A Deep Dive Into the Strangely Familiar 

Personally, I find them cozy, in a weird way. They give me a very specific feeling. Like you're alone, but not really. Like when you step outside during a party at night, so you're alone outside, but you know there's a room full of people on the other side of the wall so you don't feel alone. Or at least, you know you're outside at night alone, but you feel safe knowing you're not really on your own.

For me, the backrooms feel like when you’re a child being led around an unfamiliar space, holding your parent’s hand just following their lead bc they know the path, except you somehow got separated and are trying to find them and nothing makes sense and seems so impossibly big

I’m glad someone else connected the Vaporwave aesthetic and liminal spaces. They always gave me the same unnerving feeling.

I think liminal spaces such as empty parking lots, schools, malls feel weird to some people because it's made to have a lot of people in them. That's literally what they're designed for so seeing it void of people is what makes some people feel weird/danger about it. If you woke up one day and the world was empty it would probably feel the same way walking through empty streets, parking lots, vacant buildings, etc

I feel like liminal spaces are a product of our distorted memories. Like, when we remember something, it’s simplified in our memories. We only remember the most important parts, and sometimes mesh memories together, which screws our prescription of the environment we were in at the time. That’s why mass produced areas such as perfect cookie-cutter suburbs, malls and fast-food restaurants seem some 'liminal' in these photos, because we as the viewer know we haven’t been there, yet it feels as if we have (due to our skewed memories). It’s also worth noting that places from our childhood seem 'liminal' as well (such as playgrounds and libraries) because the older a memory, the harder it is to remember therefore causing our memories to be skewed by time. Idk just a thought :)

I remember once I was going on a school field trip where it was like and hour and a half long ride. The thing is, we didn't take the highway and spent the entire time driving through old country roads, I'm talking like literal gravel paths. It was cloudy the entire time and I swear to God I didn't see a single person walking outside the entire ride. Even when we passed through areas with buildings there was just nobody. Definitely my most liminal experience I've had.

I feel like there is a deeper meaning behind liminal spaces and especially the way people see these places in their dreams and feel nostalgic about places they have never seen before. It is fascinating how dreams mix up known places and elements into something new and unknown. Sometimes I wonder if these dreams and feelings about liminal spaces are some kind of preview into another dimension or into what life after death might look like. Maybe by our memories and spiritual states, we shape the next world. I find most liminal spaces rather comforting. They give me a sense of excitement, nostalgia and adventure, like I want to explore these places, mixed with some eerieness and strangeness. I always liked maze-like places to explore, especially in games.

So a really good example of a liminal space in my mind is a restaurant that closed about 20 years ago in my hometown. The restaurant opened in somewhat of a boom where a ton of new restaurants were built in a certain area. while the majority of them flourished and are still open to this day, one restaurant called Smokey Bones, under the Darden umbrella which owns Olive garden, LongHorn steakhouse and Red Lobster, was not successful. When it opened I suspect that there was some dispute with owners and management because it closed pretty quickly with no notice or announcement. When people showed up to try to go in and eat they just found out that doors were locked and there was a sign saying it was no longer open. Fast forward about 17 or 18 years I was in between vehicles and my best friend and I had to take a bus to do our like shopping and see a movie etc. When we got off at the bus stop that was closest to the movie theater we were in that general area where all those restaurants were and we were trying to decide where we wanted to eat and while we were walking towards our destination we happen to pass the restaurant that had closed. Despite having closed their doors almost 20 years before this day we still noticed that there were cups on tables along with silverware not to mention signs showing special pricing for happy hour items and other incentives for eating at a certain time. There were also paper on the podium in front of the front door that had a list of all the servers and an outline of which servers were working along with the table sections that they had for that evening. I had this incredibly eerie feeling and it was like something that was unexplainable. It was like seeing a busy restaurant just completely void of people. The feeling that came over me again was like something I can't even describe. I wasn't like scared but it wasn't comfortable either. It was more like a mixture of curiosity and like we need to get the hell out of here because something along the lines of a presence was definitely noted and it gave me a sudden knee-jerk reaction to just want to get off the premises. And to me liminal spaces remind me so much of that day and the feeling I got when I looked into those windows that day. One other thing I just wanted to mention is that when someone online broke down and defined what the uncanny valley is to us it really gave me a huge sense of nostalgia in regards to what I saw that day. The whole aspect of seeing something incredibly normal with one huge variable missing is how I consider what uncanny valley may be to other people. For example if you see someone who looks incredibly normal, recognizable even but they are exhibiting like one aspect of their appearance that is just slightly off it always gives me the urge to begin rethinking what I'm looking at. For example I started wearing false eyelashes when I was really really young and I didn't really know what sort of style looked the best on my face shape. I'd wear super tacky like huge gaudy eyelashes that just didn't look right and my mom would see me and say something is different Oh my god it's your lashes! But for that split second before she was able to pinpoint exactly what the anomaly was regarding my appearance she just knew that she was looking at her daughter only now her appearance was tweaked in a way that wasn't immediately recognized. This exact phenomenon can be applied to so many different aspects of our lives. And I believe that uncanny valley and liminal spaces in terms of how they became something online that everyone seemed to resonate with is exactly why people all over the world may think that they have nothing in common with others but then when things like this become something that's very well known globally similar to the way everyone seemed to recognize what the Mandela effect was is all the proof we need to know that however different we are the majority of us still think very much alike.

