Or seeing a teacher outside of school. Did you know they don't live there?!
Or seeing a teacher outside of school. Did you know they don't live there?!
My 6th grade teacher drove a bread truck route during the summer. I saw him at the grocery store.
As a kid I always thought the top perk of being a teacher was that you got summers off. Never occurred to me that āunpaid vacationā isnāt a perk.
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But isnāt it a salary for 9 months of work? Even if itās distributed over 12 months, Iād consider that 3 months of unpaid vacation.
You know, teachers hibernates during winter break and flew south during summer. Sighting of one outside their habitat is both rare and appreciable occasion.
The year we turned 21, we happened to be at a sportsbar type place and saw a bunch of teachers from our high school walk in. It was so weird
Liminal spaces. Love them.
Edit: While I can make the term still apply in my head, it was kenopsia I was thinking of.
everyone seems to misunderstand the ethereal feeling of a liminal space; it's not just an empty place that's normally populated. it's the precipice of something familiar and comfortable with something starkly alien, lonesome, or foreign.
i like to use the example of being at a house party in winter at night and preparing to leave. you're standing on the porch, closing the door, the last bits of light and warmth behind you as the door is shut. you turn around and face the cold, snowy, dark rural road you have to walk down to get back home. that's a liminal space.
sadly, the liminal spaces sub has been watered down to "places that are closed" nonsense and it' unfulfilling.
it's the precipice of something familiar and comfortable with something starkly alien, lonesome, or foreign.
The familiar and comfortable school setting is made to feel starkly alien, lonesome, and foreign in this picture. I get the term is oversaturated right now, but this seems to fit your definition.
Ok so I recently came across this stuff but I don't think I really understand the concept but is it like the feeling I would get while checking all the doors in a church building with my dad after an event and just getting an almost creepy, something else is here or should be here vibe?
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What you're describing is more like kenopsia. r/kenopsia
Yeah, I had the liminal spaces mixed up with kenopsia - perhaps somewhere I had heard those two terms together. I stand corrected.
In any case, /r/backrooms would very interested in this image as well.
Thanks for that. Really made me understand the term!
You are right that empty places are not that liminal. Empty places that are normally populated is more kenopsia then liminal. It can be liminal, though. r/kenopsia
I knew there was a name for it
Also a subreddit
r/liminalspace
Get on YouTube and go down that rabbit hole, you'll have the heebie jeebies in no time.
The proper term for this feeling is 'kenopsia'
kenopsia
Shoot, yep, had those mixed up in my head. I can do some mental gymnastics and still make the liminal space moniker apply, but you are right that is what I was thinking of. I equate it that feeling like you just missed something.
Dude, one time I walked htrough my old elementary school. It felt spooky af. Like all these weird memories cme rushing back.
Elementary schools are even weirder because everything is miniature and you didn't realize it at the time cause you're miniature when attending
Yep. I remember after my elementary music concerts we would all hang out afterwards in the classrooms and wait for our parents and then go to Kwik Trip.
Upper Midwest moment lol
Kwik Trip gang unite!
Quik Trip is better
No.
A friend of my wife recently started teaching at the high school I attended.
A few weeks ago they were working on their fall play and needed help with the lights/set.
I went back to my high school, and the old drama class room I spent so many hours in in high school. It was a real weird feeling, especially since almost nothing has changed in 30 years.
Scholastic book fairs in the school library on those crisp autumn evenings. Didn't even feel like the same school I just spent all day in.
Worst days ever.
Edit : try being a poor kid on book fair day. It was embarrassing and sad at the same time. How is this possibly being downvoted.
Prob cause you gave no context wil you edited it
So true!!!!!
This is my life working after hours. Iāve scared the hell out of myself in reflections and odd soundsā¦random flushing toiletsā¦
Thatās how I feel about the office when itās late at night and Iām the last one working. Was creepy.
Thereās a word for this in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Kenopsia
Just came here to say this! Surprised I don't see more of DOOS on reddit with all the reposting nowadays.
Vemƶdalen: the fear that everything has already been done.
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My fave time to be there of course
One-Two, Freddy's coming for you...
Three, four, better look that door...
Five, Six, grab a crucifix!
Repost
This is at least the third time I've seen this posted with the exact title.
There was a story about decade or so ago where a custodian was working late in a New York City school and he happened to be by the school office where he saw the PA system. Well, he grabbed the mic and yelled into it: "You're in the jungle baby, you're going to die!" As to which a teacher also working late heard this over the PA (didn't understand that lyric), crawled underneath her desk and dialed 911.
