer through the windows of these houses with my friends, and look into the empty, unfurnished rooms. I must also mention that every house on the patch was identical. They had the same layouts and gardens, and you weren’t allowed to paint the walls or change the carpets. So, when we looked into these empty buildings we were seeing the ghosts of our own kitchens and living rooms. It would scare us all a lot, so much so that the patch kids came up with a sort of urban legend. It went that one day you could come home from school and accidentally wander into the wrong house, an empty one, thinking it was your own. As soon as you stepped into it the house would claim you, and lock you in, so that you could never leave. You would spent the rest of your life in that place, a place very much like your old home, but with none of your things, your toys, your family. Every time a child moved away, which happened regularly and suddenly, we would rationalise this as them having walked into ‘the wrong house’ It’s crazy, after having watched this video, to find out that other people have such a similar reaction of fear and unease to empty but seemingly familiar places.
I used to live in the same kind of place when I was younger. We would always find a way into the empty houses and play in them. All of the houses had a sort of triangular room on the second floor that led into a crawl space and there was always stuff that other families had left behind, like old toys and old diarys/notebooks that we would read. One time we found a notebook that was filled with messy hand writing that I'm pretty sure said something along the lines of "the walls are going to crush me" written over and over (I'm not sure if that's exactly what it said, this was a long time ago). Probably was just the result of someone having a claustrophobia induced panic attack, but it scared the crap out of us lmao. We spread around the story that if you went into that crawlspace you would get crushed to death and no one ever went into the houses again. But like you said, every time a kid moves we just assumed they died in one of the houses. Anyways, i just wanted to share because I thought it was interesting lmao
As a Korean who never lived in America long enough, I never resonated with all the fuss about liminal spaces and backroom creepypasta/nostalgia. That was until recently when I worked in soon-to-be-abandoned American Base (in Korea) for my mandatory service. Day by day I saw increasing numbers of "empty backrooms" uncannily identical to empty backrooms in so many liminal spaces creepy pasta. To me, liminal spaces and backroom wasn't nostalgia or "reincarnation". It became a constant reminder of today, and constant reminder of entropy, emptiness and eventual death concurrently happening every where and eventually coming to us.
"liminal space" is a really poor descriptor because a liminal space is an actual thing, but it doesn't need to be discomforting or otherworldly. it's just any place designed for people to pass through but not stay in, e.g. a train station or a school corridor
@John Proctor You cant expect the mainstream to handle the intricacies of a new art movement or anything like that Same reason political movements can get dumbed down in media circulation
It's mainly when that space is taken out of its normal usage is when it becomes strange. Schools at night (elementary schools anyway) are a big one for me. We did a school play back in 5th grade but it was fairly late, so seeing all the normally lit up and active classrooms dark and empty with a setting sun beyond the windows cast a weird feeling when i went to go get some props.
i think that that's one of the reasons that it's so uncanny and familiar. probably because most of the places have some sort of quality that you're not going to be there for long. for example, an unfurnished home, you're not going to be there for long because you're moving out. i feel the familiarity is because the graininess of the photos kind of has a nostalgic vibe to it because a lot of people that see these photos grew up in the early 90's to 2000's. another reason you feel you might not be there for long is because maybe your parents took you to that place, and that also sets off the nostalgia. liminal space may be kind of bad at describing it, but it still works if you have some context (which most of these images don't have any)
To me, liminal spaces are a kind of anti-marketing. Reclaiming reality beyond what is overpolished and made explicitly to induce comfort. The sides of places the ads will never show you, or the ravages of time on what was once marketable.
Plus you never see any brands or companies in these photos, there’s no “Walmart” sign or “McDonald’s” nothing like that, the buildings are just husks, with nothing left of what they used to be
It totally does! I think that is what Kubrick was going for too. The absolute isolation from pretty much anywhere else gives it that vibe of "oh, we arent supposed to be seeing this but here we are".
I work for a facility condition assessment firm. My job is traveling the country, taking pictures of after hours and back rooms (empty if I’m lucky) buildings for capital planning or for someone who wants to buy the building. A lot of empty office buildings and schools lately because of COVID. The creepiest was a vacant car sales building from the 90s. Some of the lights didn’t work, but a building needs assessing
Recently I was in a back section of a very large mall, a place I could always remember but never put a finger on where I had seen it, since I had been there when I was much younger. I had believed it was in another country or something. As the mall began to close, I was walking through it with all of the lights on and the calming mall music but no people on any of the balconies or floors. It covered many of the points you mentioned, the strange lighting for an empty place, the lack of people, the nostalgic music and setting
my worst ever nightmare to date was about the dining room in my childhood home completely empty. that’s it. it was terrifying, I felt this horrifying and overwhelming sense of impending doom.
same, my entire house with my dad looks like a giant backroom but there was specific room that was the worst. it was a dining room in my dads house that no one used, we dont have curtains at my dads house, so during nighttime it was just an eerie darkness and it always scared me shitless. especially since i used to “see things” as a kid and the things i saw were usually in that part of the house (as well as the rooms where we had gas tanks & those looked especially backroom-y) there were multiple times when i was a kid that i walked downstairs during the night to get a glass of water and saw a tall man or clown like figure standing in the dining room watching me. twas quite scary lmao.
mine was when I was at my childhood playground, something was weird about the school that I couldn't figure out what. Then I started sinking into the sand until I was buried in it. I barely managed to make an air pocket with my hands and then a voice told me I was getting good at practicing for my next ski trip. Then I woke up
@@hanakoskokeshidoll just two days ago or so I saw a person comment in another video about seeing a tall man who sometimes wore a hat and sometimes not, and they were almost always staring from the bottom of the stairs.
I feel like this channel is the only channel that explain feelings like this, so many words that I've had no idea could explain my weird feelings about empty and left out photos. Great work Solar Sanda!
You should check out Jacob Geller. He has a great video about architecture in art and another one about haunted houses that has a similar feel to this video.
Then you should check out Jacob Geller, he's a videogame reviewrer with pretty much this style. I would recommend the first video I did saw of him: Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism
I’ve always loathed “fake outside”, like those outdoor basements or those post apocalyptic plans where you live underground. Even some restaurants or buildings will paint a fake sky on the ceiling and it’s always completely freaked me out. Not to mention the windows maze screensaver
I remember going to a casino, where the ceiling was painted to look like it was early evening. I'm assuming so you don't notice how much time you've spent there. It could be 2 AM and you'd think you could still make it out in time for restaurants to be open.
@@tgrady2570 I know what casino you're talking about, it's in Nevada and I went in there at some kind of off-hour while on a family trip and it was near-empty. A casino, near-empty... Fuckin' weird, man.
T Grady Caesar’s Palace and Planet Hollywood in Vegas. I can understand the odd feeling but those places seem to do it really well. It’s kinda serene in there.
Finally someone who can explain what I always feel. The emptiness but yet the familiarity is something I tried asking my friends about. Noone except for you has really explained this phenomenon. Thank you for explaining this as best as you can. Finally I can understand why I always have the sense of familiarity with these images.
I completely understand why they listed Target. Unlike other stores they don't play music, creating a very odd atmosphere in which the whole store seems incredibly quiet outside of the odd child's scream. Standing alone in an aisle often feels surreal because of how different the atmosphere is from most stores. It took me years of going there to realize the reason for my feeling of unease came from the absence of background music, it's something we've come to expect from that experience and the lack of it feels unnatural.
Not for me cause there's always 1: tons of people talking 2: those damn loud tv's playing ad and stuff 3: you don't notice the music isn't there if Target is the main place you go to for groceries, also my mind is great at blocking out stuff, like once I was watching UA-cam and the dog was (apparently) barking, and he barks loudly, and my Grandma was taking a shower, when she came out, she asked my why the dog was barking. I didn't even _know_ he was barking. Or the fact that there was even any noise other than the video, my mind just completely drowned out any noise that wasn't the video, which includes loud ones. (It still does)
That, and if you leave target after they've already closed and the lights start slowly going out. Creepiest feeling, even if you do go with another person.
Show me sudden movements, an image of a clown, some screaming etc. and you'll make my eyes roll... Show me an image of a kid's room taken in the 90s and every hair on my body is stood on end and I'm overcome with a sinking dread...
Perhaps how seemingly meaningless these kinds of places can easily become in our rapidly changing world? I.e. blockbuster. Many memories in buildings like these, now either something else entirely, or not there at all.
Another creepiness about them is that when you're alone, in an empty space, and you know that no one is there, you don't have much to focus on, so you invent a presence.
I've grown up knowing a lot of people with different mental illnesses and insane and weird artistic expression, one of my brothers being one of the biggest influences on me in this area. I also grew up with a lot of anxiety and and a hyperactive imagination. Unfamiliar things, and uncanny things are utterly fascinating to me. I love the sureal stories they tell, I love dream logic, and I love having some things I can't understand. I guess it's not that way for everyone, but it's one of the things that gives meaning to my life.
You Sense that because you were told. Theres a whole "urban legend" about How scary and uncanny the liminal spaces are,so you feel a lot of negative emotions not because they are nefarious,but rather your mind was trained to feel the negative aspects.
@@Ramonlaw86 I've never heard of any of this stuff until I watched this video. Some of these pictures do remind me of places from when I was a kid, but I thought they were creepy back then. My local mall went out much sooner than most and my mom and I would go walk there in the winter because it's cold in Alaska. There were only like 2 stores still open in it and the light were always half off and it creeped me out. People are pretty naturally scared of the unknown. I also spent lots of time in empty schools white my dad who is a teacher and I found them creepy back then and I still do now. I have mostly really like creepy horror things but recently I have very bad anxiety and one of the symptoms is itchiness which I find unpleasant so I don't indulge in horror as much.
The shots in the shining really make me want to go towards them. It's like a moth to a flame. I revel in discomfort. There's something nice knowing that you are in a place that others turn away from, a safety from being discovered. If I suddenly ran across two twins at the end of a dark hallway I'd shit my pants though, fasho.
also, the layout of the hotel doesn't make any sense. if you were to map it out, rooms would overlap, windows would exist that shouldn't show the outside, and staircases would lead nowhere. I think our brains pick up on that kind of stuff subconsciously and that's another reason why the movie was scary.
