I'm Scared of Liminal Spaces... 

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There's this neighborhood about 40 minutes out from where I live; every house looks the same and there's this massive hill kinda like the windows XP background that encompasses most of the foreground. (pretty sure it's a landfill) and every so often I drive down there late at night and man, that feeling is exactly how you described it!

I remember the 1st time I learned about Liminal spaces was Solar Sand's youtube video introducing me to the concept. I'm glad more people are discovering the concept and going down the rabbit hole.

China’s “ghost cities” are really interesting Liminal spaces - massive metropolises lined with glamorous buildings yet there’s almost no one living there. It’s really something else.

I think the movie "The Langoliers (1995)" gave me a similar feeling back in the day. It's based on a Stephen King novel and it's about a bunch of airplane passengers getting stranded at an airport. The passengers are the only living things at the whole airport (and the world basically). It was like everyone else just vanished in the middle of doing their business. Apparently "time" and everything else left on without them so to speak. It was a really interesting movie.

liminal spaces and anxiety are a great trauma combo for when i want to feel total derealization. i especially enjoy the pool areas the most

During the hype of the pandemic i can imagine a lot of cities looked that dead. I know some streets around Boston were a ghost town.

My whole life I've been affected by the eerieness and discomfort of abandoned spaces- dark shop windows at night, empty school hallways, the office after closing- but didn't have language for the feeling until stuff about liminal spaces started showing up. It's fascinating and I'm glad it's something I can experience.

The inevitable death of malls really makes me sad :( I hate online shopping unless it's like something on ebay or wanting something used/cheaper. Like, how am I going to know if something looks good on me or not if I don't physically have it and try it on? Looking at a screen will never compare to looking at the actual physical objects and maybe something else catching your eye

I've never really been super freaked out by liminal spaces. They just give me a weird sense of fake nostalgia. Like when I look at those empty malls, I just imagine myself and a group of friends going on a trip Though, imagining being there w/o anyone else is certainly an uneasy feeling

The strongest sense of a liminal space I've ever felt was when I took shelter in a parking garage during a particularly bad storm during a bike ride. I decided to go up to the 5th of 6 floors and just hang out, but the garage lost power. The only light I had was from downtown miles away and lightning in the clouds, as the rain picked up into an absolute downpour.

Oh god, halfway through this video I remembered SCP-184 "The Architect" and realised why it was the only SCP to seriously scare me. I'm pretty sure it was my first real exposure to liminal spaces.

This reminds of a dream, where I was stuck on a certain facility for hours. After some time I manage to break a wall and there was a space with a ladder that lead up to an exit door at the top. I opened the door and found everything was on top of a train at full speed in the middle of nothing.

Liminal Spaces are awesome, there's a stillness in the air when you're alone in a big area. I got to go to a mall a few days before it closed and walked around. Everything was closed besides the food court. It was out of this world man

The feeling you’re describing is known as “the sublime”. Where you deeply fear something but at the same time are intrigued and interested by it.

I think why liminal spaces can be discomforting, sad, or scary is because a lot of these places are similar to places we’ve seen before. Our minds hold memories of places like these and seeing how desolate and void of life makes us feel a sense of dread and alienation. We’re trying to put a memory where it doesn’t belong; even if the space you’re in is a carbon copy of somewhere you’ve been/seen before.

NGL I think adding in a creature hunting you down in these types of scenarios actually takes the horror away and reminds me way too much of slender. Horror doesn't have to be about a scary creature, it can be a never ending feeling of dread and inescapability.

Hearing Muta mention creepypastas again really fires the neurons. Imagine if he goes full circle and returns to showing off crappy exe games!

It perfectly represents despair. We aren’t fearing a computer world, we aren’t fearing being stuck. We fear never truly living. That’s why those buildings/spaces cause so much anxiety. It’s the end

The craziest liminal space experience I had came a few years ago. We were deep sea fishing off of the island of Aruba. The guide took us out to by the massive oil rigs for fracking. The rigs were waiting for approval to begin so there was no activity. Sitting on the trolling boat going around these massive steel structures that were the the length of multiple city blocks with no human activity to be spotted was mesmerizing. I forgot we were fishing for a good 20 minutes just staring up and looking at everything.

