In 2024 I started watching youtube videos about abandoned buildings and places, and at some later point in 2025 I found out more regarding liminal spaces and the backrooms. It became something I was very fascinated by and now I want to be able to put my thoughts about them somewhere.
First I'll start with talking about abandoned places. If you want to skip right to the liminal spaces then just click here.
The liminal spaces came later on in 2025, but I really grew to enjoy watching videos of abandoned buildings. Watching people explore buildings and places that were abandoned, forgotten by people, left to rot, and entirely desolate. Many of these empty places were soon to be demolished and had something new replace it instead for a new business. There's a genre for this kind of stuff.
It's called urban exploration (urbex for short).
I will introduce you to a larger youtube channel with over a million subscribers, The Proper People. (alt)
A brief introduction: the channel is run by two explorers, Bryan and Michael. They've been making videos since 2014 and since then the channel still uploads to this day. These two explore many different places, like stadiums, hospitals, factories, facilities, theaters, hotels, and shopping malls (my favorite!).
I've made a table below for some of their videos (mostly malls) in America. And speaking of America, I get the feeling the United States has most of the best looking shopping centers ever.
| name | details |
|---|---|
| Exploring the apocalyptic Pines Mall | April 2025. The Pines at Pine Bluff mall in Pine Bluff, Arkansas seemed like it opened in 1986 and closed around 2020. In the video, it doesn't look like the mall renovated very much so it's still got an early 1980s appeal to it, unlike with other bigger malls in general. An outside shot of the mall is shown here along with other photos of the interior. The picture taken showing the outside looks a lot more recent than the others, though. (picture 1) (picture 2) (picture 3) (picture 4) 
|
| Exploring the Great Northern Mall - retail in decay | August 2025. Great Northern opened in 1988 and closed its doors for good in 2022. It's in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time of posting this, their website still works. |
| Exploring Cincinnati Mills (Forest Fair) | November 2020. The doors were apparently unlocked so the public could walk in whenever it seemed. The two gives us a tour of how the mall food court looks from the inside and it's probably one of the better looking ones overall with its choice of decor and blueish colors. Really not much rotting is found throughout the video, if you walked in here without knowing it was really abandoned you'd be thinking it wasn't a busy day for shoppers. It used to be known as Forest Fair Mall. Located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Opened in July 1988 and closed in December 2022. A photo of the food court is probably the only part of the mall that has lots of color. 
|
| Exploring Northridge Mall | September 2019. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin the Northridge Mall was left to rot since closing in 2003. Some pictures of Northridge. More can be found from this reddit post. 
|
Our second channel is ERA Productions run by Andrew.
"Retails" is in his channel name so I knew right away it had to do with shopping centers/malls. If you happen to like the mall videos like I do, then here's a channel to check out!
The third channel is NorthCdogg22. This guy puts in quite the effort into his video editing. He primarily makes mall videos that are longer in length (more than 20+ minutes) and of the previous two channels I've mentioned, lots of the shopping malls he finds look amazing.
Look at these videos to get a better understanding of liminal spaces (and the backrooms in general)
Youtuber Jaden Salads has several compilations of liminal space photos. Here's a few good ones:
As the videos show different photos of indoor and outdoor places, eventually I found what my favorite liminal spaces look like and that not every picture should be considered liminal.
You may want to escape from this world. Do so by being immersed as if you are placing yourself into a liminal picture of any room or place.
This is where I get very specific with how I want liminal spaces to look like as these are the most ideal for me. It's a list of necessary requirements; if a picture gets one of them wrong I don't consider it as liminal.