@@1gnore_me. i agree. it has to do with control, and subconsciously knowing where you are, which would normally bring you comfort and security in a movie, but you lose that in the shining. which is why setting is so important. it becomes an additional character
the mysterious thing is that, born, raised and currently living in Japan, i have never been nor seen those places, yet i still have the sense of familiarity.
THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS "Kenopsia" (noun) 9:47 the eeriness of places left behind "Anemoia" (noun) 10:55 nostalgia for a time you've never known "Sonder" (noun) 21:21 the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own
17:34 I had the phone very close to my face throughout the image’s permanence. For the first time in my life I experienced heavy and persistent shivers of fear and discomfort by just looking at a picture, definitely something I wouldn’t desire to try again but still so interestingly intense
It was about a decade ago when I had a really strong experience like this for the first time (that I remember of course). I was a young teenager and up late at night, watching a video about creepypasta images with next to zero knowledge of any of that now almost ubiquitous internet lore. Slenderman and indie horror games were rising to internet stardom at the time so it was all brand new to me. And man, when smile.jpg came up on my ipod screen, I was shocked to the core with a cold fear and revulsion. I threw the my ipod away from me into the couch and refused to look at the screen while I fumbled to exit out of youtube. It kickstarted a long and in-depth interest in all types of internet horror that has never left me, but I've never been as sick-to-the-bone scared as seeing that image for the first time, even if I don't think it's all that scary anymore.
The lovely part is that in reality, it's just a goofy looking sculpture of some bearded man too. Funny how a completely harmless sculpture trigger such intense response within someone the moment it's represented in a dark, low resolution picture. I had the same reaction myself, lol.
@@amaruqlonewolf3350 Another detail about that photo that makes the "Julien Reverchon" sculpture more unsettling than it actually is: You can't really make out its arms or hands at first glance, which makes its form less immediately recognizable as "human." In the picture, it looks less like a human figure and more like an indecipherable looming black mass that happens to have a deformed human head with an indeterminable facial expression. In that sense, the way the picture plays with your mind upon seeing it for the first time is even more stress-inducing than it would be if you could clearly make out the statue's arms and hands, as it forces you to consider far more possibilities as to what the horrible figure is about to do, or what it even is to begin with. The form appears so non-human that you can't simply jump to the classic assumption of, "it's going to reach out and grab me." Rather, you have no idea what it could possibly be capable of, which makes it that much worse. That was my experience with the photo three years ago, at least.
@@amaruqlonewolf3350 @valerioFiorillo i felt the same way when i saw this months ago but i came back to say kane pixels just made a short series inspired by that image and its nuts that he picked this specific one
I feel like they are like corpses. They used to be filled with life, movement, and potential. Now they are just a dead body left behind as the life moves on.
Now THIS is a poetic comment.
Like The Langoliers
the creepy and uncomfortable part about that is you'd expect dead things to decay and rot, and when they dont, a place like a school or hospital with bright lights, shiny clean floors, and no stains on the walls but looks like its been completely empty for a long time.. its reminiscent of looking at a person you once knew and talked to in a coma. Still alive but there isnt anything there.
Jass Lang I feel like this is fog. Just foggy. This makes me feel fog in the brain. It used to be a amazing cool fair! Now the fog has come in and the fun has gone.
At least it still alive.
Not so many art i know of.
Like dadaism.
It makes you feel like you shouldn't be there. No one/nothing else is there, so why are you? It's empty for a reason
run
Yeah but from my experience that only works if you expect the place to be filled with people. For example I live in the spanish countryside in a town with less than 3000 inhabitants so in winter nights at 2 am there is no one in the streets, for me this is totally normal but for my cousin who is from Madrid it's pretty unsettling to the point that he finds scary to go out alone.
Get
*Out*
I know this is a hypothetical to drive your point but it feels like a threat.
Yes id define it as a transitional space isolated and contextless while obscuring sections
it's like ruins if they were in perfect condition. Unsettling and lonely.
so abandoned ... lmao
and nostalgic apparently
that's a great way to describe it, like modern ruins in good condition
the photos of old houses with no furniture feel like if you went into an abandoned house that was last lived in during the 1940s and everything was in perfect condition with no signs thats its been empty for more than a few hours
The fact that they're in good condition is what makes them even more bizarre
If they were damaged and destroyed, it wouldn't be as big of a mystery why there aren't any people there
"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is a film that uses liminal spaces like empty schools, convenience stores at night, and childhood homes to great unsettling atmospheric effect.
That movie made me so uncomfortable
That movie was unbearable boring but now that you comment it, you're right. The liminal settings are used there, indeed
One of my fav movies
These photos make me feel like I was left behind in an evacuation. Everyone is gone, only for me to still be here in places I shouldn’t. I was abandoned and while I may explore, I don’t want to.
It reminds me of a post-nuclear apocalypse story, you've survived in some bunker, and you come back out- everything is the same but not and also empty.
It’s like the scary short story; You’re the last human being on earth, you hear a knock at the door.
@@White_Recluse you feel like you are being chased by unknown creature, you try to hide as far as you can. Until then, you realize... There is nothing there, only you and your brain try to make you still conscious as a human being by telling you that there is enemy even though there is nothing, and no one to harm you...
Gone
SpongeBob SquarePants: Season 6, Episode 4
i work construction and have to walk into spaces like this all the time, but they do kind of remind me of one time I was sent to meet someone in their office and was given the wrong address and came into an empty office floor (I later found out the elevator button was disabled but i assumed it wasn't working and took the stairs) and it had all the furniture, computers, and everything but was completely abandoned since they were moving to another office and alot of the stuff was at the old location. I felt like I'd been left behind during the rapture or something.
I think this concept is why The Shining is so creepy; it’s a hotel that should have lots of people living in it, but it’s completely empty.
Speaking of Kubrik, these spaces also remind me of the ending to 2001. It's surprising that it's not mentioned as it's a direct depiction of what liminal spaces are.
Also, ya know, the racist murder ghosts
And the langoliers, also by stephen king, set entirely at an abandoned airport (in the past)
Holy shit, I’ve never put this together but this is extremely true
ua-cam.com/video/0sUIxXCCFWw/v-deo.html
“The Last man on earth is sitting alone in his house. There’s a knock on the door”
Gives off similar vibes to these pictures for me
"the last man..."
so it's a woman?
oh yeah isnt that a radio play or something. I remember listening to something that started with that.
@Darksider .- same
knock knock, its the death angel
@@ArthurLima-lp8ue the last womam knocked in the door se they can "Repopulate"
liminal spaces actually give me a rather librating and relaxed feeling. free from peoples jugments and the worries of the world. u got nothing to do but to look at the space, explore it and play in it
I see it the same way .a whole big place to just explore and walk around .no rush or judgment .just you and the place
Fellow creâtures
You're very special and unique buddy
A liminal space that really creeps me out is when you stop at a stoplight in the middle of the night. Nobody is there except you, it's very quiet. However, the lights keep cycling as if they're pretending the intersection is still busy.
Yeah
Traffic lights in the UK have weight detectors, so if it’s just you at a red light, it’ll know and let you go straight away
I once came across a car accident site at night, with the accident have been happening hours before, so everything was abandoned except for the destroyed car. But of course, I did not know this in this moment. It was quite a creepy situation.
Reminds me of this lone light pole in the park by me that looks so creepy at night
ya I don't stop at those 😎
I'm kinda sad that I don't feel a thing looking at them... must be because building structures in Brazil don't look any similar to those in the US.
It's actually kinda weird when people say things like "you can't deny you've seen a place like this!" and it's a classic american house. We rarely get to have front yards or modeled homes here.
Gema being a man of culture shouldn't be surprising, but it was unexpected to find ya here!
I feel like our country's aesthetics are so underrated... things like those barebrick walls, plantlife growing along the walls of more humid states, old architecture and vast concrete plains, at least in the south... having visited some of PoA, I imagine that kind of aesthetic better fits the bill.
Also, works like Seu Jorge's Life Aquatic too!
Gemaplis, esse é o último lugar que eu esperava te encontrar, como vai
i was abt to write the same thing, these are all well built places, even thoe they seem abandoned or "failed", they dont look anything like the actually decaying streets of not so well off places ive grown up with tons and tons of people. these all scream alien to me even if their designed context is achieved by people around them, etc because these are literally over the oceans for me.
gema???
ok, esse comentário foi uma surpresa kkkk
does anyone remember when you got to school, and some of the lights weren't on yet?
Yeah like going to a before-school club or something that ish was freaky
Nope, was always late at some point 😂
That wasn’t discomforting, that was the best thing that could happen.
I remember once being the first kid at school on a super foggy morning. It was most of an hour before people really started showing up. It was so quiet.
I loved that. Favorite time at school.
I think something else is to consider is that when you were younger, rooms felt a lot larger and open. So when we see them this way in liminal spaces it can remind us of that feeling
This is a good point, actually there's something intensely magical about those very, very faint memories we have of carpet stretching out to infinity or an impossibly faraway cliff with an outlet on it. This guy is too cynical about liminal spaces and personally I don't think he get's it at all, though that seems to be common. There's actually a Japanese word for the very specific feeling of wondering what's behind the crest of a hill that doesn't exist in any language, which is a powerful feeling I sometimes get looking at those treeless grassy horizons with blue sky.... it's not just remembering Windows 95.
@@erawanpencil That and there's another Japanese phrase for the ephemeral nostalgia we feels that is potentially captured by these liminal images. Mono no aware which refers to something like the impernance of things. The acknowledgment that everything passes away. Likewise, liminal horror plays off the idea of eternal stagnation. There's also an element of dreamlike surrealism to this stuff, especially things like the backrooms where architecture and placements are distorted. This subject is fascinating artistically and psychologically. I think the guy who made the video was way too reductive. Cynicism isn't a substitute for insight.
I died when he said it was the background for a lego set.
I thought one was concept art for avatar the last Airbender
Same, I lost it
What happens after you die? We're all wondering.