I like liminal spaces, It's like a visual depiction of the feeling I get when I'm still at work but only minutes away from the holidays beginning. My favorite is a motorway underpass I frequent with the tunnel walls having large stone tiles with square geometric texturing, like magnified salt crystals, to encouraged hanging plants to take root and cling to them. Driving through reminds me of a lost Aztec/Mayan ruin.

Ngl the backrooms would be 2x more scary if there was no monsters. Just complete loneliness and dread with only the thought of being watched rather than actually knowing.

I remember flying in December 2020 on a thursday afternoon. No one in the airport, just security and basic airport staff, almost as if they were NPCs and I was the only player in the game. It was blissfully creepy.

I've been having Liminal Space dreams my whole life A big nightmare of mine is aimlessly running around looking for a destination I can't find Like running around an empty school for 2 hours never being able to find the class room I need to be in Or walking away from a group of friends to... Go to the bathroom or something and all of a sudden, everyone is forever gone and I'm alone

I remember going back home from a friend at night, it was like 4am and the streets were totally empty, which was a bit unusual. I live in a relatively busy city so that was basically the only time in my life when I was alone on the street for like 15 minutes as I was on my way home. At one point I decided to get off the sidewalk and walk on the road instead, right in the middle of it. It filled me with that sense of: "I'm alone, but also free to do anything." It was that odd mixture of sadness and liberation.

“The Library of Babel” is one of my favorite short stories. It was written in 1941 by mathematician Jorge Luis Borges. I think that people like Muta would really like it because it is very easy to read without effort. The story takes place in a universe in the form of a library of hexagonal rooms with an entrance way, 4 walls, and 32 books per shelf. The inhabitants believe that this library contains every possible ordering of 25 basic characters in the English language (22 letters, the period, the comma, and space). Even though most of the books contain just gibberish, it is said that if their theory is true, the Library must contain the following, - every song ever written or will be written or could be written - every book ever written or will be written or could be written - everything that has been said or will be said or could be said - biographies of every person that has ever lived or will live or could live - all accurate and inaccurate predictions of the future - all of recorded history - all of recorded possible alternate histories - everything in this comment section - this shitpost - every solved and unsolved mystery - Translations of everything above in all languages or possible languages The resulting library would have an estimated 10 to the 104677 power books! Creating (in my personal opinion) the most horrifying liminal space ever to be conceived by a person.

Liminal spaces give me comfort. That shit just takes me back to when I lived in smaller homes

Mutahar is getting to the point of where you've watched so much horror you suddenly start feeling like everything is just as scary as it was the first time you saw something horror-related (trust me, I've been there)

I haven't even started this video, but I learned that this was an actual sought out aesthetic earlier today, and it blew my brain because I have YEARS worth of photography practice of liminal spaces just rotting away on my drives. I used them to practice composition with in, because if you can master making an empty space look interesting when it shouldn't then you win photography basically.

Ive worked at big schools/university and library’s and one of my favorites things was to experience them at night during closing shift such an eerie feeling seeing the contrast from the lively daytime but the scariest one was a civil nuclear bunker(Switzerland has huge bunkers everywhere) under the school i worked in they had one of these it was huuge it starts with concrete al grey and large but the somehow transitions to a some sort of hospital the walls were painted yellowish there were no furniture some rooms were labeled like surgery etc…im glad my coworker which told me about it came with me otherwise ive would have gotten lost

Being in an empty, silent room in a large house or building during a party or event is trippy too. It's like your body thinks your alone but you're well aware you're not.

Work at a theme park, sometimes won’t leave till 2:30 am, that feeling when walking down one of the busiest streets and seeing nothing but the light up buildings and listening to the park music was something memorable

28 Days Later is one of my all-time favorite movies Those shots of an empty London at the beginning of the film are unforgettable

I always love when Muta goes back to his roots exploring and sharing his interest in the creepypastas/eerie internet.

I liked walking around my university at night. Just the utter calm of no one, or just few people, around when during the day there are so many. Looking back, it really fit this liminal feel.

A similar feeling is like being in school at night time. I used to at school late cause of a club i was in and would sometimes wonder around and it was a kind of eerie feeling seeing the hallways and classrooms so empty and quiet.

