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Akvile Petraityte 🇺🇦

100 Of The Most Haunting Liminal Spaces You May Never Want To End Up Within

Have you ever seen a place that's a bit eerie, unsettling, or even downright creepy? Maybe it's due to the lighting, the objects that are around you, or just an overall unnerving vibe? Perhaps you've actually been to a similar place? A place that seems like a portal between this world and somewhere else.

If you have, then you've probably been to a liminal space. On the Internet, that usually refers to empty rooms, corridors, and even streets that look surreal for some reason. Here we have a compilation of some intriguing liminal spaces, so, if you're looking for some weirdness, scroll away.

#1 Lovely Winter's Day In Amsterdam

Image credits: OldWitchOfCuba

#2 My Mother-In-Law’s House Flooded Last Night. Took This Pic Before We Started Pumping Water Out, Thought It Looked Surreal

Image credits: benslack

#3 Lonely Gas Station

Image credits: THEGREATJOKER28

If you're not familiar with what the term 'liminal space' means, let us enlighten you. There are several different contexts in which people use the term. The word 'liminal' means 'intermediate,' a state, a phase, or a condition. A liminal space therefore is transitional, a threshold of sorts.

Liminality isn't always physical, although in the context of this list and the concept of liminal spaces on the Internet, it usually is. Works of gothic literature, for example, are ample with metaphorical liminality. Frankenstein's Creature, for instance, embodies a liminal state of being because he is a living corpse.

#4 I Am Currently Working Construction At A New Amazon Fulfillment Center (650,000 Square Feet). This Is The Fourth Of Five Floor. That Is Fog In The Background

Image credits: reddit.com

#5 Unsure If These Fit Here But It Was Quite A Walk Last Night

Image credits: reddit.com

#6 A Bridge In Norway While Snowing

Image credits: smells-fishy

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights uses the moors as a physical liminal space. Situated between where the two families live, the moors become a sort of bridge between two worlds, two social classes. It's also the place where the relationship between the two protagonists develops the most.

In Wuthering Heights, the moors exist as a wild space out of the bounds of society, where certain social norms can be transgressed. Catherine and Heathcliff also appear as ghosts at the moors at the end of the novel, so it's also possible they are a sort of passageway from this world to the next.

#7 Movie Theaters Tell No Tales

Image credits: Stranger1982

#8 Found A Portal To Elsewhere

Image credits: mttcrss

#9 Birthday Room In My Local Movie Theater

Image credits: sous32

On the Internet, however, liminal spaces are surreal, eerie, and unsettling. In most cases, they're abandoned or empty (of people) spaces: offices, streets, corridors, hotel hallways, etc. Liminal spaces gained a lot of popularity in 2019 when a post on 4chan about The Backrooms, a particular liminal space, went viral.

#10 This Picture Of Moment Valley Always Felt Liminal

Image credits: dinokuznik

#11 New Fear Unlocked: Indoor Pools With Dim Lighting

Image credits: AccomplishedBig7666

#12 My Husband Sent Me This. It Was Taken On His Way To Work This Morning

Image credits: fmlmel

The Internet is very fond of liminal spaces. Twitter page @SpaceLiminalBot has 1.2M followers. The Instagram account @liminalmoods boasts 463k followers. The Reddit community r/LiminalSpaces has almost 800k members. They pride themselves on The Matrix-like aesthetics, with descriptions like "Trip on the verge of reality" and "You've been here before. Wake up."

#13 Imagine Being The First And Only Person To Show Up Early To Work, Walking Down A Dark Hallway, And As You Walk Past The Break Room You See This From The Corner Of Your Eye

Image credits: dolphman85

#14 This Empty Beach Me And My Girlfriend Saw While Taking A Walk Last Night

Image credits: horrorphysics

#15 The Building Next To The Hotel I'm Staying At

Image credits: MangoSensation

The surrealism of a liminal space comes from its familiarity. Just like with the concept of the uncanny valley, liminal spaces creep us out and attract us so much at the same time because it's a mix of the known and the unknown. Some point to Giorgio de Chirico's "The Tower" as an example of liminal space in art, yet others say the place for that to work should be more recognizable.

#16 This Does Not Look Real

Image credits: Accomplished_Owl

#17 It’s Been 38 Hours And It’s Still Dark Out. Everyone Else On The Cruise Seemingly Vanished

Image credits: Discocheese69

#18 This Was My Neighborhood Today

Image credits: PepeJones15

To those living in current times, the aesthetic and concept of liminal spaces seem especially attractive because of the current state of uncertainty our world and society give us. As Jake Pitre writes for The Atlantic, "The pace of modern life seems impossible to keep up with, yet our lived reality does not change. So as society waits for the breaking point to come, liminal spaces make the anticipation of those fears visible, and reaffirm that other people are looking at the world the same way."

#19 Took This In A Gym, Close To Where I Work

Image credits: LaNyyk

#20 A Liminal Encounter I Felt Compelled To Share

Image credits: Ambitious-Scheme-818

#21 Iron Mine In Virginia That Was Abandoned In The Early 1900s

Image credits: SurviveOrDie84

You might notice that we're struggling with getting to a proper definition for 'liminal spaces' here. That's because it's hard to pin down what they mean exactly. That's why it might be helpful to note what they're not. According to the r/LiminalSpace subreddit, they're not just creepy, surreal, or simply nostalgic.

#22 Sinking Feeling

Image credits: thechelator

#23 Crown Of Birds

Image credits: JuniorStudios5674

#24 Sky Parking

Image credits: bevflora

To people who prefer to learn by looking at visuals, The Shining can be a good example of what the Internet means when they talk about liminal spaces. The abandoned and decaying Overlook Hotel with its many hallways evokes a forlorn and uneasy feeling. As the camera follows little Danny riding his tricycle, the fear of the unknown grows even stronger.

#25 The Most Liminal Space I’ve Ever Visited

Image credits: nostalgic_mario

#26 Standing Under The Avala TV Tower, Mountain Avala, Serbia

Image credits: yawntown

#27 The Creepiest Gas Station On Earth

Image credits: factor591

The urban legend of The Backrooms is also what inspired the TV series Severance. The show's creator took the idea of a place composed of infinite office spaces and hallways and explored what would happen if we actually put people there; what would happen if we transitioned from our reality to some other?

#28 Abandoned Hospital, No Power, No One Inside For Decades. A Light Always On In One Window

Image credits: SillySnowFox

#29 Time To Take Your Exam, Pick A Seat

Image credits: Yung_Years

#30 I Think This Belongs Here

Image credits: MoeJancini

But, to me personally, the most interesting representation of a liminal space would be The Black Lodge in Twin Peaks (although a lot of folks on the r/LiminalSpace subreddit would disagree with that). You can't deny how stylish and cool David Lynch's version of an in-between place looks—a waiting room between this life and the next, between reality and the dreamworld.