5:20 For a second I had no idea what you meant about another world in your head, but once you said you thought it was a past life, I realized I actually had a similar experience. Sometimes random things remind me of specific places/scenes that I can imagine and seem to remember, but that don't actually exist. For example, I seem to remember a giant ballroom at night, lit with moonlight, even though I've never been to one. I also used to wonder if maybe I went to these places in a past life, but I started writing them down recently, and I think I've debunked a lot of them. Ex. I had a nightmare that I think was set in a ballroom at night when I was a really little kid. Tl;dr: I had a similar experience of "remembering" liminal spaces and wondering if I had a past life, but I recently realized I can chalk most of them up to dreams/video games/movies etc.

Hearing Goodbye to a World out of nowhere when I never hear anyone ever mention it or anything was so pleasant, love Porter Robinson's instrumentals so much.

This video really hits a key point that I don’t see a lot of depth on when discussing liminal spaces and liminality in general; the personal aspect of liminal spaces is what gives it so much weight. Each person has their own perspective and experiences with liminality that makes it so hard to pin down. Great video!

Ive literally been to the liminal space at 8:29. Its a mall near where i live. i remember walking through it when it was pretty much abandoned.

ever since i had first heard about liminal spaces in early 2020, i have been extremely attached to them. your conclusion speaking about “going to altered realities” is extremely accurate and something i agree on, but i had never thought about prior. i always had very lucid dreams as a child where i could control everything but they still felt very liminal & surreal even when there were “people” in the dream “with me.” just as you stated, i also had an overactive creative mind and still to this day experience these dreams that feel incredibly liminal. i have asked friends in the past about their dreams and i find people with more overactive dreams find liminal spaces nostalgic and almost comforting, yet those with less interesting dreams, less dreams in general, find liminal spaces to be creepy or eerie. it’s interesting to find yet another person to support this theory of mine.

I played Gaia Online when it was Go-Gaia back in 2004. It def was a thing. They used to have an online player count at the bottom of the home page and I remember it having 40,000+ people on at once. Many times.

The video game section of this video reminded me about Stanley Parable! I remember watching it as a kid, trying to figure out why it was so unsettling. That was my first look at a liminal space video game, and I think that’s what sparked my love for them :) I’m sure you’ve seen the game before, but if you haven’t, definitely check it out!

I really love how you approached this from an anthropological pov. It's a very refreshing and innovative manner to explore something I've been researching into for so long.

Excellent job on this Kylie, I'm not sure how it only has 112 views as of the moment, the matrix must have glitched again, but excellent job!

One of my favorite liminal spaces are inside hotel pools, especially with ones with no windows. Feels like another dimension. The chlorine smell and hum of florescent lights really enhance the experience

Liminal spaces are so interesting, I always experienced that weird eery feeling in the places listed in that tumblr post you mentioned. Places where people or life seems to be missing. It always felt like this version of our reality with a layer switched off so all you can see is the setting you're in. It did feel strange but at the same time really refreshing, like you'd be drawn in kinda wishing you could live in this moment forever. When I first started watching the backroom videos it was such an intense feeling, I couldn't tell if I was suuuuper uncomfortable or just hyperfocused. It messed with my head and everything felt so weird afterwards, which I'm sure other people experienced as well. It was like the feeling after you've been rollerblading or ice skating for a while. This strange sustained energy which in a sense kinda embodied the feeling of being inside an empty parking lot or unfamiliar mall. Unease but also like... extreme fascination, haha. Super video, right to the point with lots of interesting examples to boot!

I love how this is a personal channel about your experiences and reactions not some abstract discussion.

Very nice coverage on the origin of them, that Tumblr post was definitely the start and I never really thought about how the whole Vaporwave scene pushed it further, but yeah, thinking about it it totally is!! I still feel tons of emotions for liminal spaces to this day, heck even in just this video the McDonalds one at 2:30 almost brought me to tears because of how powerful the nostalgia was, I've been in a Walmart exactly like that as a kid with the same entrance. To me, liminal spaces are indeed like a dream. The closest thing we can have to viewing a dream in a waking state, or the closest thing we have to reliving a memory, especially if that memory was long ago and forgotten. Or rather, reliving a distant memory.. after it happened. Abandoned. You're not supposed to be there anymore; reality has left it behind. That's why there's no people! And images like this are almost a portal to these.. long-since past bits of reality.

