By: Erin

Posted: February 25th, 2026

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Happy Day-After-Twin-Peaks-Day! Astute website-readers will also note that means it’s the day after EMN’s sixth anniversary. I’ll be making a big post about that as per usual, but I want to finish another website update before doing that. Rest assured, I’ve been hard at work and actually have things to talk about which you’ve probably already noticed!

Today, I want to discuss something sillier. Last year, I went to Mandy’s hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin to visit friends and their family. Not an uncommon experience. But this time, we decided to do something that was uncommon! By now, you’ve probably heard about the famous internet creepypasta “The Backrooms”, a 4chan post accompanied by an image of a sickly yellow under construction area that feels really liminal.

This. It’s this.

Well, it turns out that the original image used for this now-famous post, which is being used as the basis of an upcoming movie, is from a location in Oshkosh! Specifically, it’s for a building that used to house an RC car hobby shop called HobbyTown. Mandy and their family used to go to that place all the time! So, you know, we had to go and see The Real Backrooms…

By: Erin

Posted: February 13, 2026

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Every year, Mandy and I try to take a trip somewhere we’ve never been. That’s the cool thing about being adults with (a little) money. It started with a trip to Louisville, KY, and just kind of became a tradition after. Look at a map, look at a cool city, figure out what to do there and how to get there.

I don’t remember exactly how Portland became our destination of choice. I know we both wanted to visit the Pacific Northwest, since neither of us had been on the West Coast before, and Mandy and I had been writing stories set in the Portland and Seattle areas, so getting some real world experience in the place we had been writing about was appealing. I think learning about the massive video rental store Movie Madness was the clincher, and it helped that we had friends in the area we were hoping to meet up with.

During the trip, I was taken by the idea of filming a few vignettes here and there with the intention of editing them into a vlog. We drove to the airport listening to one of my favorite albums, Stepdad’s Wildlife Pop, and the spirit of adventure possessed me. As soon as I stepped into the parking lot I shot some film and took some photos, and that persisted throughout the trip. It took me a year to back up all my photos and videos, and I finally got off my rear end and made the planned vlog happen! You can watch all 15 minutes of our hundreds of photos and little videos after the cut.