My first experience with liminal spaces is logging in early in the morning on counter strike 1.6 servers and hanging out in an empty map. Freaky shit

As someone from detroit, at 1 am, everyone is outside, especially in the summer. Don't let casual tourist tell you any different.

When I was in undergrad, I fell in love with liminal spaces. It's so peaceful, and I'm so relaxed in those areas I've found myself seeking out liminal spaces wherever I go.

I have issues with mental illness and trauma, and ever since I started falling into a state of either frequent or constant dissociation on a mild scale, I've found the internet aesthetic of things like The Backrooms, liminal spaces, Weirdcore and other otherworldy yet nostalgic concepts have become extremely comforting for me. It's as if an internet community is describing how I feel for me in ways I could never think of.

4:35 Mutahar just completely forgets that early on when covid-19 broke out, pictures like that were made very possible.

I'm in South Florida, and everytime I'm travelling back from Key West to Miami, there's always an area where they have lamp posts with red lights. On top of it, it's always eerily empty. Just a road with a small shed and red halogenic lights.

Great that you are covering the subjects of analog horror and liminal spaces again lately! It's been an unsettling pleasure to watch. Since the first lockdown I dove into the topic to a somewhat questionable degree, including the Backrooms, local58, Infochammel and EAS. Searching for indie games on the topic I found some eerie gems like No Player Online or Anemoiapolis. There is something about liminal spaces that invokes a nostalgia that almost hurts-at least, that's what happens in my head, when I'm imagining myself into the pictures I'm looking at. I've even tried to replicate this is in art. Some artists really achieve this through music, The Caretaker or William Basinski are good examples, in my opinion. And that's another aspect. You can't really just look at them without you being involved. You're sucked in, not an isolated observer, who scratches his/her chin and goes 'oh well, that's am empty building'. But why do liminal spaces make us (or a great deal of people) feel uneasy? I quess it's comparable to Pareidolia, where the scarcity or absence of stimuli (for example in the dark) let's the brain create its own. In liminal spaces something is smoldering below the surface, and maybe our subconscious already has an inkling what it might be. And it's kicking and screaming to keep us safe and away from the truth.

I absolutely love/hate liminal spaces, so these videos are right up my alley. Please do more!

I remember this dream I had once where i was in my neighborhood and i crossed a bridge I'd never seen before and wound up in a bizzaro reality made of everywhere I've ever been blended into one town. Population: people with the faces of everyone I've ever loved or hated in such a fine mix it was disturbing.

Good to see that game store is still open in that mall, I used to love going there because they had retro games with a bunch of arcades cabin. Also fucking crazy how that mall is up because I thought the guy who owned it went bankrupt or couldn’t keep up with bills

Ok so I sometimes listen to this sleepcast called “Midnight Launderette” and it’s always given me this eerie feeling, but super calming like you said. I’ve always been drawn to that one specifically. It’s funny how even in a “meditative” state of trying to sleep, it’s that same vibe in a way.

I feel like Mutahar would enjoy playing "Superliminal", it's not quite liminal space since there are puzzles for you to solve and thus, a definite end. However, the feeling it gives sometimes while you play through it is pretty similar

8:26 That is so true, one time when I was younger I would stay up late alot and eventually i noticed when traffic would die off for the night. So one night I climbed out the front window, went into the street, and laid down in the middle of the road on the double yellow lines. I had this feeling, I somehow knew that i could do it and not get caught. I lived in the city and it was nothing but street lamps both ways on the road. I just laid there and stared at the sky for a good 5 minutes. That's as close to a liminal space experience that I can reacll. It was great

I'm all in for it man! Yeah that feeling when you know someone or something with a pulse should be around but its just you and the empty streets.. almost like the program forgot to populate the area

Quite a few years ago i used to spend the nights out with my friends regularly and when everyone went home to sleep i would just walk around town alone in the night (3-4 am). My town is always deserted at night, no cars, no people, few noises and i really enjoyed it, it made me feel so relaxed and get me in a good mood. Looking back it it now i guess you could call that some kind of liminality but for me it was always comforting instead of unsettling.