omg when you mentioned the mcdonald's liminal spaces it unlocked so many memories!! my family used to go on road trips every year to my grandmas house, it was a longgg drive. one time when i was really young, it started raining super hard on one of these trips. it was night time and we pulled into one of those "oasis" places if i remember? it was so absurd. super spaced out fast food restaurants, and it was like 2 stories but completely empty. i think some of the restaurants were even closed too, it felt so eerie. like, i'd look around for people but i wouldn't see any. i thought it was a dream for a long time, it felt so weird! probably a pretty normal experience, but it stuck with me and liminal spaces are just so cool :^) i wish i got to experience more liminal spaces

I love having liminal space moments. A couple years ago, my apartment complex's parking lot was being repaved so all the cars had to move elsewhere and going out at night to an empty parking lot with just street lights was definitely liminal. My first liminal experience since I had heard about them. I have pictures, actually. Another one I don't have pictures of but wish I did was my city bus transit center late last year on a foggy day. Empty parking lot surrounded by fog and to top it off, there was an orange traffic cone in the middle of the parking lot. It was perfect. That whole bus ride was pretty liminal, actually because even though there were other people on the bus, it was so foggy and isolated outside for like the whole ride. I was going to Walmart and even getting off there, I couldn't get the feeling out of my head. It definitely hit different. A couple honorable mentions are a convenience store that still had a payphone and newspapers out front. It felt like legit time travel and a McDonalds in a random military town on the way to Seattle. Just a bunch of military men eating there. Not a typical feeling, that's for sure. Edit: Forgot to mention my backroom style dream from childhood. I had a dream that I opened the curtain at a movie theater and behind it was a long hallway with doors on each side and no people and I felt like I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. Shit has stuck with for years and when I found about liminal spaces and backrooms, it freaked me out how much they reminded me of that dream.

I got liminal space vibes from playing Stardew Valley. During Covid I was feeling like the world was collapsing all around me, and Stardew helped me connect to a parallel world that reminded me of the pre-Covid times.

Finding abandoned shit is this way too. Every so often I make adventures to places near me in s.e. pennsylvania to photograph, walk around, even measure dimensions of old abandoned buildings and infrastructure. It's the same feeling. A bit part of liminal spaces, in my opinion, is the knowledge that people should be there. People used to be there but no longer. An example is an abandoned town called Billmeyer PA. It's right along a rail trail and still active railroad. It's an old industry town based around lime kilns. Foundations of countless buildings are there, even an old car or two and it hits different. Anyway amazing video, sharing because this channel needs more subs.

I’m British and the majority of liminal space pics are based on American suburbia and corporate buildings, so they rarely affect me because British architecture is a slightly different brand of soulless and empty. EDIT: I’ve looked up British liminal spaces and they don’t really work still cause the U.K. is liminal by design. Every estate is just copy pasted connected terrace houses with unkept pavements and alleys. The closest thing to liminal I’ve ever experienced was being in an empty Lidl at 11pm at night when all the lights were on but no one, not even staff, was in there. That was real weird

I think liminal spaces are like screenshots of dreams. Dreams aren't really all that detailed and most of what we see is just the brain making assumptions or "filling in the gaps". I think liminal spaces are the unfilled gaps, or dream-images without the gaps entirely; which is why they feel both real and unreal.

the Ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ image aesthetic actually started in 2014, i think it started becoming mainstream and more familiar in about 2016/2017

There's a particular well-known liminal space photo that really freaked me out when I first saw it, because the feeling of familiarity went WAY beyond what the images usually invoke. Eventually I figured out why it was so familiar: I actually had been there. It was the Mountaineer Mall in Morgantown, WV. I no longer live in the West Virginia, but I wish I could go back and take some photos.

For me they're pleasantly nostalgic. My dad was an ironworker and my mom worked as a clerk in various stores, so growing up I'd often end up with her, usually while she worked in malls. Stop me if you've heard of them, but before I went to Kindergarten she worked at Tri-County Mall, and some time after I started school she worked at what was then Forest Fair Mall (later Cincinnati Mills, then Cincinnati Mall, and now... I'm not sure?). While Tri-County was certainly bustling in the late '80s and into the '90s--they even added a second floor to the mall around the time my mom left that job--Forest Fair was always pretty barren, what most would consider liminal. And, since she was always occupied, I generally had free rein to go wherever, even the back employee areas at that particular store. (Not that I was being a cheeky kid; everyone there knew me and they were more than fine with me being there.) Then, in high school, I was part of the yearbook staff and in the marching band, so I was often at the school well after-hours. It was common for my friends and I to just roam the halls, waiting for a football game or anticipating a publishing deadline. Empty schools are a common theme in people's thoughts of liminal spaces, and so seeing those makes me nostalgic too. And of course, one of my aunts has generally always lived in one of those "new construction" suburbs, and my grandparents live in a surprisingly-expansive mobile home park, so even those elements of liminal spaces are familiar to me.

