What are backrooms on TikTok?
Samuel Coleman
Published Sep 15, 2026
CREEPY traps, endless hallways, and scary figures lie beyond TikTok's backrooms.
Social media users are figuring out the darker aspects of this viral trend.
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What are backrooms on TikTok?
The backrooms are an online urban legend and creepypasta that made its way to TikTok and are believed to be an alternate dimension.
TikTok users say people are transported to the backrooms when they malfunction out of reality.
When the user supposedly glitches out of reality, they are then taken to 600million miles worth of abandoned rooms.
Users characterize this dimension by its yellow walls, moist carpet smell, and crackling fluorescent lights.
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The abandoned rooms go on forever and a person's chances of surviving are very slim.
Survival rates for victims of the backrooms are low because of the endless amount of rooms and hallways.
The hallways lead to rooms which only lead to more hallways.
Not only do victims have infinite space to navigate, but some of the rooms are also monitored by an eerie figure.
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Horror film-like shadow characters are believed to lurk in the backrooms.
If the victims are unlucky, they'll wander into a backroom and come face to face with these monsters.
In those instances, the victim has to escape the room before the figure gets a hold of them.
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How many backroom levels are there?
Depending on which users are asked, the backroom levels can range anywhere from three and over a thousand.
TikTok users have compared the levels to scenes featured in the Resident Evil franchise.
The urban legend says everyone starts at level zero before getting to the third canonical level.
Level zero presents three outcomes that include:
- Getting sent back to Earth
- Returning the wanderer to the start of the level
- Transporting the wanderer to a higher, tougher level with an unknown amount of hostile organisms
TIKToK Dictionary Boxout
TIKTOK is a social app that allows users to make short videos. With thousands of trending topics everyday this TIKTOK dictionary will help make navigating the app easier.
Your Tiktok slang giude:
Tiktok trends:
Who created the backrooms?
On May 12, 2019, the backrooms urban legend was created by a thread of 4Chan users.
An anonymous user began the thread of messages by asking other browsers to post "disquieting images that just feel 'off'."
From there, surfers who came across the thread replied with photos of what they think fits the original poster's inquiry.
From that point, the photos from that thread were referred to as "The Backrooms" by the group of 4Chan surfers.
Since then, users from Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram have chimed in to add more details to the urban legend.
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The creepypasta-based tales served as part of the inspiration for the Christopher Walken and Patricia Arquette-led Apple TV series Severance.
The urban legend has also been adapted for the PC Games The Backrooms Simulator and Enter the Backrooms.