Thank you for introducing me to my new passion 😂 😂

I fell down this rabbit hole over a year ago and never dug my way out, its all so interesting, im glad more people ars finding stuff like the back rooms etc now, i always thought it deserved more attention

I remember during prime lockdown in London I took cycling trips with two other friends, I remember seeing areas that were always packed to the brim being completely empty in broad daylight and something about it was so off putting. Even worse was when it got dark and the lighting of the streets made a row of amber lights, being able to hear absolutely nothing you’d expect to hear in a normal city just added to it.

I love watching your vids while going exploring in Skyrim & Fallout. Learning a lot from you Uncle Muta ❤

The uni I used to go to was split into 2 parts: old and new (extension, same building). The old part still has offices, labs but parts of it are very rarely used, so the electricity is still on. Going to those parts feels exactly like these liminal spaces. It's even more exaggerated, because when you walk from the new part to the old part, you go from fairly busy to nearly abandoned in a matter of minutes. It was really cool exploring it, because the old part is pretty big.

My first experience with a liminal space was langoliers. I watched that whole thing in one sitting as a kid and it haunted me. I couldn't imagine a worse fate.

I get how these can come across as scary but for me these feel nostalgic/wonderous as they feel like the dreams of exploring megastructures that my mind congers up

I once visited a Hotel in China that had like 15 floors so it was a big place. There was nobody visiting except for our travel group. Some hallways would be very dark. It wasnt that eerie but it was kind of interesting how such a big place could be so vacant.

i remember getting absolutely enamored by liminal space about a year ago. Thanks for showing these to a new audience! I wish I had the opportunity to experience these for the first time again.

I have a fascination for liminal spaces. they are off putting in reality. but in media and virtual realities jt is just so peaceful.

I'm so happy that Muta mentioned Haunted Cities by Kitty Horrorshow. Those packs are perfect for liminality and horror itself. They're really an experience even if the games aren't that long, I'd recommend them for anyone interested. Haunted Cities V4 is personally a favorite of mine.

What I love is when you think liminally, you can find liminal spaces. There's a side hallway where I work where the bathrooms, utility/fixture closet and fire exit are. A sink on the wall for draining defective products. Concrete floor with yellow hazard tape by the exit doors and helium tanks. No drop ceiling, just exposed beams, pipes and electrical conduits and the breaker box. Simple, unfinished, unpainted drywall walls. I took a picture of it one day because it had that liminal vibe, but there's something more special about being there alone in the store at 5:00AM. The feeling that nobody's meant to linger there, just pass through on the way to the bathroom, fixture closet or stockroom. You can have a cluttered liminal space, but the litmus test for them ultimately is _are you meant to linger here?_ I think a lot of people will confuse liminal space with anemoia by posting images of places stuck in time like skating rinks, arcades, abandoned schools. There's enough similarities it's not worth splitting straws over, though. They both give you that really strange, uncomfortably comfortable (or comfortably uncomfortable? Unsettled?) feeling. I became obsessed with anemoia and liminal space at the start of the pandemic. I kinda want to pick up a secondhand enthusiast DSLR on ebay and take up a photographic hobby for these things.

Places like most of these make me smile. I used to love empty places at night. Especially if there was fog. One of my favorite things used to be go driving on old two lane highways late at night when there was light fog.

I used to get one of those dreams that repeats from a time to time (or that's how it feels atleast) and it's literally what this video is about which makes it so much more interesting, it was basically me walking alone in the area i live at, late night and the only light is from the very bright moon and i was feeling like i'm being chased the whole time and then wake up literally having chills, crazy feeling !

5:22 this mall is in Cincinnati here in Ohio and is a surreal experience. There's only 3 or 4 active businesses in the whole complex which makes visiting fully legal but the security there are pretty shitty to people wandering around. Unfortunately it was recently bought out by a development company that wants to turn the land into an apartment complex or something similar so it's being torn down next month. Definitely worth the visit before it's gone.