they're v cozy to me personally, like i could walk right in and be welcomed home by just the feeling of it? like returning to a warm home after shoveling snow all day, the comfort and warmth of being in a home and knowing ur safe from everything around u basically

My introduction to liminal spaces and what I would consider the single best example of them is the game The Beginner's Guide. It's made by Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable, and it's literally about liminality, about the transition between one stage of your life and another, and it's told and shown to perfection. They used the Source Engine to make the game, so it has tons and tons of nostalgia to anyone who grew up on Valve games, and they really lean into the dream-like surrealism that has come to define liminality. It's wild how much it matches, since the game released in 2016. It's an absolute masterpiece and one of the most impactful games I've ever played. It's available for a few bucks on Steam and is only about an hour and a half long, so it's more than worth it for the beautiful story that it tells.

Keep it up. Your content is just as good if not better than similar channels with 100k+ subscribers. It's almost refreshing to have a simple slideshow as opposed to the sometimes over-the-top editing.

I remember this one time at my grandmas house, and there’s this empty room in the basement with brick walls, run down fire place, and a crappy rug. It definitely gives off liminal space vibes. Wish I could share a photo

When I think back to my early childhood, there was one area of the suburbs I lived in that struck me as notable; first in a liminal sense, late in a safe and familiar sense. It was the street where my family would end up moving when I was six. Basically, there was a small green outside the houses that surrounded it, with a large, curved, red brick wall around half of it. Before we moved, I remember seeing it and getting this curious feeling, like it was a weird, alien way to build a street. But I eventually grew to love it, and when we eventually moved from there in my twenties, it was a painful, traumatic experience, like saying goodbye to an old friend before they died. I also used to dream of a form of the 'pool rooms', based around the swimming baths area of the sports centre in town; There were often a lot of areas that weren't being used, with the lights off. They had that bizarre pale green mosaic tiles covering the floor and walls, always damp, warm, and smelling of chlorine. The dreams would take it to an even more surreal level. One more anecdote; I remember one evening, I'd gone to visit my friend at his place, and we were both bored as hell. He suddenly said we should just get a bus and go to the next town along and see what there was to do. The whole journey on the coach was weird, driving along mostly rural roads at night, while the interior was illumated brightly. It felt like a bus-ride to nowhere. :D

Great video! It was great to see a new perspective on this phenomenon, focusing on the beauty and enjoyment of liminal spaces beyond just their creepy-pasta potential. Here's one of my thoughts, which goes hand in hand with many of the other theories. I think one of the big underlying emotions that these images evoke is loss. For some people that can manifest as bittersweet memory; for others mortal dread. It could be the sense of having lost the comfort and safety with which we remember our childhood. Could be the loss of remembering older family members whose homes were still decorated in a way that felt decades in the past. And a big one I think could be the loss of those physical spaces we remember that are now gone or unrecognizable, particularly public spaces. A lot of malls, amusement parks, municipal buildings, schools and university buildings can exist as aesthetic time capsules because no one wants to spend the money to modernize them, and it can be really cool to see. If you're ever considering liminal spaces to visit, I highly recommend Providence County Rhode Island. Driving through the northwest part of that state feels like traveling 40 years into the past, and it's fascinating to drive through both rural neighborhoods and urban centers that have that same energy.

i know i’ve never been in one alone, but i think of empty funeral homes a lot as liminal space. like the part/spot where they do the actual wake and people sit and cry. not bc it’s a funeral, but for some other empty non-death related reason, i find it chilling.

the lain music in the intro is very fitting, love it

I LOVED Gaia Online! Spent endless hours in the chat forums & absolutely loved dressing my avatar up! I played Gaia more than Neopets. I was on Gaia around the time that the gold and item costs really increased. I remember the white kitty from like the very first mystery item of the month (or whatever it was called) was like 1Million gold if not more.

Oooh man, someone else remembers Alice is Dead and I love it. I'd never thought about those games as liminal, but now that you bring it up, they really are, especially the first two. You're stuck in a hole or a jail and even when you escape, you're in that uncomfortable space between the beginning and the end. Wish there had been more of the series, but maybe it just adds to the liminality that it ended so abruptly and strangely.

I often remember places from my childhood in my head (schools, certain country roads, old playgrounds) and I always associate those places with liminal spaces. Like, they still exist in my mind as they did when I was younger, even though the places have changed so much since in reality.

