Werewolf Radar: Smokin’ In The Boys Tomb
By Nate Balding
Art by Jason White
Published Issue 132, December 2024
Rooms are weird. Being alone in one? Can be a bummer. Being not alone in one? We’re all dialing 9 1 and waiting on the last part. Being in a Backroom?
A back.
Room.
Get ready for the only time your death in the world you instinctively assume isn’t a video game is also how you actually G D die.
The “Backrooms” are mostly fictional liminal places. Despite the original being an absolutely strange empty moment in the photographic life of someone who had to decorate a room under the auspices of “Oh fuck, so do you kill me now or is there a first part?” might be a nice place to move into and build a family, assuming that family is all from Amityville. If you’re one of the many people who likes to occasion Reddit (or in defiance of whatever god that can’t help you, 4chan), you may have already come into contact with the theory about the Backrooms. You might even be living it. Especially if you happen to currently labor within the confines of Oshkosh, Wisconsin’s own HobbyTown.
Formerly Rohner’s Home Furnishings and, depending on your beliefs, now atop the crux of multiple ley lines, HobbyTown has become a cosmic point of event that allows one to — intentionally or not — travel outside the reality that may or may not be a Matrix-esque illusion. Putting the whole “all reality is fiction” thing aside — largely because I have no desire to offer space to conspiracy theorists who didn’t even go insane enough to come up with an original idea — stories have been borne of this one photo that carry legitimacy. The terrible photo of actual nothing — which is harder to do than you think. It spawned a huge number of conspiratorial posts about people who glitched out of our world and into a series of increasingly terrifying stages, that you must also glitch through to, eventually, end up back here on good ol’ Earth.
Or whichever Earth. It’s pretty unclear.
For anyone unfamiliar with beta level first person online gaming, there’s a concept whereby one can sometimes, depending on how well developed a map is, glitch beyond the point that other players can interact with you. Given that online gaming is most often choosing to commit fake murder of one kind or another, this is both hilarious and extremely annoying. The Backrooms, if they exist, offer exactly that, but within a construct that assumes all of us actually live in an imagined realm (check out my DnD podcast Knight Bastard) full of Junji Ito monsters who, should you get thrown into their world, will be at the very least of a different opinion about your being there.
I don’t recommend looking up the “facelings.”
Theoretically, the Backrooms can be accessed from anywhere on Earth. Most stories are about people encountering them randomly. Mostly kids. Mostly having a good time. Mostly setting the scene for a tulpa.
I don’t have to tell you how tulpas work, but “you” is a highly variable personage so definition time: Essentially a belief that’s been given mortal life. And there hasn’t been a better engine for it than our social networks; e.g. Reddit, Discord, Twitter — never X — maybe in the history of the world. Pretty sure they made at least two of our worst presidents happen. Pick two and play a fun game! (Hint: one’s George Bush and one’s Donald Trump). Could’ve been y’all being awful people. Who can say? Still happened. Four times. That’s insane.
It’s definitely extra insane if a tulpa ends up being an entire pocket universe made of yellowed walls with enemies from Silent Hill 2 walking around, but they’re still there. Hanging out. Waiting for the day that just enough of us believe in it to become real.
At least if tulpas can happen and the Backrooms can be real, we know America will somehow run that table with the worst we can offer.
Have questions about the paranormal?
Send them to werewolfradarpod@gmail.com or on Twitter: @WerewolfRadar.
It’s a big, weird world. Don’t be scared. Be Prepared.
Nate Balding is a freelance humanoid who occasionally manifests in print and can most likely be seen at Werewolf Radar. Should you wish to hear him manifest audibly you can do so at the aforementioned Werewolf Radar’s associated podcast on Spotify and Apple, and if anything ever becomes humorous again, on a variety of stand up stages around the nation. If you’re truly craving further content there’s always @Exploder on Twitter — even if it is only a form of digital self flagellation at this point. His one thing that he considers actually accomplished was this time he was published in the journal Nature and then later collected into a volume called Futures from Nature, still available in places that have things.
Jason White is an artist living in the suburbs of Chicago. His favorite mediums are oil on canvas and pencil & ink drawings. When he was a kid he cried on the Bozo Show. His work varies from silly to serious and sometimes both. Check out more of his work on Instagram.
Check out Nate’s November Werewolf Radar install, Only Yazoo, and Jason’s companion art to Brian Polk’s piece, Attempts To Become Whole Again Are Forthcoming, But First I Have Some Work To Do, in case you missed, or head to our Explore section to see more Werewolf Radars of the past.