Way cool
r/liminalspaces
Itās even stranger when you do the same but youāve graduated twenty years ago
Yup. I graduated in 2002. My old highschool is right down the street from my apt and is a polling place during elections so that's where I go vote. Going in there feels so weird. After I voted last time I went walking around the halls just to see what it was like. Super weird.
I love that feeling ngl
night school student for algebra, i did remember how eerie it felt and how different with friends in the morning
āKenopsia (noun)*: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quietāa school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgroundsāan emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-emptyā
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/medn45/that_weird_feeling_youd_get_whenever_youd_visit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
damn, word for word shameless repost lol
Lol it was! Exciting and spooky all at once š¬
NOPE
Or from day one as a freshman to the last day when you were graduated.
I remember one time we had a career fair. During the fall so it would get dark quickly in the later day. But i was helping out on the art department. But it was boring coz nobody would come up. So me and a friend went around the skool to see the other subject stands on the other department. I hung out with this girl i knew and she was in the science department. They were looking at hearts. And she was showing mr the inside of a heart. At the time it felt disgusting. But now i miss those times. Just hanging with friends and fooling around
You knew your school wasnāt haunted, but it sure looked haunted then.
My mother is a retired elementary school teacher. When I was in about 8th grade, my school was rebuilt across town. The elementary school that my mother worked at was even older, and was getting a rebuild too, but in the interim, they moved into the old intermediate school building. We spent many late hours there because my mom was a workaholic. At first, it was a surreal feeling being in my old school with no one there, but after a while, it got spooky. Well, to be fair, I'm not one to believe in supernatural stuff, but our experiences mirrored something out of a nightmare, and I simply cannot explain it to this day.
We started hearing people talking in the hallway when nobody was physically there. It ranged from groups of people to an angry old man's distant voice. The bell system also went off in some sort of impossible fashion if you were in the building past midnight. If you were outside of the building past midnight, it simply wouldn't chime. If you were inside the building and it started chiming, and you then exited, it would immediately stop chiming. Similarly, it would start chiming if you entered after that time. My mother was friends with a few of the school janitors, and asked them if the school had any scheduled chimes so late at night, and to their knowledge the bell system shouldn't have even been in service anymore. Being an ancient place, there was certainly no high tech mechanism to allow it to chime based-on if someone was present in the building or not.
Another time, my stepfather, who also worked at the school, tried to enter the main building after hours, but had forgotten his keys in the car. Instead of making a long walk back to the parking lot, and knowing that the janitors had an office in the basement, he decided to see if anyone was there to allow him in. He found the door locked, so he knocked and heard a woman answer him with "Who is it?" When he identified himself, the door mysteriously opened, but with the lights off, and no one inside. He was more confused than scared, and walked through the basement and into the main building where he found a janitor working all the way down the hall with the music turned-up. He questioned her about who had let him in, and she told him that she was literally the only janitor working in the building at that time.
There are many other stories that I have from that time. Suffice to say, I will never forget the stuff even decades later. This photo seriously looks similar to that school, and gave me chills.
Like the other commenter, my high school and junior high had stories. I can't remember most of them now but the janitors were the ones with the stories
Whereās that metal gate
It felt eerie and familiar for me at the same time.
/r/outlast
went to the comments to look for any Outlast 2 talk.
Hold me
Redrum ... REDRUM!!!
I had a job installing various soap, hand sanitizer, paper towel, and toilet paper dispensers all over the country. One time I had to go to a school just like this. Very old building. Pretty big. They wanted me to install at night because of the noise. The job was supposed to take a week but I busted my ass and did it in 2 nights because it was spooky as fuck being in there by myself at night.
Or go back when you are older, maybe to pick up a sibling, and it looks way smaller than you remember
Being in someoneās house while they are away yields a similar feeling.
r/liminalspace
y e s
Yup
It feels like prison
Is this the school from A Nightmare on Elm Street?
"I wanna be an airborne ranger!"
Bender!!!!
Spooky, many souls was tormented here.
The only time i'd ever visit my school after hours is for parent teacher night. And Yes it did give off a weird feeling of being at school when I shouldn't be.
mann wtf are theese actual (common) schools in the us?
all of the 5 schools i went to they were all mostly spread out with individual buildings, though a particularly shit one in a pretty shitty not-quite-a-city had 2 floors and one main building and a few others, though i have no idea what the size of schools are in the us; all of the ones i have been to probably had less than 200-250 students
This in Michigan? I swear it looks just like my school
Giving āUsā vibes
i member our middle school had these old ass metal dividers theyd close at night to keep people out of the rest of the building.