I knew it was coming from some of the other comments but hearing the beginning of Goodbye to a World made my hair stand up. Such a good song! The clip of Imagination Movers at the start caught me off guard too lol. I never really went to restaurants or anything much as a kid but OH BOY that suburb picture at 1:18 got me, because it reminded me of the suburb i used to go to for swimming lessons. I hated thr lessons after a certain point but I look back and miss those days because it seemed simpler (I am a very nostalgic person). Normally I don't feel anything with liminal spaces, or find them slightly uncanny but that one was just different

Speaking of liminality in video games, it's funny how you mention hanging out in certain areas just to experience them. I used to do the same thing as a kid. The "rest area" in Super Smash Bros. Melee's All Star mode was one of these spaces for me. The calming music and beautiful visuals seemed out of place in a fighting game, but I loved being in that moment. I used to imagine sitting by the fountain in the background. Another good example is Destiny Islands from the first Kingdom Hearts game. Both of these games were a large part of my childhood and the nostalgia definitely adds to the liminality I experience thinking about them now. Thanks for the video :)

Just wanted to leave a supportive comment for the algorithm. I just discovered your channel the other day and have been binge-watching your videos! Keep it up! Hope your channel continues to grow!

Totally forgot in my comment yesterday: OMORI is an amazing game that essentially only works because of that liminal feeling. It mainly takes place in “Headspace”, and it uses that freedom to depict dreamlike areas that capture both the insulated and comforting and the scary and claustrophobic places of the mind. It gets really dark, but considering the kind of media you like, I think it’s really up your alley ☺️

When you mentioned point-and-click games, a series of games came to my mind: Mystery Case Files. I remember in 2008 when my mom got me into it, and to this day I still occasionally play some of them to trigger my inner nostalgia. So far, I've never met anyone in my life that played any of the MCF games :') I will never forget the first time I played MCF: Dire Grove and MCF: Return to Ravenhearst. I was so hooked

I’ve always struggled to relate to liminal spaces and the “been there before” feel because i spent 2/3 of my life in mexico where a lot of the now liminal/nostalgic infrastructure was absent. But first ever “job” i had where i live now did have that liminal office feel, which is the only reason I end up feeling something when looking at liminal spaces and it is just interesting how much the whole new country first job matched the definition of “liminal.”Also i’ve been binging all your videos all weekend i love ur channel

Finally someone who experiences Liminal Spaces in the same way that I do! One of the reasons I love Liminal Spaces so much is because whenever I see an image of a liminal space it's almost like it unlocks a long lost memory. For instance, when I saw the second image you used in the intro of the suburb my mind immediately went to when I was at a garage sale with my grandma about 4 or 5 years ago in a neighborhood that's not even too far from where I am currently. In reality the only similarity between that neighborhood and the one in the photo is the curved road, but for some reason my brain associates that particular memory with that specific image. Liminal Spaces have never really given me that sense of dread that everyone raves about, they actually have the exact opposite effect on me. When I see a picture of some dimly lit dead/dying mall after hours I long to actually be there, completely isolated in an empty and massive building in the dead of night, the only sounds being the echo of my own footsteps on the linoleum floors and maybe some light "mall music" playing over the intercom, completely free to explore the halls, atriums, backrooms and empty storefronts at my own pace all the while reminiscing about the times I would visit malls just like this one as a kid. The only time I've been truly unnerved by liminal spaces was when I played through Anemoiapolis a couple months ago, which is a great game (albeit short) game if you haven't played it already, most of my playtime was just me exploring and imprinting my own memories into each level. I spent so much time in an almost Zen state that when the game started doing actual horror stuff it really through me for a loop and was one of the most unnerving experiences I've ever had in a game, I had made this clearly hostile environment into a safe space only for it to betray me.

i know very well i cannot be the only one- I get both feelings from liminal spaces: some are extremely calming to me, but others give me a weird scared feeling. I've always wanted to get lost in those poolroom liminal spaces. I know if i was truly in one i'd be creeped the hell out, esp if i was alone. But there's something calming about being alone, in a whitish/blue tiled series of rooms, with water that cannot move unless i interact with it. there's a sense of control. I choose where i go, i choose when the water moves, i choose when the tile gets wet from me stepping out of the pool. i think the noise of the water would also be calming. on the other hand, empty movie theaters creep me out. I feel isolated and vulnerable. As if things can and will go wrong. There's a lost sense of control for me. I think its because I know what a movie theater looks like when full. I've been there before. It's a real place to me. Unlike a poolroom, of which i have no memories of things similar. I would love to explore liminal spaces all on my own, tbh- to be lost, and subject to travel alone. there's a calm in it. maybe because i have social anxiety. maybe because we all need our loneliness at times. I can never truly explain it at all. There's a calm in it all, and there is a chill in it all. All liminal spaces are- in their own ways- calmingly terrifying, in their own oxymoronic way. music can also feel weirdly liminal to me- even stuff outside of the "liminal" genre. "Azure Memory" and "An Endless Cycle" have parts that feel nostalgic, like i've heard the parts before. they're weirdly liminal to me, but that's personal experience. obv stuff like "Six Forty Seven" and "Nowhere" are liminal to me, but AM and AEC are liminal in a different way. idk, i cant explain I love your videos, and I'm super happy I found your channel. your voice is really nice, and your content is stuff i havent seen before. keep on fighting the good fight, my bro

i'm so glad that i got you in my recs yesterday, i literally watched all videos thank you!

