The year was 2019 and an aspiring writer was browsing the internet in the early hours of the morning looking for a fix of horror. They tried a few places where such was often posted at the time, but nothing really jumped out. After reading some Creepypastas, he recalled that 4chan had a board that at times had horror threads so they decided to check it out. After scrolling a few threads, they came across a thread asking for unsettling images. At the top of the thread was an image that gave them the inspiration they were looking for — the image was of a large yellow room, old musty wallpaper adorned rather odd looking walls, the carpet looked like it had seen better days, and fluorescent lights were overhead.
The writer contributed a random image to the thread but then added some text about the image that had started the thread.
“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God help you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure to hell has heard you”
This is the often unknown story about Black August. The person behind the anonymous text that started the legend of The Backrooms. A story that — unless you do some digging — has been mostly lost to the depths of the internet. A story that many Backrooms fans likely don’t even know about.
Special thanks to Mctoran for giving us permission to use information from his recent interview with Black August in this article, along with providing us with the raw interview files to further delve into.
Something Awful Forums Revelation
Several months after making the post on 4chan — on September 22, 2019 — the subject of an early Backrooms game came up on the Something Awful forums. Black August posted for the first time that he was the one who wrote the text.
“You want to know the real gently caress of it? The absolute pisser?
I wrote the original backrooms paragraph. I’ve been goddamn weirded out to discover it’s suddenly a small phenomena.”
He had discovered it had grown purely by accident as he saw a thumbnail for a Backrooms video on YouTube. He had actually never gone back to 4chan to check to see if his post had received any replies.
(Interestingly though, even if he had gone back to check, he wouldn’t have found much on his actual post, as this post had only received a total of 4 replies at the time, 3 comments and 1 photo reply — for it wasn’t until it was reposted with the photo — by another anonymous user who still remains unknown — a couple of days later that it exploded.)
A Mention Mostly Unnoticed
Over the years, not much has been said about Black August and his writing of the original text. The posts made by Black August came and went and even Black August himself didn’t say much about how he wrote the text (another user on Twitter made a single mention in 2022). He started an ongoing “Choose Your Own Adventure” type story-game in 2020 called ZEN [Hell End] on Something Awful which — although isn’t directly about The Backrooms and barely mentions it, does have some of the Backrooms concepts included in it.
Fast forward to May 2024 — when the location of the original Backrooms image was discovered. In a video about this posted by Farrell McGuire, a brief mention about it was made in passing. Likely due to the excitement of the location being found at the time, no one really said anything about this other discovery. A month later, Reddit user Ian_does_things posted a thread which contained screenshots of Black August’s posts from 2019 and later a couple of posts from early 2024, including one where he expresses happiness that something he created helped to give Kane Parsons a career.
Even after this however, the story of the original writer has remained buried. You won’t find mention of it on Wikipedia’s Backrooms page, it isn’t mentioned in any of the countless Backrooms articles online. His name has only popped back up on Reddit three times since the thread by Ian_does_things, and a mention of his name is in a Quora post from May 13 this year.
The First Interview
Long-time member of the Backrooms community, Mctoran recently managed to track down Black August — still a member of the Something Awful Forums where he is still actively posting his ZEN [Hell End] story-game. Black August agreed to do an interview with Mctoran and has revealed a lot of interesting information about the Backrooms concept and his thoughts about the direction that it has taken.
We recommend having a listen as it is a very insightful look into the beginnings of The Backrooms legend and the inspirations behind it.
The following is information from the interview, most of which previously hasn’t been posted publicly by Black August.
Making the Post
Let’s now go back to that time in 2019 when Black August first wrote the Backrooms text. What caused him to write something based on a single photo?
On that fateful night back in 2019, Black August was trying to take his mind off things. Real life wasn’t the best for him at the time, being forced to move back home due to high rents and financial issues. Horror was an escape for him. He was hoping to find something new as he felt things were feeling old in the genre at the time.
When he first saw the photo, the yellow rooms took him back to when he was playing a game called Morrowind — a lot of the maps in this game had yellow halls made of stone. A connection was instantly made due to the color and emptiness of the image. Back in the day he had used console commands to explore areas of this game that were unused or text maps — no-clipping into these areas.
With the concept already something he had had in his mind for years, he wrote the text hoping to encourage others to write more on the idea. Unfortunately no one did … at least not at the time. He closed his browser, went to bed and didn’t give it any more thought.
The Big Question — Are there Entities?
