You’ve checked in to your hotel room. Swipe card clutched in your hand as you make your way to the elevator. You pass no one, entering the elevator you are about to encounter one of the most commonly found liminal spaces. The hotel corridor. As you step out of the elevator you feel that usual eerie feeling. Ahead of you only a long quiet hallway maybe the slight sound of the air con. Closed doors to the left and right but no sign of human habitation, you feel uneasy and make your way quickly to your room.
There’s something about a deserted hallway, an empty mall at midnight, or an abandoned school corridor that feels… off. You can’t quite place it, but it tugs at your mind, leaving you unsettled. These spaces exist in the threshold, the “in-between” they are liminal spaces. That uneasy feeling you have when what you see and feel is not quite as your brain comprehends.
What Are Liminal Spaces?
The term liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” Liminal spaces are transitional areas, they are neither here nor there, but somewhere in-between.
They include:
- Hallways and stairwells
- Airport terminals at 3 a.m.
- Empty parking lots
- Vacant playgrounds
- Office corridors after hours
Unlike abandoned buildings, true liminal spaces maintain their function and familiarity, but the absence of people or activity gives them an eerie quality.
Related post: “Doppelgängers in Movies and Books” explores another uncanny phenomenon rooted in in-between realities.
What Is Often Mistaken for a Liminal Space?
Not every empty or abandoned location counts as a liminal space.
Abandoned buildings, these are derelict, not transitional. Liminality comes from function and expectation, not decay. Derelict buildings have their own eerie feeling from the decay and desolation of a usually functional place. The echoes of the past can almost be felt as we can imagine how it could have been before the decay.
Dark or dangerous areas can bring a sense of fear. But fear alone doesn’t create liminality. Think of somewhere like Pripyat, it is abandoned, it is dark and dangerous, but it is these factors that do not make it liminal. Liminality has the feeling of subtle unease, which is key. is key.
Quiet streets at night can feel creepy as they bring up feelings of isolation, a usually busy place is now quiet. Our imagination fills in the blanks and can make the lack of activity become threatening. Liminal spaces require a transitional purpose, corridors, terminals, or waiting areas, not just being quiet.
Horror sets or Escape rooms artificially created tension that mimics liminality but lacks the psychological subtlety of true in-between spaces. They leverage the psychological pressure to immerse you in the feelings of isolation. If you are with other people this can increase the groups adrenaline responses by the shared experience.
On a psychology note, the brain reacts differently to liminal spaces versus decayed or deliberately scary environments. True liminality triggers unease through pattern disruption, emptiness, and temporal ambiguity.
The Psychology of Liminal Spaces
Why do these spaces feel so unsettling? The answer sits at the intersection of perception, memory, and expectation and more importantly, what happens when those systems stop aligning.
Prediction Error and Pattern Disruption
Your brain is constantly predicting what should happen next. In a hotel corridor, it expects footsteps, voices, doors opening, signs of life. When those expected cues are missing, the brain experiences what psychologists call a prediction error. Instead of relaxing, it ramps up alertness, scanning for threats. This is the same mechanism that once helped humans detect predators, now misfiring in an empty hallway.
The Uncanny Valley of Space
We often associate the uncanny valley with human faces, but environments can fall into it too. A place that looks almost right, but not quite, creates the discomfort. Slightly too quiet, too still, too empty. The brain can’t categorise the space as safe or unsafe, so it lingers in a state of unease. You’re not afraid of anything specific, you’re uneasy about everything.
Loss of Social Proof
Humans rely heavily on other people to signal safety. This is called social proof. If others are present and relaxed, your brain assumes the environment is safe. Remove those people, and you remove the reassurance. An empty airport at 3 a.m. doesn’t just feel quiet, it feels wrong, because a space designed for crowds is suddenly stripped of its human context.
Temporal Distortion and “Frozen Time”
Liminal spaces often feel like time has stalled. Without movement or change, your brain loses its usual markers for tracking time. This creates a subtle dissociation, minutes feel longer, and the environment feels detached from reality, almost like a paused scene waiting to resume.
Memory Echoes and Emotional Residue
Many liminal spaces mirror places tied to routine or childhood, schools, malls, corridors. When encountered empty, they trigger what feels like a “memory echo.” You’re not just seeing the space, you’re subconsciously recalling how it should feel. The clash between memory and present reality creates a quiet emotional dissonance: nostalgia mixed with unease.
Existential Awareness
At a deeper level, liminal spaces strip away distraction. With no people, no noise, and no activity, you’re left alone with your thoughts. These environments mirror transitional phases in life, endings, beginnings, uncertainty. That’s why the discomfort can feel oddly profound. It’s not just the space, it’s what it represents.
Liminal Spaces in Horror and Pop Culture
Liminal spaces are a cornerstone of horror, they make ordinary environments terrifying without needing monsters.
Liminal spaces work in horror because they remove the need for a visible threat. Instead of showing you danger, they make you feel it.
