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.
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.
Table of Contents
1: Lonely Gas Station
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.
2: 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
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.
3: Took This In A Gym, Close To Where I Work
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 Unsettling.
4: Found A Portal To Elsewhere
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/Liminal Spaces 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.”
5: This Was My Neighborhood Today
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” Unsettling as an example of liminal space in art, yet others say the place for that to work should be more recognizable.