I thought they were background for visual novels. I actually yelled WHAT when he said they were for lego lolll
@@redcenteno7150 Same
When I was a kid, my dad and I went to see a movie, but everyone's tickets were printed with the wrong theatre number, and it turned out the theatre number was in a part of the building that was being renovated. So me, my dad, and about 20 people sat in this small half-finished theatre with insulation and wires hanging out of the ceiling, torn up carpet, and nasty seats. It looked like a cold war bomb shelter. We were early for the showing, so we expected to sit for a good 20 minutes, but it was a total of 40 minutes that we sat there before we figured out something was wrong, feeling weirdly out of place like we're the last people in existence. I half expected to walk out and the whole city would be abandoned.
A couple of years ago I went to a movie theater with my mom at like 8 pm or something, the parking lot was empty, the lobby was mostly empty, and since we arrived earlier the theater was empty except for just me and my mom, the ads weren't even playing yet. And then ofc my mom has to go to the bathroom so I was left there alone for a bit (I think I remember). I felt like anyone could walk in at any moment and murder me.
About like, 9 months ago, a movie theater in my city was closed.
2 New movie theaters were opened and so the old one went out of business, and I felt nostalgic because it has been there ever since I was a kid, I mean, the memory of my first ever horror movie happened in that theater, I was a toddler and we went to see coraline, ya know, with the botton eyes, and out of everything I got freaked out by the arm that was chasing coraline at the end of the movie while she was alone at a forest, not knowing something was crawling towards her, so my dad took me out of the room and into the hallway full of people so that I could breathe some fresh air. Some time after its closing, I went up to the movie theater with my friends, and although the place itself was unaccessible, we could see the inside through the glass, and everything was standing still, like its about to die, or like it has always been that way, meant to close.
That same movie theater company still operates in other cities, but not in mine anymore.
I kinda visually sat through your experience right now lol
until they renovated it, there was a cinema in one of the town centres near me that literally had stuffing coming out of the seats... it was as if people were actually using an abandoned cinema...
Can imagine this as the premise for a Tom Stoppard play...
The unsettling feeling you are experiencing is guilt for pushing all those people into the river in LEGO city.
You feel your sins crawling up your spine
@@aa-ir6si 😱😱😱
HEY!
Lmaoo
You’re making jokes about a guy who gets oppressed.
He speaks his mind, and then he gets tortured. This is serious, and you should be ashamed.
Join the Rebellion
17:34 it's great to see a once unpopular unrecognized photo like this being used in your video. I was recently watching a Wendigoon stream in which him, Kane Pixels, and Alex Kister were watching different analog horrors. When Kane said "he got the image of the rolling giant from a Solar Sands video". I think it's cool that I was able to find this out and see how other creators can influence eachother.
I'd need to go back and check, but I think it was the other way around. He knew he and a lot of other had *seen* it in this video, but he found it somewhere else first.
i think he saw it already before seeing the solar sands vid
i remember freaking out when i saw the Kane Pixels video pop up in my recommended and seeing that thing again, considering it’s one of my favorite liminal space images, it made me really happy to see it used by Kane Pixels!
That image haunted me, so when I saw the Wendigoon video I had to try to find where I first saw it. Finally managed to find it!
"These rooms are future ruins."
-Anne Lamott
"The malls are the soon-to-be ghost towns.
Well, so long. Farewell. Goodbye."
-Isaac Brock, Modest Mouse - Teeth Like God's Shoeshine
Tale foundry! love your work, I would love if you did a video on Liminal space maybe one day. I've always wondered ways to spark the same feel in writing.
6:13 Patchy the Pirates House
they already are
Wasn’t expecting to see you here!
Empty Multiplayer maps have this feeling too.
Fun fact theres a horror game about that
@@plutoniclol6589 what's it called?
@@yul12twelve i think he means "no players online"
@@enejfangirl364 yes
@@enejfangirl364 no players online sucks though
I think a lot of this "strange familiarity" comes from how many things in our lives are generic and mass-produced. School hallways all look alike because they're built with the exact same linoleum floors, painted cinderblock walls, and drop ceilings with flourescent lights. Fast food places have standardized architecture to make them instantly recognizable. And many houses (particularly those built in the last century) are cookie-cutter copies of a standard plan used by the neighborhood's developers to streamline construction. These places have no identity of their own, but we've all seen something exactly like them at some point in the past, so they look familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time.
I thought exactly this too
But they're also places we don't pay much close attention to, because we're not there to admire the architecture or decor, but we take it in via osmosis, which is why so many of them seem so vaguely familiar, but we can't pinpoint where.
The uglification of America, converting every town into bustling cities with the exact same shopping centers, stores, houses, the erasure of any previous unique identity will continue as we enter the end stages of capitalism.
GHANI ZIYAD SAGIANSYAH
This is just where it’s happening the fastest.
Damn
I've always gotten a weird ecstasy from visiting "liminal" places. I see pure, unbridled potential. It feels good, oddly freeing.
I feel like The Shining perfectly captures the eeriness of liminal spaces: an abandoned hotel that, even before the danger shows itself, feels very creepy because the lack of people.
Especially the ending and its music
@@luiseduardofontes33 You should check out the video 'Can you name one object in this photo' by Solar Sands if you are intrigued by the music of The Shining. He talks about a music project by an artist called 'The Caretaker' (notice the obvious reference) which takes this feeling to a further level in a very.. effective way
@@Jeanne0805 i know about the caretaker his songs are awesome and sad at the same time!
And the tacky late seventies decoration of the Kubrick film actually helps with that effect.
The Victorian gothic style of the Stanley, as seen in the Stephen King version, is too "traditional." It's what haunted houses are "supposed" to look like.
Kubrick was an avid student of psychology, and he was probably well acquainted with this idea.
While we're on the subject of horror movies that make good use of this idea, the original Japanese versions of _The Ring, The Grudge,_ and _The Depths of Dark Water_ all do a fair job of it, as well as the experimental short _My House Walk-Through._ That last one is actually available for free right here on UA-cam, and it's by far the purest application of the "liminality" concept.
I think hotels are often scary per se
You know when you have a dream and you're in your house, but it isn't your house, but it is?
Dude, yeah..it’s unsettling - i’ve had a couple of those dreams
Now that you mention it...
Those are the worst!
I had this dream where my house looked identical as it is irl but completely made of wood and had deer heads mounted on the walls. It was isolated in some grey Midwest winter setting, and I was completely alone. I would wander around everyday to find that there was nothing but plains and trees for miles and miles. Weeks went by and finally some dude came wearing a deer head and shot me in the face. Never had a dream so eerie before.
i thought you meant when its my house but it isnt, but now i see you meant when its my house buy it isnt
This is basically psychological horror, there's no real threat or a monster attacking you, but you are scared by the atmosphere itself and the environments that surround you.
Whenever games try to replicate this feeling of being lost in another unpredictable dimension they never get it right because it only works in images, but there’s something else about it that isn’t right that I can’t describe
@@hotdogga the back rooms game does it really good though
there are entities that attack you in the background
The Uncanny Valley
@@hotdogga the stanley parable and superluminal do it
And any time in a game where the music stops completely
Also, minecraft cave noises
If you've ever had an eye test and have seen that red-roof house surrounded by the greenest green field and the most standard blue sky, you'd probably have had an early experience in Liminal spaces.
It's weird to think that, while these places are "taken out of context", they will inevitably become those places. An office will get shutdown, and you get places like the backrooms. Arcades will shut down and you get these images. Leaves me overwhelmed personally.
I definitely agree that it's overwhelming to think about. Everything is in a constant state of transition, even our own places of comfort and joy. It's a bit scary to think that these places become a sort of liminal space once the human aspect dissolves.
In Track and Field, I would always see my school empty. It's not so weird when you walk so fast to get it over with quickly. Post Soviet era buildings have the best sense of abandonment that I've seen. Most buildings were left alone since the 1980's. Nothing has changed. As a young kid, I went to a camp, there was multiple versions of cabins. Old and new. The oldest cabin was a wooden, unpainted with moss all around. 5 crooked steps to go inside. The light bulb still worked. Metal-rusted frames for bunkbeds with 3 inch bedsheets. It was so freaky to me when I was a kid, I wish I had the balls to actually explore inside it. The old bathrooms were the scariest. The plumbing didn't work. 😆 How did that scare me?
The Spongebob episode where he misses the last bus is a liminal space
Yea i know it is so eerie
Or that one where squidward time travels, and he breaks the machine and is left in like a blank limbo. That gave me chills
i was literally thinking that bruh
Coward the dog its ALl liminal too
I'm obsessed with that episode and now I just figured out why since I love liminal spaces
I think it's creepy because it looks lonely, but it doesn't feel lonely.
Yes, that is exactly how i feel about them.
Like you're lonely, but you're not alone
It’s designed to be inhabited by people, but there’s no one there
So it feels abandoned and creepy
its creepy because it just might not be lonely. like how we're not afraid of being alone in the dark, we're afraid that we might not be.
To me, it feels like there should be people there, but you can't see anyone, but that doesn't mean there isn't anyone. It's a space that feels like it was filled with people right before you walked in the room, like a surprise birthday party, but instead of them popping out and cheering they just stay hidden, leaving this unresolved tension behind. When will they pop out?
As a kid, my friends and I used to sneak into schools at night through open doors or windows and just run around and explore. AND IT WAS SCARY AF.
well put together as usual solar sands
Oh hey it's you
Fancy seeing you here too my dude
Love your videos. Do more of the phobia ones. Always open for new phobias.
Sans*
Was it really though?
As long as I'm not in fullscreen, nothing can hurt me
Poor anon
😭😭😭💀
Oh man I truly understand u
*laughs in mini player*
Fullscreen protects me from outside murder
I recognized the “You’ve definitely seen this before” photo of the house immediately. It’s Patchy the Pirate’s house from Spongebob.
Okay wait my brain was just like, that doesnt create confused weird feeling thing that's just patchy's house and I literally thought my brain was just relating a childhood thing to the photo but I fkn could never have forgotten it cause I have a phobia related to him and his house is engraved in my brain I THOUGHT MY BRAIN WAS LYING THANK YOU FOR THIS COMMENT
"That's it?"