Film
- The Shining
Kubrick turns the Overlook Hotel into a masterclass in spatial unease. The long, symmetrical corridors create visual repetition that feels unnatural, almost dreamlike. The Steadicam shots,especially Danny riding his trike force you to move through these spaces without escape. The horror isn’t just what appears (the twins, the blood elevator), but the oppressive feeling that the space itself is watching and waiting. - Don’t Look Now
Venice becomes disorienting through fragmentation, narrow alleys, dead ends, and empty waterways. The city feels like a maze suspended outside normal time. The lack of crowds in a place known for life creates a subtle wrongness, reinforcing themes of grief and psychological dislocation. - The Lighthouse
Here, liminality is vertical as well as spatial. Staircases, tight quarters, and the looming tower create a sense of being trapped between earth and sky, sanity and madness. The fog isolates the characters from reality, turning the lighthouse into a psychological threshold rather than a physical place.
Television
- Twin Peaks
The Red Room is one of the purest liminal spaces in media. It’s not bound by normal rules, speech is distorted, time loops, and movement feels unnatural. It exists between dream and reality, making it deeply unsettling because it cannot be logically understood. - Stranger Things
The Upside Down works as a corrupted mirror of reality. Familiar places, homes, schools, streets, are stripped of life and covered in decay. This creates a dual-layered unease: you recognise the space, but it no longer behaves the way it should.
Video Games
- Silent Hill 2 (and the series broadly)
These games weaponise emptiness. Fog limits visibility, streets are deserted, and interiors feel abandoned but intact. The player becomes hyper-aware, projecting fear into the unknown. The lack of constant threats is what makes the environment oppressive—your mind fills the gaps. - The Backrooms
Unlike traditional horror, there’s often no immediate antagonist. The fear comes from infinite, repetitive space and the impossibility of escape. It’s pure liminality, stripped down to its most psychologically raw form.
Why it works: Isolation, temporal disorientation, distorted familiarity, and existential tension make liminal spaces perfect for horror.
The Backrooms: Liminality Taken to Its Extreme
The Backrooms resonate because they take something familiar, office corridors, cheap carpeting, fluorescent lighting—and remove all context. What’s left is a space that feels recognisable, yet completely alien. That tension is what makes it stick in your mind.
One of the most unsettling aspects is infinite repetition. Human brains rely on variation to orient themselves. When every hallway looks the same, you lose your sense of direction—and eventually, your sense of control. This creates spatial vertigo, where movement feels meaningless because nothing changes. You’re not just lost, you’re trapped in sameness.
Then there’s the sensory monotony. The constant hum of fluorescent lights, the stale yellow tone, the damp carpet underfoot, it’s not aggressive, it’s dull. And that’s exactly why it works. Instead of overwhelming you, it slowly erodes your mental stability. It’s the horror of being stuck somewhere that never escalates, never resolves.
The Backrooms also tap into a specific kind of modern anxiety. These environments resemble offices, hotels, and commercial spaces, places associated with routine and corporate anonymity. Stripped of people, they become symbols of emptiness and disconnection. It’s not just fear of being alone, it’s fear of being forgotten in a system that doesn’t notice you’re gone.
Finally, there’s the idea of no exit and no narrative. Traditional horror offers progression, you escape, you fight back, or you die. The Backrooms offer none of that. There’s no clear goal, no resolution, just endless wandering. That lack of structure breaks one of the brain’s core expectations: that experiences have meaning and direction. Without that, the horror becomes existential.
The Aesthetic of Liminal Spaces
Artists and photographers explore liminality using:
- Muted colors and repetitive architecture
- Harsh or unnatural lighting
- Stillness contrasted with the expectation of movement
This combination evokes nostalgia, unease, and fascination—the hallmark of the uncanny.
Liminal Spaces in Everyday Life
- Early morning commutes
- Empty airports or train stations
- Vacant offices or school hallways
These transitional spaces create a “threshold effect,” suspending the mind between states and triggering subtle psychological tension.
Why We Are Drawn to Liminal Spaces
Liminal spaces:
- Stimulate pattern recognition and imagination
- Produce a safe form of fear
- Serve as metaphors for life transitions
They’re psychologically engaging because they exist between the known and unknown.
FAQ About Liminal Spaces
Q: Are liminal spaces dangerous?
A: Physically, usually not, but psychologically, they can feel disorienting.
Q: What’s the difference between a liminal space and an abandoned building?
A: Liminal spaces are transitional and functional, creating subtle unease. Abandoned buildings are derelict.
Q: Why do empty hallways or malls feel creepy?
A: The brain expects activity; absence of cues triggers cognitive dissonance.
Q: Can liminal spaces trigger memories or emotions?
A: Yes, nostalgia, déjà vu, and existential reflection are common responses.
Q: Are there studies on liminal spaces?
A: Environmental psychology research shows ambiguous, transitional spaces increase spatial anxiety, temporal distortion, and emotional responses.
Some thoughts to end on
Liminal spaces are more than empty corridors, they are psychological thresholds that blur reality and imagination. From quiet airport terminals to the infinite Backrooms, they provoke reflection, unease, and fascination. Understanding what counts as a true liminal space, and what doesn’t makes the uncanny all the more potent.
If you loved this, explore doppelgängers and uncanny doubles another phenomenon thriving in the unsettling in-between.
And if you’d like to share your experiences about liminal spaces, leave us a comment below.
