The "backrooms" lore imagines an unsettling maze of empty offices and storage areas, sterile but yellowing, bathed in buzzing fluorescent light—a liminal zone tasting of 20th-century corporate space and alienation. The original anonymous posts that defined the vibe dated to the 2010s, but the mysterious photo that inspired it (above) has long-been the subject of research. Where was it? It is even a real place?
After years of fruitless searching, many backrooms fans had come to believe that it was a 3D-rendered creation, and took its peculiarities—the blandly repeating wallpaper, the odd changes in geometry—as evidence of this. But now, after years of hunting and speculation, the original has been found: it was taken in 2002 and shows a HobbyTown franchise in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, under renovation.
It turns out, as such things often do, that this is a rediscovery: the image was originally tracked down by Twitter user @rksg_me and posted there, with a link to the photo's original URL, on May 19, 2019, though they did not appear to complete any further research into exactly what hobbytownoshkosh.com was and had few followers to notice the find.
There it died until just a few days ago, when backrooms image-hunters Semliot, compiling ancient 4chan archives, and Serrara, examining 4chan image hashes, figured out the filename, from which another, PerditusRedux, found the 2019 tweet. From there, other users, most industriously xaft, tracked down the Wayback Machine archive of Hobby Town Oshkosh and the history is rest.
Semliot writes:
ON MARCH 2nd, 2003, THE BACKROOMS PHOTO WAS UPLOADED TO THE HOBBYTOWN OSHKOSH WEBSITE UNDER THE ORIGINAL FILENAME "Dsc00161.jpg" AS PART OF THEIR RENOVATIONS BLOG.
NOTE: I've decided to add a brief section following some confusion around the exact location: – There are two connected buildings that occupy this space: 807 and 811 Oregon St. – Rohner's Furniture occupied both 807 and 811 (both buildings) for much of the 20th century until they closed down in 1994. – Hobbytown was moving to a new location and decided to buy the 807 address in 2002. During renovations they took many photos, including a picture of the second floor of the 807 address that became the backrooms photo. They uploaded this picture to their blog 7 months later in 2003. Their renovations were complete by 2004. – Fabulous Finds bought the 811 address in 2010. Hobbytown remains in the 807 address, and the backrooms room is now an rc car racetrack with an entirely different layout.
Pictured here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10155222622920784&set=p.10155222622920784.
It finds new liminality, then, in the inventory of places one can know were real but cannot visit. You might go there, but it still will not be found.
Previously:
• The rise, fall and reboot of The Backrooms
• The quiet horror of procedural generation
• Explore The Backrooms in this short found-footage horror flick