@@shortbr3eaf THAT WAS JUST A BUNCH OF CHEAP DEVIANTART OCS
i thought that immediately as well
Where in the video is it? @
I worked at a major theme park, Universal Orlando, and I had the privilege of being able to see the park almost totally empty at times. Walking into the park in early morning or late at night was always fascinating to me, I loved the peacefulness. Quiet empty paths, rides moving in their cycles without riders to fill them, no one standing in the queue lines, clear music wafting through the air. Such a stark contrast to the impossibly busy times when guests would crowd up the lines, stampede down the walkways and fill up the air with voices.
That sounds incredible. 🌎
I feel like this is what made the The Shining so disturbing. All the spaces in that film felt like liminal spaces.....
That's a real thing. There's videos on UA-cam describing various shots in the movie that display impossible geometry within the hotel.
It’s so interesting, I’m glad I now have the vocabulary to describe how that movie made me feel. All the same feelings that liminal spaces evoke as described in this video! I just didn’t know what exactly it was that I was feeling at the time. I’m so glad I stumbled across this video and channel!
Exactly, when I stumbled upon these images one of the first things that crossed my mind was the scene from The Shining where a massive amount of blood was pouring out of the elevator in front.
That was kind of the point of the film. They're in a usually bustling hotel during the off season. Something that should be full of guests, staff, and various hotel items, but is missing everything that makes it alive. It's missing the context. It's supposed to be so uncomfortable that people kill their families.
That's what I was thinking when I watched this video. Like Solar Sands described, these liminal space photos give attention to things that are mundane. There's several scenes in the movie that are like this. When Wendy checks on Jack while he's writing, when her and Danny were walking around the hedge maze, and when Jack was talking to Danny on his lap. All of these are seemingly normal, uneventful scenes, yet the music swells and causes us to think that something more is at play. It's that sort of juxtaposition that makes us uncomfortable
The reason I find the backrooms so terrifying is that there's this endless sense of anticipation. SOMETHING is going to happen, SOMETHING is going to jump out at you, but it never does. It's just this infinite horror that you are about to be terrified, but you never are.
Well said
That kind of feeling of impending doom would drive me insane.
The kind of horror where you scare yourself.
Except in the game. Then something actually happens
And there's no real place to hide
Hi this is the artist from the beginning of the video, Chris Barrett, I just wanted to say thank you for featuring me, I recently lost my father and have put art away for the past few months and this video reminded me of the pursuit of the craft, and that I am definitely feeling the absence of it, among other things. I also found the subject to be rather intriguing, I have always "felt" the effect of liminal spaces, but never fully grasped the concept. I feel movies like Napolean Dynamite, Gentleman Bronco's, and Beverly Luff Lynn are made out of these such spaces. Brilliant work!
I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope things will be better for you soon :)
Finally, someone else who watched Napoleon Dynamite
Truly sorry to hear about your father. You are a very talented artist and I hope you feel up to it again soon.
Obi-Wan Kenobi i've watched it too. it's good lol
im sorry to hear that. things will get better and we all hope you come back to doing what you love and have a passion for.
I used to work the graveyard shift at a mall... It was one of the most uncanny feelings in the world... Empty back corridors, empty shops with mannequins that seemed like they wanted to move since no one was watching, food courts that were empty, and an encapsulating smell that lingered throughout the premise.. not to mention the echos of your boots was you walked throughout.. yeah.. it was uncanny
I feel like "The Shining" also uses this creepy feel of liminal spaces for its atmosphere. The almost entirely empty hotel lobby or the long hallways could also be described as liminal spaces.
That's a super good point! A big emphasis Kubrick tried to put on the film was how vast the hotel is and how alone the family is in that space and how that increased their paranoia throughout the film.
Not just the size of it, the decor is hideous in just the right way. Look at room 237, those God awful carpets, the curtains pattern clashing with the walls pattern, the feeling that the room goes on for a bit too long... it's such a well designed set
@@MCDreng Not only that, but the layout doesn't make any sense. Some hallways aren't supposed to lead anywhere, but somehow they do, etc. There are a lot of videos covering this topic.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE DONT REMIND ME OF THE BEAR SCENE
O yes
I worked night shifts at a gas station for years. There were times when I felt like the only person awake within miles. I used to just stand outside and look at the empty world. I lived in liminal spaces... It was a weird feeling but eventually it kind of became comforting. Safe.
This is beautiful in a way :)
Creepy...
I used to work the graveyard shift at a mall... It was one of the most uncanny feelings in the world... Empty back corridors, empty shops with mannequins that seemed like they wanted to move since no one was watching, food courts that were empty, and an encapsulating smell that lingered throughout the premise.. not to mention the echos of your boots was you walked throughout.. yeah.. it was uncanny
@@hadriangonzalez607 you’re lucky don’t call it creepy. It’s an honor to be alone
ever since i was a kid, i loved the feeling gas stations at night gave me. the lights reflecting on the dark pavement, the artifical lighting inside... immaculate.
I think Courage the cowardly dog, displays this ‘liminal space’ pretty well.
getting some rule 34 vibes here
@@quasiBooter Honestly, any room in that show had a weird feeling. All the rooms seem to lack something, like the furniture was placed in such a manner that there was loads of empty space for no reason
All these comment are just stealing from Reddit posts.
@@DforDenmark true
@@quasiBooter Or the lone farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere that you see every episode.
17:34 i knew i have seen the rolling giant before holy shit
Yeah revisiting this video totally jump scared me lol
An artist who I love and you might consider the “originator” this is style is Edward hopper. Although his paintings do occasionally contain humans, they maintain the haunting, uneasy, lonely, aesthetic that is trademark of luminal spaces. I recommend his 1942 painting “nighthawks”.
I was just thinking about him
YES when Solar started describing these images I first thought of the backrooms and that painting
I think the lowlit background contrasting from the lit front of the image is what gives it the effect of liminal space
Oh wow! I saw his 1942 painting in my art class.
Well no looking threw google images most of them have a vocal point
Something in common to all these "spaces" in my mind is silence. All of the photos are silent. I hear maybe the Air conditioning humming and thats it. Other than that is only crushing silence.
I can even hear a distinct buzzing sound coming from the ceiling lights in the office images
To be honest, silence, in my opinion, is the most horrifying thing in existance. Just... the abscense of such an important sense, one that is so connected to our survival instinct. Not being able to hear anything at these spaces gives you the feeling that there MIGHT be something dangerous that can be sneaking right behind you without your knowledge.
@@smokingsnake8276 that’s really what deaf people go through, right?
@@scpguard6677
Lol
I didn't mean to deminish anyone, but I still think that silence is quite disturbing
I think silence is terrifying when you’re not used to it.
The most common and early example of this feeling I can think of is when you were in school, and you had to leave the classroom for whatever reason in the middle of class. (bathroom, nurse, etc.) And everything was too empty and your footsteps were too loud.
Definitely. I remember I'd try to be as quiet as I possibly could. But because I was the only one in the hallway, my footsteps would still sound too loud to me.
Lol I used to take a bathroom break just to play hopscotch on the hallway tiles 😂
Yeah I usually ended up sprinting down the halls (I was a paranoid child)
{UwU}Lord{ wow I thought I was the only one who did this except I would usually sprint full speed out of bathrooms because it was just too quiet and I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there
I used to "get the door" in kindergarten and close it behind me and look around outside for like 3 seconds
The new game "Stray" about a cat in a post catastrophe space that humans once dwelled in gives you this feeling a lot. You've probably touched on this before in another video but it's the empty city itself that gives me the creeps.
"People might be manufacturing false memories with these images"
Is a thought that scares the shit out of me
Oh my. Is this what happened to me? I have perfectly clear memories of all of these images. I can see things, remember people talking, subjects, smells, sights, even feelings.ican remember it when seeing g these images. What happened?
Memory error is a really common thing especially when people are susceptible to suggestion that there is more importance to the images.
Wait till you hear about
Lucid
Dreams
@@randominternetbro6562 It’s advanced technology messing with you because you can’t connect to source.
@@icantthinkofaname8139 ohh yeaah my room looked really minimal there when i think about it
They're like something you'd see in a nightmare, not jumpscare scary, but very unnerving and fake feeling
I have these dreams, nightmares as you call them, often. I can remember dreaming examples such as, “the inaccessible waiting room-turned into two bedrooms with a wall that you wouldn’t want to fall off of,” and, “The vacant inside malls-turned swimming pools and diving platforms while still accommodating shoppers,” etc. Could be because I moved constantly while growing up and had lived in some of these places/spaces. It can be unnerving and/or adaptable what, “uprooting and transplanting,” can do to the psyche.
I’d never thought I’d ever read something that describes my dreams so accurate.
I be having sleepless nights because of that exact thing
17:35
I was like “hmm yes I see I see” trying to analyze the art and what it could mean...
“They’re all backgrounds for Lego sets”
....oh
The whole point of these backgrounds is to allow the product to pop and to not call attention to themselves, while still providing a mood, so when we hone in on them, they can be strange. For something I made with the idea of it "not being noticed" it's definitely getting a bit of attention now.
ikr
I guess Stanley Kubrick really knew what he was doing when he made The Shining.
Or that scene in Titanic where Rose is wandering empty hallways looking for help.
Other artists who play with liminal spaces are Ed Ruscha, Lynne Cohen, Uta Barth, William Eggleston, Edward Hopper, some Tiina Heiska, certain scenes in David Lynch movies, Henk Van Rensbergen, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Martin Parr's 'Home Sweet Home' series, 'The Splash' by David Hockney, Toshihiro Yashiro... I'm an artist myself and have always been drawn to this sort of stuff without ever knowing it had a name 'til now, so I love finding new artists that work with this often unnamed weird vibe in their work! Thanks for making this video and putting a word to my favourite spaces and aesthetics! :)
When I see the solar sands logo on a couch all I can imagine is a tiny hourglass with legs and arms shouting
That exists in cuphead, in the bottom right corner of a loading screen theres a mini hour glass with limbs
*Solar sands in cuphead confirmed*
@@guy7408 *Well, he exists but he doesn't serve his purpose of talking about art, he just is a loading screen element.*
@@juango500 you dont know his secret life
@@mobmilkk you neither.
