The Origin of the Backrooms – Eithan Harel Foundation [Season 2]

Overview

The video presents the Backrooms as the product of decades of secret research by the Ethan Harel Foundation. It traces the Foundation’s story from an early solar mission to strange dimensions, dangerous creatures, and a series of disappearances.

The First Major Anomaly

In 1989, the Foundation launched “Shemmisia,” a mission to study the Sun. Five astronauts, commanded by Saul Benowitz, were pulled toward a sudden, unexplained force. Communications failed, and the crew’s final recordings showed them struggling to understand what was happening.

The video treats the incident as a turning point: despite the apparent loss of life, the Foundation continued investigating the limits of human knowledge.

Later research focused on reaching a dimension called “Shady Gray.” Teams used underground facilities, hypnosis, and neurological equipment to alter consciousness and access it. A 2008 expedition reportedly produced the clearest images yet, prompting researchers to divide the dimension into levels.

A Tour of Shady Gray

• Level Zero is a seemingly endless monochrome maze. It can feel calm during the day, but at midnight the area abruptly goes completely dark. Its almond-scented water also changes at night into a harmful liquid that can cause severe physical and psychological effects, making evacuation before midnight essential.
• Level One resembles a damaged, unstable building. Its most notorious resident is the Landlord, a suited, briefcase-carrying figure who locks the doors and pursues visitors. Escaping him is described as extremely difficult.
• Level Two looks like a snowy forest, despite temperatures hot enough to be dangerous. A small outpost shelters three survivors. The level’s Fallen beings appear badly injured but can communicate—until the Tower of Babel is mentioned, which reportedly makes them hostile.
• Level Three is a toxic, dark sea. The next level, reached through it, contains a decaying city where hostile, nonhuman figures rob and attack explorers. Storms and other hazards add to the danger.
• “Lost Hope” is described as the most psychologically devastating level, with a survival rate said to be below one percent. Only two explorers returned. Both suffered long-lasting mental problems before eventually dying.

Other Foundation Investigations

Siberian Tunnel Network

In Siberia, a team investigated an enormous underground tunnel network that seemed inconsistent with the surrounding geology. Inside, they found abandoned industrial equipment and a strange, warm, mucus-like substance. Six agents vanished without warning.

In 1994, one of the agents reportedly turned up in Arizona, confused and dehydrated. He said he had escaped through an opening in the tunnel wall.

Level Nine

By 1995, the Foundation had developed experimental portals and entered Level Nine, a foggy, perpetually dark suburban landscape. The team encountered a creature nicknamed the Mangled: a towering, spider-like being with a distorted human face.

Researchers also found that objects brought out of the level rapidly broke down, as if the dimension itself resisted outside interference.

Mount Iwaki Factory

A later investigation near Mount Iwaki in Japan focused on an abandoned factory and unexplained disappearances, including those of three local officials. Foundation researchers detected a shifting dimensional breach inside the site, leading to a vast industrial-looking space filled with corridors, machinery, fog, and water-filled pits.

Boxes of supplies offered possible help, but their contents could also be dangerous. Power cuts create especially serious risks because threatening beings become more active in the darkness.

The Backrooms as an Internet Legend

The recap closes by linking these secret investigations to the Backrooms’ rise as an internet legend. What began as a familiar image of empty, fluorescent-lit rooms became a shared language for unsettling “liminal spaces.” The Foundation’s records, the video suggests, leave open the possibility that such places are more than online fiction.

Personalities and Named Figures

The video mentions Dr. Ethan Harel (also rendered as “Harrell” in the subtitles), Jack Locke, Saul Benowitz, Eliezer Corman, Rachel Wieselberg, David Shocker, and Aaron Lightman.