As long as we have had The Backrooms, there has always been a debate as to whether there are entities or not in The Backrooms. The last line of the text vaguely eludes to them, but it also has been interpreted that there is nothing.
According to Black August, when you’re stuck in The Backrooms, the threat is more of an existential threat rather than a direct monster threat. The environment itself is the primary source of anxiety/fear — the idea that you don’t know what you will encounter.
But entities do exist. They may not necessarily be of the “monster” variety however — it could be another human, or even an animal which has no-clipped into The Backrooms. It could be anything the writer imagines —a monster, an alien, even a future version of one’s self.
In the environment of The Backrooms, if you are in close proximity of something, it is only inevitable that you will eventually be in contact with it — both you and the entity know it. Anxiety is caused by knowing this is the case and that you can’t avoid it.
What is Canon?
Black August actually has a very open and unrestricted view of this. His view is that the only canon is the “original concept of stepping outside of reality”.
This definitely leaves it open to almost any concept one could think of — a lot more beyond what is generally created by Backrooms fans and creators. His view doesn’t even suggest there should be liminal spaces which is usually a major part of almost all Backrooms creations and interpretations.
Adding to this, he believes that anything can be canon, with it being a public domain concept, it’s much like a fairy tale — that everyone can share it. People can have their own ideas about what The Backrooms are.
The Backrooms can be anything someone wants it to be. Want it to be filled with monsters? That fits just as conceptually as complete isolational emptiness. It can be surreal (think Dreamcore for example), it can be generic horror. It can even be something that is not horror — such as a personal story. It can be scientific or it can be more fantastical, time travel even. The possibilities really can be endless and expanded on in all kinds of ways and don’t have to be limited to what he wrote.
The Backrooms and Black August
To Black August, the Backrooms have always existed in the back of everyone’s minds. He just ended up being the one who bought it to the forefront in more of a horror/fantastical sense.
In his own creative mind, it has been something that he has had in his head for decades as a story concept, a setting so to speak. He had always called it “The Back” but only added “-rooms” to it at the time of making the post as the image was of a room and it seemed catchy.
As a kid playing video games in the 1990s, he was always fascinated by the idea of going out of bounds — it felt like he was going somewhere he wasn’t meant to go, that he was violating a rule. As he got older, he eventually understood what was happening in the game, but he was still fascinated with the concept — “going out of reality, going to the back of reality”. This would form the basis of the idea.
There was one part of his life he pinpointed as having more of an influence on the idea. He had worked as a security guard in a government facility for a year — a place that had hundreds of rooms over 4 levels. This place gave him the feeling for liminal spaces — being the only person in a place that was usually bustling with people left a lasting impression on him.
Other influences he cited were the books “House of Leaves” (Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000) and “Annihilation” (Jeff VanderMeer, 2014) from the Southern Reach series, as well as game from 2004 called “Yume Nikki” in where the character wandered through vast monolithic spaces.
The Backrooms are for Everyone
Throughout the interview, Black August continually expresses how happy he is to see people creating their own stories and lore, that he loves seeing it expand and that he is “happy to let The Backrooms belong to everyone”. He comes across as such a humble person who simply loves seeing people create and in-turn is inspired by such.
With The Backrooms becoming a “shared universe” due to the anonymous nature of the original post, his actual view fits in perfectly with this. He is someone who just wants to see people create from this idea. And that’s what The Backrooms has done ever since it’s conception — it has inspired so many people to create. From when the Fandom Wiki first went online, to the countless stories, videos, games, concepts and artwork it has inspired — to the photography trend — and right up to what Kane Pixels has achieved with it having a full feature film in production.
The way The Backrooms has developed and the view of Black August couldn’t be more in-line with each other. The Backrooms are truly for everyone.
As he says at the end of the interview, “Have fun with the concept, you don’t’ have to let other people’s opinions affect you.”
As Backrooms fans, we ultimately will make up our own minds as to whether we think that Black August is genuine in his claims or not. He points to his writing style as the main hint — if people wanted to they could compare some of his other writing.
Listen to the interview too — the way he speaks comes across as so genuine. Something that words in this article cannot portray. He truly does sound happy about how The Backrooms has developed and that it has become something that has enabled people to write and create.
This humble man who we (at The Backrooms Online) believe wrote this text that in turn has inspired so many — also has just one hope when it comes to all of this— that he would like to be recognized for what he originally wrote.
So to the Backrooms fans reading this — remember the name Black August and don’t let that name continue to be lost in the depths of the internet. Share his story and the origin of those words.
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