story 009 · film · oshkosh, wisconsin, 2002
this photo started a $400 million horror hit.
the short, written out
2026’s four-hundred-million-dollar horror hit began with this photo.
it was taken in june 2002, upstairs in an empty furniture store in oshkosh, wisconsin.
a hobby shop took over the building, and posted the photo online as a “before” picture.
somehow, it drifted onto the message board 4chan. in 2019, someone there asked: “what is that?”
a stranger made up an answer. slip out of reality, and you end up in the backrooms: “six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms”.
if you hear something wandering around nearby, “it sure as hell has heard you”.
in 2022, a sixteen-year-old turned the story into a youtube film. at twenty, he directed that horror hit.
the real room was torn out in 2003.
today, radio-controlled cars race where it stood.
the print that goes with it
maze lines
black & cream, topographic labyrinth, modern living room
no. 179 · 8″×10″ or 16″×20″ · from $20.00 · see the print
sources
- the photograph’s own file data (exif)
- hobbytown usa of oshkosh, “the new ‘revolution raceway’”, as updated on 2 march 2003 (the wayback machine) and 4 april 2004 (the restored copy at nimaid.github.io/backrooms)
- 4chan /x/, thread 22661164, 12 may 2019, via 4plebs and the wayback machine
- internet archive blogs, “the backrooms of the internet archive”, 1 june 2024
- ella jameson, “the history of 807 oregon st.”
- wisconsin public radio, 28 may 2026
- john’s hobbies and liverc (revolution raceway)
- box office mojo, variety, deadline, thewrap
- nasa, earth fact sheet
pictures
- hobbytown usa of oshkosh, 2002–2004, from the set its owner gave to the internet (archive.org/details/backrooms-photos, cc0). enlarged, not retouched; the racetrack picture is cropped to the track
every sentence of the short was checked against its sources before it went out.