When I was attending university, I'd go to hallways late at night sometimes, and even though I didn't know the term "liminal spaces" at the time, I understood the profound feeling it would give me. The feeling of empty yet, brightly lit hallways normally filled with people now empty without any sounds. It was truly some of the most dreadful yet fascinating feelings I've ever had.
Be strong buddy.
I had that feeling with the airport of my city, is not a big one so when i went at night some places there were like that and at this time I'm only realizing about this concept and yet I feel amazed by those sensations
Or working night shifts in a huge office
Is this why I don’t like highways at night
I'm UK born in 1976. Still I get liminal spaces totally; there is a certain kitsch to it too.
Imo, the wierdest ones are the rooms that are lit in a way that everything is the exact same brightness. Those ones make my brain say, "Whoa, this shouldn't be possible." Those ones are _it._
Or ones where you can’t tell where the light source is. Like light comes from a corner you can’t see, and just dissipates in a weird way.
I was born in Scandinavia back in the 80's before we left. Back then it was a lot like the Soviet Union. Murals, very specific art and so on.
Today I have a nostalgic, but sickening feeling seeing pictures of my old schools etc. Left and forgotten, with murals that "promised" us a better future.
The Liminal spaces give me this feeling.
the in-betweeny-ness of these images is somewhat familar, yet unsettling, yet calming
Familiar and unsettling, I think there is a series of videos in UA-cam about that, with pictures taken from completely random places to try at making you think that you already have been there when you where younger or something...
Yeah it’s so unbelievably uncanny and depressing.
@@zendariun101 pictures that feel strangely familiar yet uncomfortable
I don't find it calming. It's suspenseful and scary to me
@@bubbs4882 yes
Probably the creepiest liminal space I’ve been in was a hospital lobby in the dead of night. No one around not even someone at the front desk just a massive open room
don't forget school at night too!
Honestly wish our hospitals were more empty like that but no, people keep choosing violence and hospitals are always busy
@@Thedutchjelle sounds like a labyrinth!
Highways at night when you're the only one on the road, watching as signs go into unnatural focus from the headlights while the rest of the world remains dim, hearing nothing but the gentle drone of the car engine. Now there's a good liminal space
But hospitals are cozy and comfy. What’s wrong with them?
The thing with this images is that they don't have the things that are meant to be in there. Not just humans, the parking lot with no cars, the store shelves with no products, even the receptions with a clean desk. If there was no recepcionist but a bit of dissorder, then there would be a trace of someone being there.
By extracting all the elements you just get the idea that you should not be there or that the place is dangerous. But it goes further. By not seeing any visual danger you imagine an invisible threat, like poison in the air, radioactivity, the building is meant to be demolished or it's a bomb testing site. Everyone and everything left for a reason, but you don't know wich is it. Heck, even chernobyl is less unnerving cause people left things behind
"By extracting all the elements you just get the idea that you should not be there or that the place is dangerous. But it goes further. By not seeing any visual danger you imagine an invisible threat, like poison in the air, radioactivity, the building is meant to be demolished or it's a bomb testing site. Everyone and everything left for a reason, but you don't know wich is it. Heck, even chernobyl is less unnerving cause people left things behind."
Wow, what an excellent point! That does ring kinda true for me! Interesting!
sometimes my brain doesn't even think of realistic things, like for some reason when I see pictures of empty offices I just think they are some kind of Minotaur's labyrinth.
My thoughts exactly. The LEGO set backgrounds feel so liminal because there is a massive empty space in the central part of the photo (where the set photo is supposed to go). The backrooms photos are all creepy because there's no FURNITURE, but there is wear. If there was furniture, desks and chairs and fake plants all over, you'd just feel like it was after-hours, or you'd get that feeling of being late/early. If there was no wear, with pristine new paint on the walls, it would just feel new, yet to be filled, like a realtor is showing you around to buy it. But with wear AND no furniture, you can immediately tell it used to be normal, but the main subject of the photo has been removed. Like you said, all the fear and anxiety are in not knowing HOW or WHY they were removed.
i completely agree, like in a school or mall, you only ever go there when there are things there.. have you ever been to a mall that is completely empty exactly, because you shouldnt be there, and if you have, than you know, you shouldnt be there, so these images just make you feel that you shouldnt be there. Because nothing else is either, theres nothing to do nothing to really explore because its empty
Something made by humans but abandoned. Orphans of masons. They are without purpose. They have no trace of human presence but are still completely artificial. It's this feeling of conscious design without any spirit. Everything is sterile, everything is generic. A relentless and boundless mundanity, like seeing the stock assets in a game. Everything feels fake.
I love this video! Your's and The Librarian's content on liminal spaces are my go-to videos when I want to get into that altered reality mood. I remember the first time I came across this video, almost 3/4 through 2020, suffering from both an abscessed tooth and COVID at the same time, out of work for three weeks, isolated in my room, exploring YT in the early morning hours. Watching this again, and thinking back to that time, just floating along, not really doing anything (not that I could at that time anyway), just "existing", elicits some strong nostalgia right about now.
i love when solar uploads, his takes on art are so unique and listening to him is calming and interesting. his videos are quite different from other youtubers, they have a type of class. it’s also really nice to have unique topics to be talked about than just boring videos about tracers.
He’s the only guy I watch about art
Mildred Gwindi me too, he makes it so interesting
gahh, yesss, for most videos I'm always in such a rush, even for like 7 minute videos, I just have to put on 2x speed, because idk, I have more videos to watch before I have to do stuff.
However, when it comes to watching Solar's stuff, honestly he's pretty detailed, gives a good amount of thought, and his stuff like this is quite relaxing to watch, I can watch the whole 25 minutes, and it's a pleasure, it doesn't feel like i'm waiting for it to finish.
Then there's the livestreams.
(lol jk I like those too)
It'e crazy looking at what he used to do compared to what he does now
Anyone knows the name of the music that starts 15:40
Did anyone else get this feeling from Minecraft? Especially the time period when Villages were a thing, but Villagers weren't
going back to the alpha stages of Minecraft after I haven't been for like 9 years felt so weird pretty much like this
I downloaded a city map and there this feeling is even stronger.
Cave sounds, mineshafts, the weird bro with the white eyes. I played Minecraft as a kid and it definitely freaked me out sometimes.
definitely, especially early mc!! no wonder he used mc music in the vid lol
Dead Voxel from the nether tracks gives me this exact feeling.
I once got lost at laser tag when I was a kid. The buzzer went off, everyone left the game room and I heard the doors slam shut. For five minutes I walked around in the dimly lit, foggy, silent room and continued to search for an exit. What was once full of life and noice was now dead. It was the most "liminal space" feeling that I've ever gotten. Someone eventually realized I was missing and they came in for me
You experienced the literal version of exploring an empty multiplayer map from Halo or Gmod or something like that. That must have been something truly surreal.
I had that exact experience once.
We once got a tour of a laser tag maze before going in for real.
accidentally joined an empty server
This sounds like a nightmare I had as a kid about a library.
Liminal spaces are so eerie because they’re familiar which reminds me of an adventure time quote “something weird might just be something familiar viewed from a different angle, and that’s not scary, right?”
woooow thats so deep
I definitely feel a large percentage of the nostalgia sensation lies with the closing statement. It captures a moment in time for us when we were very young, seeing the world with new eyes and desperate to learn more, unsure of what is should be frightening and what shouldn’t be, living in an entire world without context, and hoping to someday learn, and truly know and understand what that context is.
Eerie sights, strange devices, bizarre arrangements of man-made design that we do not yet comprehend, that is still new and alien to us. To be a child, gazing out the windows of the car on a ride, late December and looking at all of those lights, those homes, the little play things, and feeling this sudden realization that every single person out there is living a life as complex as your own, as you say. Those children are waiting to wake up on Christmas day just like you.
Their parents argue, their tvs go static, their food comes from the little grocery store on the corner, their toys sit under the snow, forgotten until spring; A first view of something that will become so common an idea you may never think of it again.
Until you see these images.
Excellent comment!
You painted that perfectly.
Well said. That would make amazing narration for a movie
I agree and would like to contribute with my personal examples; abandoned construction sites and hastyly designed building hallways.
I am a Turkish national born in 1991 in Istanbul. I spent most of my time inside vast, crowded urban settings which oddly comforts me with every vibration of it's life. However some parts of the city includes really cheap and bad (often newly made by sketchy contractors) apartment buildings, sporting white halls that are often afterthought and narrow, has single bulb lighting and sometimes small windows to save energy on daylight. Tile floors with no shapes on walls amplifiy footsteps incredibly, with the lack of elevators accompanied with steep steps gives you a sudden rush of misery and helplessness in the belly of a concrete hell which often concludes with a shot of happiness for finally reaching to your loved ones or increased misery for finally arriving homes of less desirable people.
Abandoned constructions were less miserable yet highly eerie spaces. They were 'exotic' to me because they were pretty rare for all the right reasons and yet there were always even sketchier contractors existed and they scammed or bankrupted whole projects time to time. I can't recall a specific site but i have some scattered memories about them, mysteries of their origins and the uncomfortable feeling of death. Now that i am 29 years old i am no stranger to news like mobs burying peaople to 'unused' sites but 20 years back then it felt like those spaces were dead. There were no windows, no insulation, no doors, no furniture, just empty and dusty concrete shells, towering in the middle of vast grounds of dirt that had planned walkways, carparks, vegetation that never build and placed. Those places always had natural light but that didn't give any feeling of assurance, instead sunlight reminds you further decay by making current ones appear to your eye and warming you relentlessly to remind you that it is superior than your fleshy being. Getting to places always took time and effort since there were almost always no guide info existed. While traversing exterior grounds is exhausting to body with heat and distances, traversing interiors were exhausting to soul as abandoned concrete and steel mourns for the days that never came and noises of the footsteps (again) and rubble just pushes your soul further away from itself.
I once witnessed one of those constructions being purchased and repurposed, a multi-storey parking lot (how the hell could you unfinish that? it's just floors and a wooden gate) stayed astray for years when i was a middleschooler and highschooler. It's ground floor was 'usable' so it's 'defacto' owners worked it as a shady parking lot for years while we witnessed that thing's nets and covers decay. A while after i graduated some bigshot bought it and made it into a tiny 5 star-ish hotel, the 'CVK Park Bosphorus Hotel' at Taksim, Istanbul. Look it up, you'll find it oddly out of place and highly cubic because it always was out of place and highly cubic.
