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…
The thing is, though, that some time between the original photo being taken and when we finally made it there, HobbyTown had switched buildings to one right next to the old one, with the new building being taken over by a thrift shop/kitsch store called Fabulous Finds. So, of course, we went to both. Presenting: the Real Backrooms!
Something really funny is how despite relocating buildings, HobbyTown insisted that they were still the real location of the Backrooms! Don’t get me wrong, they had a cool creepy upstairs area, but you can’t fool me! My partner and their cousins grew up in this place! It’s going to take a lot more than that to trick us into accepting that these are the Real Backrooms!
I haven’t been back to Oshkosh since we visited last July, but it seems like HobbyTown has closed. A shame if so; it was an institution, and they sold a ton of Gundam models. Even the Fake Backrooms couldn’t have saved it. Darn.