Me and my friend had a few after school clubs we attended and after they were over, this vibe was real with the emptiness.
āThey make scary movies that start out like thatā¦ā
This looks 100% like the third floor of the high school I graduated from
The smell was the same tho, unforch
Stranger Things vibes
This pic looks familiar. What school is this? Is it from a TV show?
So true why was it such a vibe š
My father worked 2nd shift as the custodian of my high school for 20 years...Sometimes I would go with him and it was awesome..I had full range of the school..He'd unlock the equipment room in the gym and I would go nuts..If I wanted a snack, I'd go look in kitchen and maybe find some square pizza..I'd go to the library and read whatever I wanted..Watch TV in the English room, Make popcorn in the home ec room..
The one thing I hated was when it was dark in that school..it totally gave off the vibes shown in that pic...I remember one night I was watching TV in the english room (which was on the 2nd floor) and I was flipping channels and came across the TV version of The Exorcist...I was already scared to death of that movie and just seeing any scene from it would make me scared as shit...Anyway, I turn the TV off and there was only quiet and dim light in the main hallway...My dad was nowhere to be found...Man, I booked it down the hallway afraid that the boogeyman was right behind me...Never happened of course, but I will always remember it!
r/liminalspace
I remember once after an evening Girl Scouts meeting in elementary school, we all headed for the bathroom, and of course there were more girls than stalls. The adults were like "just use the boy's bathroom, it's not like there are any boys here" and we were so flabbergasted. š²š¤Æ
Quick story from around 1989
Me and my best friend went to a small private school and we would often put a wadded up piece of paper in one of the doors so it would not lock after hours.
We'd then come back later, after dark and "break in" and walk around the school. Not really sure why and we never did anything bad or destructive. It was just really cool roaming around there when it was devoid of people.
As someone who used to work for a school district, I would regularly walk through schools in the night, it could get pretty creepy. Erie is probably the best word for it.
Google Liminal spaces
This is how American schools feel to me, anytime I visit one. Day or night.
So cold and prison like. I've only been to schools in Kansas and Georgia though. But do they all feel like that?
Australian schools are largely outside except for classrooms. It's such a big change for me haha.
Iāve never had an indoor school. Iām in California though, but Iām assuming schools that are in colder climates are probably more indoor.
Yeah, I wonder why a school in Kansas might be indoors. /s
r/liminalspace
You guys could wander around? My highschool was built in the 70s and had locking doors between the six wings. For school dances we entered at the cafeteria and could only access the closest bathrooms.
This feels like some sort of r/backrooms shit
I actually remember from my childhood my dad took me to the school he worked to (he is a teacher) because he had a meeting and my mom wasn't at home.
It was winter and already at 18.30 the halls were pitch black.
I still remember how unsettling it was to walk in theses corridors with barely any light to the vending mashines to get some snacks.
The feeling of empty buildings is called r/kenopsia
https://youtu.be/2T7wSwQtkts
That feeling is called āKenopsiaā
Can confirm, I used to be a cleaner at a school and winter time was pretty freaky as I was the only one at the part where I cleaned and come 6:30pm it's dark and quiet, plus the caretakers would start to turn off all the lights and many a time I had to shout out that I was there.
My teachers would always make me stay after dark when no one was around.
Is this what a liminal space is? Familiar yet different?
I remember having a class sleep over - in the class room. Was weird as...
āIn my restless dreams, I see that townā¦ā
(Wrong game I know but probably most famous quote).
I am in my late thirties and I still have a recurring nightmare that looks pretty much like that picture. I am back in school for some reason, but they didn't give me a schedule and I am lost with everyone else in class.
Last summer I was in an outdoor production of a show that got rained out by a massive rainstorm that lasted all week. We relocated the show to a nearby school, which happened to be my alma mater. A bunch of other alums and I got a guided "tour" from one of the teachers on staff doing summer prep, and we all joked about how little had changed since the respective years we graduated. It was a cool but eerie feeling.
This building reminds me of fritsche middle school in milwaukee
It definitely had a creepy feel to it. Also, this pic looks just like my old junior high!
Maybe Iām crazy but it always felt like Michael Meyers was gonna come out and grab me because it was so quiet
Schools always smell like pineapple juice to me. Sickening.
Damm. Really didn't realise I had feelings for those old, after hours hallways.
In high school I would get dropped off by my dad on his way to work in the morning. It was dark outside and teachers were still arriving after I got there. I was allowed to go in and wait in the cafeteria. It was strange to be in the building when it was so empty and dark. I didnāt feel scared but it did feel weird.