Edit: spacing and side note: Half-Life multiplayer deathmach map named as 'Crossfire' hits pretty close to that abandoned construction feeling. Turn on 'footsteps' option and fire up a LAN game without anybody to play and hang around a bit, you'll feel the loneliness, misery and ultimately death, probably without even killing yourself. I really loved playing on that map, jumping around and fragging people but if you're against 3 or less people, trust me, that place will get to you.
Damn, this comment makes me sonder
Okay.. I'm am in disbelief.
I was about to make a comment about how these photos are really not that effective for me because I'm Finnish. Until you showed the photo at 16:17. That is a photo from a finnish spa/waterpark. It is quite small, and not a very popular tourist attraction. The fact that you showed that very photo is so eerie because it is very rare to see anything related to Finland in any video that does not especially talk about something Finnish. Let alone a random waterpark that I went to as a kid. I have so many memories from that specific place that it's hard to describe how I feel about it. At first I thought that there is no way that my small local waterpark from finland would ever end up in a compilation showcasing american architecture. I thought that the logical answer was that there is a common template for indoor waterparks, that was used in the one near me. And this is just a extremely similar one. But when I searched "Flamingo vesipuisto" the name of this place, sure enough you can find this very photo. I am in shock right now, I feel like the fourth wall of life was just broken and reality is a lie.
Trippy. I've gotta say that photo fits in pretty well with water parks I've seen in Canada. The high ceilings and exposed support beams, the weird patchy lighting... I guess the style is consistent enough to have international appeal as a liminal space. I just wonder who took the photo and how it ended up in this context.
@@omegatitan1322 It wasn't the mouth pipes, it was the waterslide with the elephant
That’s absolutely wild! That image is one that really got me! It looks so much like a dream I had a lot when I was a kid, or at least it feels the same! That’s so kind blowing to me that it’s a real place!!
You Have To Wake Up.
Please.
You Have To Wake Up.
Bruh do water parks look the same everywhere? Cus America has water parks exactly like that one.
All these art pieces in the begining kinda stresses me out ngl..
Mood
Me too lol
makes me really uncomfortable
@Elalae La really? Interesting, so it doesn't feel familiar or nostalgic for you, but it's still a little creepy and unnerving?
All the images stress me out
I feel like any building that Spirit Halloween sets up shop is a liminal space. Or old KMart /Zellers stores if you’re from Ontario. I rewatch this video every few months. The images unlock nostalgia (and what feel like hard wired memories, but probably aren’t). I’ve continue to use windows XP Bliss background to this day. Love your channel, consistently thought provoking; videos I come back to regularly
My belief as to why they are so familiar is for three main reasons:
1: The pictures are low quality. The graininess allows you to connect with it more comfortably due to certain details being lost to the grain of the image, therefore making it more generic.
2: The images have no people, or at the very most, an incredibly obscured person. This makes them more easy to relate to subconsciously, because your brain has an easier time placing yourself there when there is no one present.
3: The images are very, very generic places. Notice how you can't pinpoint a single brand, location, or otherwise memorable objects anywhere. Their generic qualities makes them much easier to find yourself in, due to it being more easy for your brain to believe you were there at one point. (Hell, half of them don't have furniture or obvious plant life [trees]. This makes them even more generic, for the very basic shapes of buildings or interiors can trigger memory.)
TL;DR: The pictures are so dang generic and non-detailed that your brain can't help but try to remember where they're from, despite not being there.
They're mostly office buildings, warehouses, or back rooms for stores all of which are owned by international companies that tend to use the same basic layouts and use the same things like paint, carpet, linoleum, etc across their stores, and they're all designed to be as generic and inoffensive as possible and as cheaply as possible. I've built plenty of them and you'd be surpised to learn that a store in France will use the exact same carpet, ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and nearly everything else as one in America if they're owned by the same company.
Strangely enough this is also what makes them slightly creepy
Interesting that it's a natural result of our modern day mass production as well as interconnectedness. We definitely build our own mazes.
Besides clinics (generic) and a few other common buildings, they don't feel familiar at all to me. It's probably region based too, since buildings in different states/countries would probably trigger different feelings.
Also adding to this. Architecture, wallpapers, furniture etc. go by that time's fashion. So many places and houses can look similar, even if they aren't the exact same place. Which can create a sense of familiarity and uncanniness.
And if you didn't live through those trends, you probably have seen them in older movies or pictures.
Another explanation: dreams. Your dreams are just a large conglomeration of your experiences. You've probably dreamed of some hodgepodge environment put together with mental snapshots of places you've seen. A lot of them have a huge dreamlike quality, even the Soviet ones. Low exposure fuzzy images add to that dreamlike quality, since dreams feel more fuzzy and out of focus when you think back to them.
7:50 this one. Just a few days ago I had one of the most vivid dreams ive had in a long time. Of course I couldn't remember everything as some stuff was still fuzzy but in my head a very faint and distant image of a room that looked similar to this one kept popping up. Now, I don't know if it was actually part of the dream but it was still there in the back of my mind that morning (also I write my vivid dreams down when I wake up and I wrote this memory down as "strangely familiar place" so it's quite cool to see it in a liminal space video)
On a different note I've had dreams where it feels like I've already dreamed that before and I know the plot and that night was one of those dreams haha
Every single one of these makes me feel like a monster is gonna peek around one of the many corners. Why would I watch these before bed? I’m actually getting kinda scared just looking at these
I'm experiencing the same discomfort. Maybe hearing that you're not alone will make you feel better.
Same, it's almost 1 am and I'm uncomfortable
It's really difficult to scare me, but liminal spaces freak tf out of me.
That's why I watch them in the morning
I relate to ur mood, i just turn on every light on i can
Just today, while at work I was browsing UA-cam when I found this video about liminal spaces. It describes my feelings so incredible well! I have very vivid dreams of visiting my primary school as it is empty and thinking of all the memories I have with my friends back then. I do have these dreams as well of my dormitory when I was a student. The building has now been stripped and the fact that I will never visit those places again, while having the most precious memories there gives me a strong melancholic feeling. The photos you show in this video have the same vibe: they used to be happy places, but are now abandoned.
I never knew that this subject was so wide spread. I really think none of my friends experience this the same level as I do, so I'm really glad I found these videos. It makes me feel less alone and more understood. Thank you!
What a masterpiece of storytelling this video is. What a delight it was to watch. You Solar Sands, are a genius.
I like how this community of UA-cam doesn't like bomb comments just because they're from a verified channel
Hi jj
I am surprised to see mr. jj here but glad to regardless
Wait ur verified I’ve been subed to u for a while
Wassup JJ
17:24 The origins of that pool have been found, actually. It's pretty mundane.
The pool is located at the Sanatorium Ingul in Nikolaev, Ukraine. A sanatorium is a facility native to the USSR, and is essentially a spa.
The green water is most likely not because of algae caused by poor maintenance, but just the lighting making the water appear green. If you go to Google Images, and search for "sanatorium ingul pool", you'll find plenty of pictures of people happily swimming in the pool despite the green water, and also ones with better lighting that show that the water is perfectly clean.
As for the mouth pillars (or, as thier website calls it, a "cascading waterfall"), it's just a design choice. They're no different from any other pool fixtures whose sole purpose is to constantly spray water into the pool.
Is it just me or is it less creepy now that I know what and where it is?
@@kylep3514 Nah, it's not you.
@@kylep3514 It's not you. The mind functions on context.
I feel like this is sort of universal of all liminal spaces--put them back in their context, and they're just normal places, with at worst just a bit of mildly weird structure. It's by removing that context that become strange and off-putting. Fascinating stuff.
My theory is that "gut feelings" are just observations we haven't yet been able to process rationally. Sometimes it's something really obvious - if a place that's normally full of people appears to be empty, there's a strong sign that *something* is wrong, even if you can't tell what it is. Your brain tells you there must be a reason people are avoiding it, then tells you to get away.
@@lilylopnco yeah, it's totally possible. I don't know if there's been any research into it (seems like a difficult thing TO research, by definition), but I'd be interested to read more about it if so
That makes good rational sense and seems like the most likely answer. There's that saying "it's better to mistake a stick for a snake, than a snake for a stick". It kind of explains why reactions aren't perfect and would tend to swing towards unsettling/creepy feelings of things that aren't explicitly dangerous.
@@applebutter4036 Yeah, absolutely. We're excellent at recognising patterns. I just think about times people had a gut feeling about e.g. avoiding a gas station, then later finding out people inside were being held at gunpoint, and wonder what would be different there - well, people would be on the ground, and nobody would be leaving. So you wouldn't see anybody moving around inside, and even with cars parked outside, people wouldn't be leaving to get back into them. So your brain pattern matches with every other time you've seen this, notices some kind of big discrepancy, and says "leave right now" before you stick around and figure out what seems off. I could be wrong of course, but the theory appeals to me - what can I say, just a gut feeling.
@@jamiedoesthings that's an excellent observation, and a great rationalization of gut feelings
@@jamiedoesthings This is exactly it for a lot of these photos. And indeed the reason behind a significant number of "haunted houses" AND INDEED, can save people's lives when experiencing a gas leak. Something's off. You don't know what. You trust your gut. You leave. It turns out something was actually wrong, it was just hard to perceive. ... Oops I wrote some rhymes... Anyway... Water damage can make us afraid, because walking on rotting floors can make us fall into a hole. Wind howling is creepy, because storms can cause fallen trees, lifted rooftops, or lighting strikes. A skeleton is scary because we don't want to be next. That's why,,, "Facts over feelings" is bullshit and dangerous for many reason. Feelings are there for a reason, they are the more nuanced and complex forms of thought, that store not hard data that can be referenced and compared, but vast fuzzy data that forms patterns and suggestions. In my walk of life, this phrase comes up a lot: "If it feels wrong, don't do it." It's only when you have successfully concluded that the alarm is for a reason that is fully addressed, that you should ignore it and move forward. And these photos are full of alarms of unconfirmed danger.