Hey, I just found your content this afternoon, and while watching this video, I just realized where I missed the red coin in Bowser and the Fire Sea in Mario 64. So thank you. Oh, and your content is really great, too.

I think what makes Liminal spaces so fascinating to people is they exist in this weird uncanny valley of nostalgic and familiar while also different and just a bit off, sort of sparking this feeling in your brain where it can't decide between "I know this, this is familiar, this is comfortable" and "Where am i, why is this place so wrong, i am uncomfortable" though really it's probably more like the reason these images strike a cord with people is different for every person or it's multiple things or a combination of things that some people can't put their finger on because it blends together into this confusing but beautiful blur or comfort and nostalgia and confusion and unease. I'd actually compare them to the environmental equivalent of the alternates from the Mandela catalogue. Where they range from "Very familiar but there is something off but they still seem real enough but there is just enough wrong here that you have to question if it's real or some nightmare scape" and "Like if an eldritch horror who's never seen anything even slightly like Earth had a flash vision of some things on Earth and tried to jot them down on an eldritch notebook from memory, filling the gaps in their mind with what they know reality to be, that being a complete violation of everything we know life to be"

I played Gaia Online for like ten years, if not more. Was a huuuuuuge part of my teens and early adult life.

7:54 is very relatable, once i dreamt of a place with a building that looked just like that indoors building courtyard thing, and thaat was before i saw it.

Hollow Bastion and End of the World both from the first Kingdom Hearts game give IMMENSE liminal space vibes. I loved exploring both worlds as a kid despite how much it should’ve creeped me out, they’re both pretty empty (EotW is literally meant to represent places where all the people are gone/dead), and if I’m remembering right, EotW rarely even has music or ambient noise, and HB can go from quiet to loud with battle music.

It's not very often at all that I irl experience this, but what will get me every time is an empty apartment....and VERY especially one I have just moved out of. You walk in to take one last survey, room to room, making sure all is clean and/or packed. You can't help but reflect on the life of however long you spent in this space, but seeing it now empty and almost unrecognizable, to me...reeaaalllly hits a deep, strange feel I don't ever feel otherwise. Then, you arrive at your new place, forward and excited to unpack and settle in here, in this new space - I couldn't describe all of this any other way but as uncanny, familiar AND transitional *shrug*. A similar channel, Nexpo, put out a good rundown on liminal spaces in the first segment of his Disturbing Things vol. 13 worth some of your eyeball time :)

As a teenager I used to take walks or bike rides at like 1 am (don't ask why my parents let me do that I still don't know) and all those dead empty streets or parking lots of once busy stores are just so nostalgic

One game that really has a liminal vibe is LSD Dream Emulator for the PS1. It was my introduction to liminal spaces before they were actually called that. I found it maybe 10 years ago and it gave me vibes similar to current liminal spaces media.

i just found your channel a few days ago and youve already become one of my favorite youtubers easily, i love the way you format your content and your personality, im looking forward to watching more and i hope you talk more on liminal spaces and the strangely familiar :)

Games with an area that you can't go back to once you beat the game have that same feeling to me. Specifically thinking about the Past Mystic Ruins from Sonic Adventure 1 where you can just run around and explore until you activate the cutscene to head back to the present. There really isn't anything to do, but that gives it a kinda liminal vibe to me because of how oddly peaceful and quiet it is compared to the rest of the game.

8:16 okay this sounds crazy but I've been to that place (or a place extremely similar) multiple times. It's a ferry that takes/picks up people from Seattle. Its so interesting to me how it never felt weird when I was in there because I was always with family but seeing it empty like that gives me a totally different feeling.

Liminal Spaces both brought me comfort and made me anxious or uncomfortable It obviously depends on what aspect of Liminal Space But for example one of those pictures of a empty living room brought me comfort because it felt similar to my living room when I was 5 but it also made me anxious because of how empty it was So I only look at Liminal spaces in small amounts and then breaks just because of how it kind of messes with me Yet I still love Liminal spaces Some bring comfort Some bring off feelings Some give both! Or many feelings

From watching all of your videos, your like a philosopher of different eras in culture. Sorta like Sisyphus 55. Love your channel dawg, watch them while playing source games, like Half life 1 & 2.

I was just talking about the vaporwave and liminal space connection the other day. People have also described vaporwave music in the same way. Like the visual album of floral shoppe feels very liminal to me

4:56 I love how you say "I don't think it became like a thIIIng until 2020". Idk it's just funny

We have an abandoned Toys R Us near where I live, and every time I look in the window I just have a very profound sadness wash over me. I am no longer a Toys R Us kid, and I can never be a Toys R Us kid again, even if I wanted to be. And sometimes I pretend I can still hear the early (kids-bopified) 2010s pop music that always played in the Toys R Us.