To the liminality experience, I have. I distinctly remember this one time when I was kid where me and a family of mine were driving through a still being developed area of my country that's situated in the bay. At one point there seems to have been some sort of large shopping complex there but it has been abandoned. This distinct experience/memory was at sunset with no other cars around and we were just passing through. The deteriorating large building complex there could be seen with panels and things sagging and falling off from age, with enclosed walkways above parts of the roads being held up by slightly rusted supports. The angle I viewed this from the car window was facing the ocean, so it really felt like I was stuck on some sort of island with a deteriorating mega structure with nothing but oceans around at sunset.

OMG THAT ABANDONED MALL I'VE BEEN THERE BEFORE! It really was a weird ass experience ngl. I just like walked around and all they have is that Game Store as well as a Bass Pro Shop. The whole feeling of being in a Liminal Space actually makes me feel very weird. Whether I be in that Mall or heck, I was even in my middle school in the dead of night sometimes and the feeling of being alone and sometimes even empty as well as the complete silence is a very off-putting feeling and can definitely make someone feel pretty creeped out.

It's also pretty related to vaporwave, which employs liminal space imagery quite often

Great video best one since we talked about the Fermi paradox. I feel there is something more primal to luminal spaces. Have ever been deep in the woods? When you hit a transitional space you get most of the same feelings. I disagree with it being gatekeeping. Or rather it's not the toxic version of gatekeeping. Having genre and definition be respected and defined consistently is a good thing especially when people are trying to water it down or shift its definition.

When I have a nightmare, it's never someone chasing me, or me being scared of something trying to kill me,... it's always stuff like this. The repetion, the anxiety of being stuck doing the same thing over and over. Waking up constantly and returning to that same dream.

Me when this shows up in my recommended at 11 pm

I’d recommend checking out the work of Francesca Woodman, she’s a photographer who mainly did surrealist work but her photos share the feeling of liminal spaces

That weird feeling of liminality is why i adore taking walks at night. Empty streets only lit by street lights, no cars anywhere, nobody nowhere. Just you, the empty street and your thoughts.

I get a very peaceful feeling when looking at certain spaces. When I find myself in one I love to just stop and take everything in as much as I can. It’s such a surreal feeling.

The idea of an empty corridor scares me more than the idea of life after death.

Someone: Hey Mutahar, what’s your hobby? Mutahar: finding new phobias everyday.

Love it when you get back on the liminality topic

I've been a consistent viewer since your dank web browsing days. I always really enjoy your videos that cover spooky creepy stuff. Good video, Uncle Muta.

4:28 Mutahar I think that's Ortigas CBD in the Philippines. I did a little search.

Just watched this video, and after seeing the idea of Liminal spaces it made me recall of an event that happened about 3~ months ago. So here i was at a friends house late evening we were watching youtube videos and laughing about random stuff and it was getting kinda of late and i wanted to get home because i was working the following day and wanted to get some sleep, his home is around 20 minutes before you get on the highway, and i had no car so i went on foot, he told me good night and be safe and i left his home, mind you it was late and the night was settling in, it was the worse feeling i have ever had, there was i just walking towards the highway in a path which was poorly made and with little lamps to guide me towards the highway, every house around me had no lights, every car and dogs that the neighbours had were plain quiet, no sounds of barking no sounds of family cheering or watching tv, just complete silence.. there were no sound of the wind or anything like that, the only sound that i could hear was my own walking.. the tip-tap of the soil.. it felt very uncomfortable and eerie, i would watch behind my back around every 15 seconds because it felt strange and surreal that there was no human being awake at that hour, anyway 20 minutes later i arrive to the highway.. from there i have to make around 30 more minutes on foot before i get to my house, it was getting around 12 in the morning when i arrived at the highway.. i finally saw some laps.. about 2~3 every couple of hundred meters ahead, but the most frightened thing that i noticed was that once again i was alone.. no cars from both ends, no lights in front or behind me besides the lights of the lamps just myself on an empty highway on a sunday night, later on the path i'd say mid way through i have to cross near a graveyard that is in the left side on the highway, which itself wasn't so bad in the morning but in the night it just hit different, seeing the emptiness of the road, the graveyard and anything in a 500 meters radius made me feel very frightened that night, finally after about an hour of madness and panic that maybe somebody is behind me or after me i start to get near my house where it became better, there were still no cars or people or shops,super markets opened but at least i had a lot more lights to work with, after that i get to my house and open the door, and i'm very glad and happy that i escaped that weird feeling of being alone and helpless when i hear my parents tv in the other room and my cats that came to greet me. Weirdest feeling i ever had and i hope i dont get to experience it ever again..