I think the real meaning of liminal spaces is actually people missing the consumerism and economic prosperity of the 1980s and 90s, the shopping malls, the kids play places, all of it. Most of the places showcased in liminal spaces are either in a late 20th century styling, or take place in a place that's part of an industry that has considerably declined over the last few decades, with the rise in online shopping diminishing the need for many of these things.
Take the backrooms, for instance. The mono-yellow walls and the fluorescent lights were most common in this time period, and the emptiness of all of these photos indicates how this era and the architecture from it is slowly fading away.
This also explains why many of these images are seemingly in random indoor locations, as when we are young, our minds are fascinated by everything around us, including walls or buildings. These memories might also not always be very clear, which can also sometimes be seen in liminal spaces.
During such a turbulent time like this one, sometimes we wish that we could be back during a time when we were safe, when were comfortable, when we were a kid. And that's what I think liminal spaces represent.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Yeah, I tend to agree more with this interpretation. I don't think it's just nostalgia. It's more a sense of loneliness and decline. These were once places that were very active socially and economically - in fact, for much of the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, some of these malls and other public spaces were really the center of social life in a lot of these communities. Now they're just forgotten and empty, and serve no discernible social or cultural purpose. I think you would definitely get the same kind of feeling, for example, in a recently built suburban housing development from the 2010s that had been abandoned before completion. It's less about nostalgia and more about the lack of social activity and economic prosperity.
perhaps the 80s/90s nostalgia is specifically targeting teens from that generation who’d be in their forties, experiencing midlife crises and yearning for the nostalgia of a time that was relatively carefree and fun
I totally agree with you
To build on this (although I kinda disagree - I think the pics hit different because being alone in an empty space inherently feels kinda funny), there is another layer to it nowadays when there aren’t public places where people just hang out anymore. If you don’t go to bars, clubs, or some kind of church then the liminal space imagery is often pictures of places you USED to go in order to hang out - but those places would be empty if you visited now.
The arcades are closed. The malls are emptying out. Nobody’s stopping to eat inside the fast food place. The diners are closing down. The strip mall chains are disappearing, except the really big names.
If you wanted to go back to someplace from your childhood, how many of those places even exist anymore?
When you work as a janitor, these things don't phase you anymore.
Same. I feel like a combination of late night travels, going to empty houses with my real estate agent father, working as a custodian, and Covid leaving nearly every building empty, none of these are uncanny because my brain automatically places them in at least one of those contexts
One of the Pros of being a Janitor lol
Chad janitor mindset
that sigma grindset
I think that really supports the idea of context, Janitors are used to that context
I have spent nearly all my life living on different ‘patches’. A ‘patch’ is an artificially created village or neighbourhood, usually constructed by the government to house military families. They were almost never full, and there were always at least two empty houses on every street. I remember as a child I would peer through the windows of these houses with my friends, and look into the empty, unfurnished rooms. I must also mention that every house on the patch was identical. They had the same layouts and gardens, and you weren’t allowed to paint the walls or change the carpets. So, when we looked into these empty buildings we were seeing the ghosts of our own kitchens and living rooms. It would scare us all a lot, so much so that the patch kids came up with a sort of urban legend. It went that one day you could come home from school and accidentally wander into the wrong house, an empty one, thinking it was your own. As soon as you stepped into it the house would claim you, and lock you in, so that you could never leave. You would spent the rest of your life in that place, a place very much like your old home, but with none of your things, your toys, your family. Every time a child moved away, which happened regularly and suddenly, we would rationalise this as them having walked into ‘the wrong house’
It’s crazy, after having watched this video, to find out that other people have such a similar reaction of fear and unease to empty but seemingly familiar places.
Jesus christ the urban legend these kids created is actually pretty creepy
"You picked the wrong house, fool!"...
*Bonk*...
Big Smoke proceedes to claim another patch child to his vastly empty home...
I used to live in the same kind of place when I was younger. We would always find a way into the empty houses and play in them. All of the houses had a sort of triangular room on the second floor that led into a crawl space and there was always stuff that other families had left behind, like old toys and old diarys/notebooks that we would read. One time we found a notebook that was filled with messy hand writing that I'm pretty sure said something along the lines of "the walls are going to crush me" written over and over (I'm not sure if that's exactly what it said, this was a long time ago). Probably was just the result of someone having a claustrophobia induced panic attack, but it scared the crap out of us lmao. We spread around the story that if you went into that crawlspace you would get crushed to death and no one ever went into the houses again. But like you said, every time a kid moves we just assumed they died in one of the houses.
Anyways, i just wanted to share because I thought it was interesting lmao
lavendew Jesus Christ you were braver than us lmao
@@indralicious8877 it didn't really scare us until we found that notebook lol
As a Korean who never lived in America long enough, I never resonated with all the fuss about liminal spaces and backroom creepypasta/nostalgia. That was until recently when I worked in soon-to-be-abandoned American Base (in Korea) for my mandatory service.
Day by day I saw increasing numbers of "empty backrooms" uncannily identical to empty backrooms in so many liminal spaces creepy pasta. To me, liminal spaces and backroom wasn't nostalgia or "reincarnation". It became a constant reminder of today, and constant reminder of entropy, emptiness and eventual death concurrently happening every where and eventually coming to us.
Damn, das dark
Wow. That's so creepy...
I think that the sadness that comes with nostalgia is just mourning over childhood.
"liminal space" is a really poor descriptor because a liminal space is an actual thing, but it doesn't need to be discomforting or otherworldly. it's just any place designed for people to pass through but not stay in, e.g. a train station or a school corridor
@John Proctor You cant expect the mainstream to handle the intricacies of a new art movement or anything like that
Same reason political movements can get dumbed down in media circulation
It's mainly when that space is taken out of its normal usage is when it becomes strange. Schools at night (elementary schools anyway) are a big one for me. We did a school play back in 5th grade but it was fairly late, so seeing all the normally lit up and active classrooms dark and empty with a setting sun beyond the windows cast a weird feeling when i went to go get some props.
i think that that's one of the reasons that it's so uncanny and familiar. probably because most of the places have some sort of quality that you're not going to be there for long. for example, an unfurnished home, you're not going to be there for long because you're moving out. i feel the familiarity is because the graininess of the photos kind of has a nostalgic vibe to it because a lot of people that see these photos grew up in the early 90's to 2000's. another reason you feel you might not be there for long is because maybe your parents took you to that place, and that also sets off the nostalgia.
liminal space may be kind of bad at describing it, but it still works if you have some context (which most of these images don't have any)
Let's think of a name for this sort of liminality-focused internet subculture then. Americentric cyberspatial nostalgic surrealism?
@@ORLY911 yes! I've had that same thing happen when I was in school
To me, liminal spaces are a kind of anti-marketing. Reclaiming reality beyond what is overpolished and made explicitly to induce comfort. The sides of places the ads will never show you, or the ravages of time on what was once marketable.
Plus you never see any brands or companies in these photos, there’s no “Walmart” sign or “McDonald’s” nothing like that, the buildings are just husks, with nothing left of what they used to be
Didn't think about it like this, but you're right
Nicholas Haynes that’s why the posts that call any target/walmart a liminal space are completely over exaggerated
The hotel from the movie “ the shining “ is a liminal space
It totally does! I think that is what Kubrick was going for too. The absolute isolation from pretty much anywhere else gives it that vibe of "oh, we arent supposed to be seeing this but here we are".
For sure. AHS Hotel too
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All these comment are just stealing from Reddit posts.
maybe thats why its so terrifying 🤔
I don't feel anything about liminal spaces, but it makes a lot of sense to me intuitively that it can make people feel uneased
it's because they have been ruined by children
That is pretty scary for the photographer. Someone had to take a picture of those places.
psychopaths and serial killers are afraid of them
It's not weird to those who take the photographs because they know why it is the way it is.
@@Rafael47936 Yeah, I guess that's right. But I would still find that scary because I have autophobia.
i have to disagree... i would absolutely love the opportunity to be in any one of these places.
I work for a facility condition assessment firm. My job is traveling the country, taking pictures of after hours and back rooms (empty if I’m lucky) buildings for capital planning or for someone who wants to buy the building. A lot of empty office buildings and schools lately because of COVID. The creepiest was a vacant car sales building from the 90s. Some of the lights didn’t work, but a building needs assessing
Jake Longstreth is an artist that capture liminal spaces absolutely perfectly, especially related to growing up in the 90s and early 2000s
Found the TC head
Is he related to John (death metal drummer)?
I feel like lonnie’s dads garage would be a pretty good liminial space
Was just about to comment the same thing! Hello fellow TC head :)
Shane no, but he is brothers with Dave Longstreth, of the band dirty projectors
I would really love to see him cover something like Junji Ito's art
god you're big brained, that's a fantastic idea
YESs
YES that'd be great
Preach this!!!
u should check Super Eyepatch Wolf, he talked about Ito on his channel
Recently I was in a back section of a very large mall, a place I could always remember but never put a finger on where I had seen it, since I had been there when I was much younger. I had believed it was in another country or something. As the mall began to close, I was walking through it with all of the lights on and the calming mall music but no people on any of the balconies or floors. It covered many of the points you mentioned, the strange lighting for an empty place, the lack of people, the nostalgic music and setting
my worst ever nightmare to date was about the dining room in my childhood home completely empty. that’s it. it was terrifying, I felt this horrifying and overwhelming sense of impending doom.
same, my entire house with my dad looks like a giant backroom but there was specific room that was the worst. it was a dining room in my dads house that no one used, we dont have curtains at my dads house, so during nighttime it was just an eerie darkness and it always scared me shitless. especially since i used to “see things” as a kid and the things i saw were usually in that part of the house (as well as the rooms where we had gas tanks & those looked especially backroom-y) there were multiple times when i was a kid that i walked downstairs during the night to get a glass of water and saw a tall man or clown like figure standing in the dining room watching me. twas quite scary lmao.
@Goromi goreng sometimes i saw a tall man but he didnt have a hat
mine was when I was at my childhood playground, something was weird about the school that I couldn't figure out what. Then I started sinking into the sand until I was buried in it. I barely managed to make an air pocket with my hands and then a voice told me I was getting good at practicing for my next ski trip. Then I woke up
@@Mrdestiny17 that is terrifying
@@hanakoskokeshidoll just two days ago or so I saw a person comment in another video about seeing a tall man who sometimes wore a hat and sometimes not, and they were almost always staring from the bottom of the stairs.
