What makes the Backrooms so unsettling — and why do they linger long after you stop listening?

In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, I explore the psychology behind the Backrooms, the internet’s most disturbing modern myth, and why endless hallways, fluorescent lights, and empty rooms trigger such deep unease. This isn’t a story about monsters or jump scares. It’s a story about liminal spaces, derealization, and what happens to the mind when familiar environments lose their meaning.

I begin with a real experience of getting lost in underground hospital corridors — a real-life Backrooms moment — before moving into an immersive storytelling segment that recreates the quiet horror of endless space. From there, I break down the psychological mechanisms behind the fear: predictive processing failure, free-floating anxiety, social absence, and existential threat.

This episode connects the Backrooms to modern life — burnout, bureaucracy, and the feeling of being trapped in systems you didn’t design and can’t escape. I explore why adding monsters actually weakens the horror, how liminal spaces destabilize the brain, and why the Backrooms feel less like fiction and more like a mirror of the world we’re living in.

If you’ve ever felt unsettled in an empty hospital hallway, an abandoned mall, a quiet office after hours, or a place that felt familiar but wrong — this episode is for you.

Topics include:

• The psychology of liminal spaces

• Why the Backrooms are so disturbing

• Derealization and depersonalization

• Predictive processing and anxiety

• Environmental meaning and fear

• Modern folklore and internet horror

• Burnout, bureaucracy, and existential dread

• Why some horror stays with you

Listen now to understand why the Backrooms don’t end when the hallway does — and why some spaces swallow you long after you leave them.

Psychology of the Strange is part of the Darkcast Network-- Welcome to the Darkside

Haunted People Syndrome, recurring paranormal experiences, and the psychology of feeling watched — why do some individuals report unexplained events across different homes and stages of life, and what does psychology reveal about ghost experiences and perception?

In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, I explore the idea of haunted people through cognitive science, perception, and meaning-making. I begin with a documented case of a man who experienced persistent disturbances in his home, but quickly move beyond the question of whether the events were supernatural to examine why certain experiences feel intentional and emotionally charged.

Drawing on research into sleep disruption, hypervigilance, pattern detection, absorption, and what researchers call Haunted People Syndrome, this episode explores how the brain interprets ambiguity, and why the boundary between external threat and internal perception can sometimes blur.

I also reflect on the modern context of storytelling, including how sharing extraordinary experiences publicly can shape interpretation and meaning, while recognizing that similar patterns have been documented long before social media existed.

As part of this season’s exploration of the psychological line between good and evil, I consider how cultures have historically framed unexplained experiences as supernatural or malevolent, and how psychology offers another way of understanding the same phenomena.

This conversation isn’t about proving or disproving ghosts. It’s about understanding why certain experiences feel haunted, why they linger, and what they reveal about the human mind’s relationship with fear, belief, and uncertainty.

Topics explored:

– Haunted People Syndrome

– Psychology of haunting and ghost experiences

– Recurring unexplained phenomena

– Feeling watched and hypervigilance

– Sleep and perception

– Meaning-making under uncertainty

– Social storytelling and interpretation

– Fear, ambiguity, and the line between good and evil

Follow Psychology of the Strange for weekly explorations of folklore, perception, and the psychology behind the experiences that unsettle us most.

What happens when the rules stop working? In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, we step into thin places, liminal spaces in Celtic lore where the boundary between worlds weakens, identity destabilizes, and moral certainty begins to fracture. These are places of power, not comfort. Places where choice carries weight, and where survival often demands more than virtue can offer.

At the center of this episode is The Morrigan, a shapeshifting figure of war, prophecy, and sovereignty who appears at thresholds: river fords, battlefields, borders, and moments of irreversible decision. Often misunderstood as a goddess of death, the Morrígan is better understood as a witness to transformation appearing where people are no longer who they were, and not yet who they will become.

Through immersive mythic storytelling grounded in Celtic tradition, this episode explores how thin places function psychologically as environments of uncertainty, threat, and transition. We examine why ambiguity heightens vigilance, how identity shifts under constraint, and why being seen during moments of moral rupture can be more unsettling than judgment or punishment.

This episode builds toward a deeper examination of how humans navigate the blurred line between good and evil when moral categories begin to collapse.

If you’re interested in:

• Celtic mythology and folklore

• Liminal spaces and thin places

• The psychology of uncertainty and moral decision-making

• Dark psychology, identity under threat, and choice without certainty

• Myth as a way to understanding human behavior…this episode invites you to stand at the threshold and notice what it reveals.

Because thin places don’t change who you are.

They show you what remains when certainty disappears.

psychology of the Strange is part of the Darkcast Network