Editorials
5 Creepy Real Places Horror Games Should Visit
It’s been a while since I last did one of these. If you’re new to Bloody Disgusting — in that case, welcome! — way back in 2010, we took a treacherous journey into the darkest recesses of the world with a look at some ridiculously creepy real world places that would make great settings for horror games. From the safety of our computers we visited a slew of terrifying locales, from an ossuary in the Czech Republic that’s made from the remains of tens of thousands of people to an eerily silent forest in Japan where hundreds of people have committed suicide, and even a Pennsylvania ghost town that’s alarmingly reminiscent of the town of Silent Hill.
You guys seemed to enjoy these little trips, so it became a series, an annual celebration of how freakishly scary this world can sometimes get. After taking a year off, it’s back with five more places horror games should visit!
Dyatlov Pass — Ural Mountains, Russia
Unless you’re like me and any real amount of physical exertion sounds absolutely terrifying, the scariest thing about the Dyatlov Pass isn’t the area itself, but the manner in which nine hikers died there in 1959. The pass sits at the eastern base of Russia’s Kholat Syakhl, or “Death Mountain” — okay, sure, that sounds moderately terrifying — a mountain the group was working on passing before they mysteriously perished.
At first, it sounds like a mishap, another tragedy to add to the ever-growing list of reasons why it’s best to remain indoors where you can soak in the electromagnetic radiation that’s being emitted from practically every electrical appliance in your house so it can get all up in your biomagnetic field. It is tragic, but it’s when you go into the details and circumstances in which they were found where things start to get bizarre.
For one, they were all experienced hikers and skiers who were led by a guide that was familiar with the area, so they weren’t exactly tourists. When rescuers were dispatched to locate them, they found a tent that had been torn apart, and within it was a majority of the group’s belongings, including all their shoes and coats.
When the hikers were finally located, their bodies were found in two groups. The first group was lying in the snow in a line next to a river, with about 200 yards separating each of them. Two months passed before the rest of them were found, and when they were it was under 15 feet of snow in a den they had hallowed out in a seemingly desperate attempt to stay warm.
Some of the bodies had broken bones and various internal injuries, but no external wounds to help identify what could have caused them. Lyudmilla Dubinina’s body was also missing her tongue and eyes.
No one knows what happened there, but I’m sure anyone with a decent imagination can come up with something a bit more detailed than the explanation the Soviet government decided upon, which described the cause of their deaths as “an unknown elemental force which they were unable to overcome.”
After going unsolved for nearly sixty years, the Dyatlov Pass incident has only recently begun to see a new surge of interest. It was used in the 2013 film Devil’s Pass, which is actually a decent horror film until it completely unravels in the final act. There’s also an indie game on the way, titled Kholat, which also plans to take advantage of the mystery surrounding the incident.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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