Damp yellow wallpaper, buzzing fluorescents, no exit: the photograph that spawned the Backrooms circulated for years with no known origin. In 2024 internet sleuths traced it to a 2003 renovation shot of a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The yellow is long remodelled away, and the upper floor where the picture was taken now runs as an RC car racetrack — which people travel to stand in anyway.