There’s an early 2000’s computer game I used to play all the time called marble blast gold. Pretty liminal and funky, very 2000s. I adore it

I'm in the middle, I think; Liminal spaces offer both curious surroundings and comfort, as well as a sense of unease, and the whole thing is f fascinating af. I'm also a person who loves the aesthetic and that oddly soothing but uneasy feel of being completely alone in a strange place (Silent Hill series was grrrreat). For current times, if you're still into exploring liminal space and have time? Nightingale is in early access, but each 'realm' (other players notwithstanding, when they're around) are SUPREME liminal space material. The environments are seemingly being reclaimed by a natural space, are all but abandoned, and those remnants of industry and signs of previous habitation really are wild. Not to mention the specific game lore that gives only hints of what may have been, and graveyards of literal and metaphorical types. A++ liminal exploration, tbh. There are things you can do to advance the story, wildlife to contend with that's bizarree, but you can really just vibe and explore for hours and accomplish little else.

Got recommended one video and ive been watching all your videos so good

I've had a lot of dreams before I even knew what liminal spaces were that incorporate sooo many elements of this, and I think it's really really weird how many people see the same stuff in their dreams. I'm convinced it has something to do with gen z being born in the world of the 80s and 90s with tapes and tube TVs and old weird architecture in buildings that leaves a huge impression in a child's mind, and then we had it all ripped away and replaced with a broken and boring gray world and more of our interactions taking place on the sterilized internet. Liminal spaces literally feel like I'm connecting to another world that I'm from or something

I think you should try keeping a dream journal and read into hypnagogia and hypnopompia. As a listen you describe your childhood and dreams, I think you are really close to controlled lucid dreams and just not have realized yet how precious that gift is.

What liminal space pics remind me of is dreams that you've forgotten but still remember having. Like what I mean is that you ever feel like you can remember having a dream sometimes years or decades ago, but you literally remember nothing about them, just the feeling thst you did have the dream? Like if your brain was a computer the link to the file is still there, but if you click on it you just get a 404 error.

You couldn't have explained it better; I fully agree with your whole viewpoint. Glad I found this is in my recommended!

I find liminal spaces comforting/peaceful but I think that's because I like being alone so being in these places seems like it'd be peaceful

Liminality does seem eerily wired to nostalgia. I vividly remember, being 8-10, and having my friend over. I lived next to my elementary school, so there was a vast hill and a playground in my backyard. I remember peering out my kitchen window during a foggy night and then joining my friend on the playground while everything was entrenched in fog. We had made up that witches were after us. It was legitimately spooky, though, on some level. I remember always noticing, while around the playground with friends or alone - that no matter how the weather was….the playground would always be illuminated by the Sun no matter how cloudy it was. Nostalgia similarly clouds the mind in ways I too this day cannot reckon with. Im 27. But going back to my first girlfriend when I 14 in my mind…its just bliss. It feels otherworldly. Like life was coated with pure love. All from emotion/memories/teenage lust. I am in the camp that finds liminality spooky AND artistic. Both very viscerally. PS: I grew up on the first Playstation. Spyro was/is very liminal!

Just found your channel but your content is seriously underrated omg

I've been going through your channel and watching as many videos as I can, and I really love your content. The images you find in videos and the background music are always very enjoyable. Hoping to see more uploads soon?

Liminal spaces give me an uncanny valley feeling, more than any human uncanny valley picture has given me. One liminal space I’m reminded of is in Ocarina of Time 3D. Entering Kakariko Village seconds before the cuckoos are meant to cuckoo in the morning gives it an otherworldly feeling. Like, it’s daylight but there are no people. Just an empty, music-less village.

I find liminal spaces comforting, wierd, and also kind of creepy. It really feels like a dream or something else. I also associate a kind of small game called skyscrapersim with this sort of thing because of how you would explore an empty building that always was kinda creepy.

One day before a hurricane/tropical storm we went to the galleria. Lord knows why but we did. Half the parking lots were flooded and it was raining hard. So we entered the mall and man. It was so quiet it was surreal. And anyone whose been to the galleria in texas KNOWS how huge and loud it is. But it was so quiet and desolate, we were the only ones there and you could hear the fish tank echo. I'll hold onto that memory forever. It was like 2014 before I knew the word to describe it, other than beautiful.

The 3D GTA trilogy has a liminal space feeling too.

I'm loving your channel so much! Keep up the amazing work! You really deserve for subs! I'm excited to watch your channel grow!

me and my close friends actually started going back on gaia again during lockdown out of boredom, it's not as popping as it was 10+ years ago but i get enough engagement doing activities and posting on forums, plus dressing up your avatar is always fun.