Silent Hill 3 still has my favourite use of liminal spaces in video games. The shopping mall, the subway, the apartment complex, walking the dark streets back to your apartment. Every location (especially for the first half of the game) just feels so eerie and dream-like. It all feels very familiar, yet disconcerting all the same.

As someone who plays vrchat, I experience this so freaking much and it’s so weird. There is a world I like that’s called sky camp. It used to be super populated but after revisiting, no one was there. It’s such a surreal freaking experience

Imagine our ancestors walking around in the woods, and suddenly all birds and land animals weren't around, our ancestor would know something is wrong, and there is probably a predator around. It stayed in evolution with us, and this is the uneasiness we feel

I'm starting to get into liminal spaces cuz of you. It's fascinating how it feels.

I always loved liminal spaces, never knew there was a word for them. I find them to be creepy but also oddly relaxing. I think that’s partly why I like exploring abandoned places.

I actually live right by the Cincinnati Mills mall. Walking through it is definitely really chilling especially later in the evening. It's pretty surreal seeing Muta talking about something I have personal experience with lol

A couple times inside of dreams I’ve had in the past I’ve experienced being in the middle of a giant space filled with water, you can see the walls, ceiling, and the floor, but the space was so big it would be impossible to swim to one side from even the center. Seeing this space gave me a lot of anxiety, but relaxation at the same time. Idk if that counts as a liminal space but I definitely can understand what you’re talking about when it comes to the feeling you get from them.

I'm scared and fascinated by Liminal Spaces and The Backrooms the Internet has made insane lore from it not to mention we are getting awesome Indie Films on RU-vid and Indie Games using the awesome and scary that is Liminal Spaces!

I liked how the one anon mentioned gas stations. It's a weird emotion pulling into an empty gas station at fuck AM at night, especially when you're the only car there. Not a bad emotion, just weird and oddly calming.

There were tons of aged, boring hallways, stairways and unused common areas at my university. One semester I was commuting and had a 7 hour break time between classes one day per week, and eventually I got tired of sitting in the student center with my cheap laptop and went walking around all the old buildings. I would find a particularly eerie place and maybe sit down a while and study. The weirdness of those places were gradually lifted for me because someone would always wander through going about their business. I got weird looks a few times, since those were places you never expected to see someone sitting.

I remember the game cry of fear had lots of liminal spaces still one of my favorite horror games even today.

5:16 Hey Mutahar, "Bright Sun Films" explores lots of abandoned places like this, including malls, stores, even explored a cruise ship and mansion that had been abandoned!! Worth checking out!

I took a 27 hour (eta without stopping) roadtrip with my grandma and we were at so many of those liminal space vibes places. The turnpike in Oklahoma City at 2am, Northern Texas past the feed lots, Kansas gas stations, etc. All empty. Such an interesting unforgettable experience. So many stabby places but otherwise great

"It's both an anxiety and a fear , and something that gives me a lot of meditative relief". Best explanation

I've never been in an area that felt like a liminal space, but I have had the sort of experience of feeling like there was a massive error in reality that happened. It's stayed with me all my life, never been able to explain it. I was a kid, my mom was in my room talking to me, and it was nighttime, no light coming through the curtain. Without any sort of "break" in the conversation between her and I, I remember blinking and suddenly it was morning, bright light coming through the curtain, could see blue sky through the bit of window not covered by the curtain rod. I didn't mention it to her because it didn't feel real. I just shook it off and went about the day normally, but yeah... this experience is something I'll never forget.

My favorite liminal spaces are the edited ones that are just believable enough but still weird enough to sit in uncanny valley territory. Like a strange dream

the vistas in the old spyro games on the ps1 gave off these vibes as well, I always found it eery yet soothing to gaze off at them.

I always loved driving through the Midwest and seeing the random power centers or whatever they are, alongside the road with the orange lights. Always a weird sort of beauty to me.

I have actually been to the abandoned mall in Ohio and it was genuinely terrifying seeing absolutely no one.