Its like the same vibe as backrooms.
When I was younger my dad worked hosting body building competitions and the local high school auditorium was the venue and the entire upper floors were vacant. My sister and I and our friends would of course sneak upstairs and explore the empty building.
We did this from when we were little kids until the last one which was in my mid 20s. The experience of the high school building hit differently over the years. When we were running around the place as kids we were like "wow this is high school there's so much freedom. This is so cool" to when we were actually in high school and it was just an odd feeling being there on a weekend and no students were around and then in my 20s I walked around the school again and I was hit with nostalgia for times in high school having realized those times were the last times of relative easy times in life. It's all down hill from there in adulthood.
Asylum vibes for sure.
I had a friend with keys to our high school so we'd break in in the middle of the night and go swimming, play air soft and all kinds of fun stuff. Can't do that now that everyone has security cameras
that after-hours smell always got to me.
Your imagination can run wild.
"Would be weird if the lights shut off one by one"
"Someone can pop out of the lockers to give a good spook"
"I wonder if anyone else is here, sure hope I don't here random singing in the dark part of the hallway"
Just me?
r/liminalspace
Always has the same smell, whatever that smell is....cleaning liquid mixed with asbestos and BO maybe..
Liminal spaces
I used to work for a school district and over the summer we would do work inside with no staff there, super creepy
Welcome to Drum Corps where they your the country during the summer and stay at local schools.
Both happy and sad
Haha, seeing the inside of a high school makes me feels... nostalgic lol. This year is my 10 year reunion. It will be even weirder if I have kids and end up in a high school at night for concerts or sports. š
There's a name for this it's called Kenopsia.
Does that feeling have a name?
I used to love this. Weād have gym shows, or school plays. Even ran the halls after school for basketball practice.
When youāre part of some after hours event like a band concert or theater performance, and you have to run to another part of the school to go grab something, and itās like youāre in this alternate world.
Edit: man, and then the further you get from the event, where all the people are, and things get quieter until itās finally just totally still.
You just reminded me of that time when my art teacher asked me to go to the basement to get some supplies during after school. The stillness and silence makes it so eerie.
I remember helping a teacher get supplies once and learning that the school even had a basement storage room. It was like I unlocked a new level I didn't know about.
I work in telecommunications.. i run fiber lines in places like schools and office buildings. most schools have a catacomb of basement storage and crawlspaces under them. pretty weird haha
Thank you, cold war.
Sounds like an episode of Recess haha
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naruto runs to see what all the fuss was about
One of the few times to actually enjoy the place.
Reminds me of r/liminalspace
If you like that, check out /r/kenopsia I think itās a bit more like the āweird feeling of an empty schoolā, where liminal spaces to me feel a bit more uncanny.
Weāre fairly used to seeing empty hallways at school, so to me itās only a little weird but indeed more nostalgic.
Idk, Iāve already spent too much time thinking about this lol
Added both to my collection. Thanks!
If you like this sort of content and have a half hour, please check out this video Solar Sands - Liminality
I think he does an amazing job getting at the core of why these images unsettle and intrigue us.
Great video!
Also, at 5:28, you can see OPās school image in the video. lol.
I've had such a hard time explaining the concept of kenopsia to people, this whole "being at school after hours" description will be my go to now.
To be fair, next time you try explaining something, consider removing the dildo from your mouth /u/dildo_gagginss
I'm in complete agreement!
I worked on our school newspaper when I was in the USA for junior/senior years. Just a weekly paper, but deadlines led to late nights at school with just us saying bye to the janitors as they left for the night, working til midnight or later to make sure we had something to take to the printers in the morning...
Good times. Late 90s. Small school in the sticks. Nothing but cornfields on most sides for miles around.
Spooky AF.
I always thought it was quite peaceful, but maybe Iām a spooky dude?
In my middle school there was a program called āpeer supportā that you would have to be voted into by the other students, and for some reason I made it in. And every year they would have a school sleepover. At around 9, they turned off all the lights in the school and we would play a giant game of hide & seek. Being in the classroom I was in everyday completely empty and dark was the most liminal experience Iāve had
This is how I learned that my high school was haunted by the ghost of a slave. No joke.
Omg i miss those days...it's so sad to realize that kids today are dealing with way more BS than I had to (class of 2000!). I remember several different occasions being in a play or after school function having to run to "xyz"classroom for a costume change or whatever.... The hallways were always spooky but dam these days spooky is the understatement of the year.