Was born in 1996 so I got to see the tail end of a lot of these places like the old styled fast food restaurants and 80s and 90s styled housing architecture ect. They are very calming and nostalgic . Nothing but solitude(apart from ones ment to Creep you out) also I swear Mario 64 and silent hill is what spawned my love of liminal space and surrealism. I played those game for hours when I was a kid and as a adult I still pop them in from time to time to play.(especially Mario 64)

A strong aspect of liminal spaces is unnatural lighting. These pictures tend to have way too little or way too much ambient light. That is, an area with no direct light, like on a foggy day, or direct light but it's all one colour, like fluorescent strip lighting. This leads to very flat and uncanny lighting compared to unobstructed sun or moonlight. Before the 2010s, realistic lighting required a lot of technical engineering - usually a lot of hardware power - or highly skilled texture work. As an example, in Persona 3 (FES), walking the main character up to a window doesn't effect the lighting on the model. The light traveling through the windows isn't rendered in real time; they just change the texture depending on the time of day and our minds fill in the rest*. By the time of the Vaporwave boom, this was easily accomplished by mid-budget games, using a method called "ambient occlusion". You can see how big a difference this makes by looking at the Wikipedia page sample image. In practice, look at NieR: Automata. It has many areas set in untextured environments, such as the Copied City. They're rarely cited as liminal spaces, because the use of ambient occlusion gives a tangible feel to the environment. In real life, light is never just one colour. Because it is scattered in the atmosphere, there are imperceptiblely small variations in what light bounces across a flat surface towards your eye, depending on the angle (shadow). Fog and cloud scatter the light so much that it doesn't come from any particular source and only appears white or grey. Alternatively, late 20th century light bulbs and modern LEDs give off only one hue of light. Both of these mean the data we use to judge distance - by the change in hue and dynamic range as objects are further away - is taken away from us. It's very uncanny. This is why light from windows and under-lighting make spaces feel more comfortable, by the way. The best way to test this theory is to look for 3D PC games from the early 2010s which have adjustable lighting settings! It's fun in horror games, because low quality lighting makes it unsettlingly uncanny, and high quality lighting looks so real that it's scary! *Fun fact: this is also used in Persona 5 Royal for the Switch, which is why it runs so well!

Liminal spaces are so interesting. They bring some sorta emotion or memory that's personal from person to person. Although I like them and the idea of them they tend to give me intrusive thoughts that just break me down emotionally and mentally. Curious to know if anyone else mentally ill (like clinically diagnosed) has those problems too.

The machintosh plus music video thing started the love for liminal spaces in me.

9:32 😂 Early 2000s architecture is so recent! I guess if you're only 18 years old it seems old, but to adults, early-2000s is still, like, now!

The best example of liminal spaces in video games is "lsd dream emulator". The whole game is just exploring psychedelic, vaporwave twinged, liminal spaces. A pure delight

I was choked out by an evil clown in a liminal space nightmare one night. Won't forget how it stared me down as it watched me suffocate, or the staircase it cornered me on which looked "strangely familiar".

a game that gives me huge liminal vibes is lsd dream emulator for the ps1, the game is empty yet full of life and its just so ethereal

I find liminal spaces to feel both nostalgic and creepy. To me, the horror of it sort of comes from seeing familiar places in ways which is not familiar. Like if you see someone shave their beard who has always had one, and their face doesn't look quite right without it. Liminal spaces expose how unnatural indoor spaces are.

I remember dreams I had with empty spaces with nobody around I remember a few where I'm in a big empty house Seeing these images are so nostalgic

To me liminal spaces are sort of nostalgic (depending on the era they are from), sometimes comforting in a strange way, and also quite surreal. Some of the most notable I've experienced being highway rest stops and convenience stores when it's late at night and there's no one else there, this one subdivision my relatives live in where there's a lot of hills and no trees, whenever I walk there it feels like I've just walked into a stock photo, it just doesn't feel like a real place. Also those unused rooms in some houses that are part of finished basements, they just feel surreal for some reason.

IVE BEEN TO THAT VIDEO GAME STORE IN THE PHOTO ABOUT TEN MINUTES IN SO MANY TIMES OMG

in the mid 2000's, these sorts of photos were being uploaded constantly but no one was calling them "liminal spaces." No one was talking about it, and there was no discourse of "liminality" or lore about entities or whatever. But every shared them for the same reason: they were uncanny, and were evocative to people that were born in the late 80s and early 90s. It was a similar thing in 2010 when vaporwave started getting big. what I don't get is how all these things have been taken up by a younger generation of people that didn't live through all the era that this media was originally nostalgic for. They've taken up all this stuff leftover from the older internet and have made something totally new out of it.

i was definitely a big wanderer when it came to zelda games as a kid. i didn't get into them until i was around middle school, but majoras mask and ocarina of time felt so good to do this in. especially at the time when i was still a weenie and got spooked by things in those games made it enticing. weird rambling but it feels good to remember those times

I wish i found this account sooner, great vids!!!

I would imagine there's a connection between being an introvert/extrovert and how you feel when viewing/being in a liminal space

liminal spaces have no hold over me, was a night auditor at a hotel 😂😂 BUT on the topic of vivid dreams, duloxetine sends me on long cosmic journeys almost every night, i really enjoy it!!