I feel like this channel is the only channel that explain feelings like this, so many words that I've had no idea could explain my weird feelings about empty and left out photos. Great work Solar Sanda!
He always explains everything so well
You should check out Jacob Geller. He has a great video about architecture in art and another one about haunted houses that has a similar feel to this video.
Solar Sandra
Then you should check out Jacob Geller, he's a videogame reviewrer with pretty much this style. I would recommend the first video I did saw of him: Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism
I’ve always loathed “fake outside”, like those outdoor basements or those post apocalyptic plans where you live underground. Even some restaurants or buildings will paint a fake sky on the ceiling and it’s always completely freaked me out. Not to mention the windows maze screensaver
I remember going to a casino, where the ceiling was painted to look like it was early evening. I'm assuming so you don't notice how much time you've spent there. It could be 2 AM and you'd think you could still make it out in time for restaurants to be open.
@@tgrady2570 I know what casino you're talking about, it's in Nevada and I went in there at some kind of off-hour while on a family trip and it was near-empty.
A casino, near-empty...
Fuckin' weird, man.
So did I, once. Still wouldn't like such style personally, but later I've come to apericiate the art and effort put behind them.
T Grady Caesar’s Palace and Planet Hollywood in Vegas. I can understand the odd feeling but those places seem to do it really well. It’s kinda serene in there.
I remember walking through a mall in Vegas with a ceiling like that, and it felt so weird.
Finally someone who can explain what I always feel. The emptiness but yet the familiarity is something I tried asking my friends about. Noone except for you has really explained this phenomenon.
Thank you for explaining this as best as you can. Finally I can understand why I always have the sense of familiarity with these images.
I completely understand why they listed Target. Unlike other stores they don't play music, creating a very odd atmosphere in which the whole store seems incredibly quiet outside of the odd child's scream. Standing alone in an aisle often feels surreal because of how different the atmosphere is from most stores. It took me years of going there to realize the reason for my feeling of unease came from the absence of background music, it's something we've come to expect from that experience and the lack of it feels unnatural.
I never noticed Target doesn’t have music
Not for me cause there's always
1: tons of people talking
2: those damn loud tv's playing ad and stuff
3: you don't notice the music isn't there if Target is the main place you go to for groceries, also my mind is great at blocking out stuff, like once I was watching UA-cam and the dog was (apparently) barking, and he barks loudly, and my Grandma was taking a shower, when she came out, she asked my why the dog was barking. I didn't even _know_ he was barking. Or the fact that there was even any noise other than the video, my mind just completely drowned out any noise that wasn't the video, which includes loud ones. (It still does)
That, and if you leave target after they've already closed and the lights start slowly going out. Creepiest feeling, even if you do go with another person.
Depends where you live since where I live a store that plays music is weird
one of the things that i liked about working there is that they don't play music
Show me sudden movements, an image of a clown, some screaming etc. and you'll make my eyes roll...
Show me an image of a kid's room taken in the 90s and every hair on my body is stood on end and I'm overcome with a sinking dread...
Maybe we were all abused in our rooms and we suppressed those memories 😂
Same but opposite :/
Jumpscares make me flinch, but horror atmospheres don't bother me anymore.
Show me a pink floral shirt and I will cryXDD
Perhaps how seemingly meaningless these kinds of places can easily become in our rapidly changing world? I.e. blockbuster. Many memories in buildings like these, now either something else entirely, or not there at all.
Sucks cause I’m afraid of everything and then end up paranoid and scared as fuck
Another creepiness about them is that when you're alone, in an empty space, and you know that no one is there, you don't have much to focus on, so you invent a presence.
I'm terrified. You are exactly correct.
Ex: 9ft long necked man snaking in slowly behind you in the darkness with 1 uncomfortably dim light source.
R͔̪̞Y͉͍͜Z͓̞̟E̻̝͉N͉̫͙ R̷Y̷N̷E̷ thank you
Never shout into an empty room
You're right, my creature snores a lot and sleeps on my floor...
It's my dog
17:37 love seeing mr rolling giant here!!! When I first saw that picture i did not think it was real at all, haha!
The weirdest thing is that this video is 3 years old…this guy thought of the giant BEFORE it was cool.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't feel a sense of familiarity, but a deep discomfort and dread.
i kinda feel both.
I've grown up knowing a lot of people with different mental illnesses and insane and weird artistic expression, one of my brothers being one of the biggest influences on me in this area. I also grew up with a lot of anxiety and and a hyperactive imagination. Unfamiliar things, and uncanny things are utterly fascinating to me. I love the sureal stories they tell, I love dream logic, and I love having some things I can't understand. I guess it's not that way for everyone, but it's one of the things that gives meaning to my life.
You Sense that because you were told. Theres a whole "urban legend" about How scary and uncanny the liminal spaces are,so you feel a lot of negative emotions not because they are nefarious,but rather your mind was trained to feel the negative aspects.
No. Some arw different. Like the Christmas one? Comfy. Others are an unsettling and not just because we're sheeple, fridge temp moron
@@Ramonlaw86 I've never heard of any of this stuff until I watched this video. Some of these pictures do remind me of places from when I was a kid, but I thought they were creepy back then. My local mall went out much sooner than most and my mom and I would go walk there in the winter because it's cold in Alaska. There were only like 2 stores still open in it and the light were always half off and it creeped me out. People are pretty naturally scared of the unknown. I also spent lots of time in empty schools white my dad who is a teacher and I found them creepy back then and I still do now. I have mostly really like creepy horror things but recently I have very bad anxiety and one of the symptoms is itchiness which I find unpleasant so I don't indulge in horror as much.
The fact that nobody really knows where the original Backrooms image came from just adds a whole other layer of ominousness
Yeah
It was taken in some old russian building that was gonna be demolished
@cl.napoli look up david crypt
@@johngill8125 thats not the original one
@@johngill8125 thats not the original one
this is the whole reason why the shining is a terrifying movie
Duuuuude you’re so right the overlook is empty as fuck and that’s why even when nothing bad happens it feels haunted
The shots in the shining really make me want to go towards them. It's like a moth to a flame. I revel in discomfort. There's something nice knowing that you are in a place that others turn away from, a safety from being discovered.
If I suddenly ran across two twins at the end of a dark hallway I'd shit my pants though, fasho.
also, the layout of the hotel doesn't make any sense. if you were to map it out, rooms would overlap, windows would exist that shouldn't show the outside, and staircases would lead nowhere.
I think our brains pick up on that kind of stuff subconsciously and that's another reason why the movie was scary.
@@1gnore_me. i agree. it has to do with control, and subconsciously knowing where you are, which would normally bring you comfort and security in a movie, but you lose that in the shining. which is why setting is so important. it becomes an additional character
The right carpet can set the mood for terror, while the right rug can really bring a room together
the mysterious thing is that, born, raised and currently living in Japan, i have never been nor seen those places, yet i still have the sense of familiarity.
THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS
"Kenopsia" (noun) 9:47 the eeriness of places left behind
"Anemoia" (noun) 10:55 nostalgia for a time you've never known
"Sonder" (noun) 21:21 the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own
Thanks
Sonder hurts
well hello there
Whenever i see a photo of an empty room, i always assume there is a hidden scary face in it. Thanks internet
I feel like there is something to my right or left and i will turn to look at it or it will jumpscare me
@@turo3131 same lol im in a darkroom and the only light is my phone screen
wHeN yOu SeE it...
Liquid Bismuth you’ll shit bricks
I’ve learned to lean back when viewing photos like that because of the potential for it to be a gif
Schools after dark are some of the only times I've personally visited a liminal space and felt the same feeling
Have you ever trie an oculus rift? The main room lobby on it gives very off putting vibes.
@@peeko_luxx2873 yes i hate being in the main menus
Ive been an a hospital at night it was scary. I heard unesrthly music almost like the ones on this but to be fair i was on lsd
@@peeko_luxx2873 fax
.
17:34 I had the phone very close to my face throughout the image’s permanence. For the first time in my life I experienced heavy and persistent shivers of fear and discomfort by just looking at a picture, definitely something I wouldn’t desire to try again but still so interestingly intense
It was about a decade ago when I had a really strong experience like this for the first time (that I remember of course). I was a young teenager and up late at night, watching a video about creepypasta images with next to zero knowledge of any of that now almost ubiquitous internet lore. Slenderman and indie horror games were rising to internet stardom at the time so it was all brand new to me. And man, when smile.jpg came up on my ipod screen, I was shocked to the core with a cold fear and revulsion. I threw the my ipod away from me into the couch and refused to look at the screen while I fumbled to exit out of youtube. It kickstarted a long and in-depth interest in all types of internet horror that has never left me, but I've never been as sick-to-the-bone scared as seeing that image for the first time, even if I don't think it's all that scary anymore.
The lovely part is that in reality, it's just a goofy looking sculpture of some bearded man too. Funny how a completely harmless sculpture trigger such intense response within someone the moment it's represented in a dark, low resolution picture. I had the same reaction myself, lol.
@@amaruqlonewolf3350 Another detail about that photo that makes the "Julien Reverchon" sculpture more unsettling than it actually is: You can't really make out its arms or hands at first glance, which makes its form less immediately recognizable as "human." In the picture, it looks less like a human figure and more like an indecipherable looming black mass that happens to have a deformed human head with an indeterminable facial expression.
In that sense, the way the picture plays with your mind upon seeing it for the first time is even more stress-inducing than it would be if you could clearly make out the statue's arms and hands, as it forces you to consider far more possibilities as to what the horrible figure is about to do, or what it even is to begin with. The form appears so non-human that you can't simply jump to the classic assumption of, "it's going to reach out and grab me." Rather, you have no idea what it could possibly be capable of, which makes it that much worse.
That was my experience with the photo three years ago, at least.
@@amaruqlonewolf3350 @valerioFiorillo i felt the same way when i saw this months ago but i came back to say kane pixels just made a short series inspired by that image and its nuts that he picked this specific one
@@LucillePalmerI believe this is the video kane saw it from