Isn’t this how most horror movies start? A lone traveler trying to connect with his flight stumbles upon a strange series of tunnels and rooms instead. All you need is Jordan Peele and a special effects budget to imagine what happens next.
Thankfully, no one was hurt when TikToker and travel vlogger Hollow Hollis (@hollow_hollis) recorded his discovery of the Denver International Airport’s notorious backrooms, a feature of the airline hub that has helped make its reputation as one of the world’s strangest airports.
Hollis uploaded his video to his TikTok account on Thursday and it went viral almost immediately, picking up a jaw-dropping 7.9 million views in just over 24 hours.
Over an eerie soundtrack, Hollis addresses his viewers in the video. “Not me accidentally finding the Denver Airport backrooms,” he says.
Hollis pans his camera around the sterile-looking, eerie halls before saying, “Like this shit just keeps going on and on. The ceilings are all so low,” he continues as he reaches up to touch them.
“Okay, and it keeps going,” he says, forging onward past a gate sign. “This says that there’s a gate right there but there’s literally nothing right here. This airport is just so [expletive] weird.”
Is the Denver airport haunted or what?
Hollis is not the first to point out the bizarre nature of the tunnels and the airport itself. Indeed, the DIA has been a hotspot for conspiracy theories ever before construction was completed in 1995.
According to Denver.org, some conspiracists believe the Airport conceals “miles of underground tunnels and layer upon layer of secret buildings and bunkers beneath the airport” that “secret societies plan to use to ride out the coming apocalypse.”
Some theorists have even claimed the underground tunnels connect the Airport with “North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which is located 100 miles away near Colorado Springs.”
The reality is much more banal, however.
“It’s a lot of luggage down here,” Stephanie Figueroa with Denver International Airport told NBC affiliate 9News last year. “That’s all it is, luggage tags, maintenance workers, and lot and lots of ramp workers,” Figueroa said.
It’s also home to a notorious failed baggage claim system which cost the airport $560 million and “resulted in the newly complete airport sitting idle for 16 months” as engineers unsuccessfully attempted to get it to work according to the Why Projects Fail blog.
But those facts don’t make the tunnels any less eerie to those stumbling upon them.
“The Denver airport gives me the HEEBIE JEEBIES,” viewer guerrero (@c.guerrero0) wrote in the video’s comment section.
Heather Haluszka (@heatherxox96) commented, “I TOO FOUND THE DENVER AIRPORT BACKROOMS i was tryna get to the food I wanted so I followed the map but I ended up in a place it felt like I shouldn’t be bc there was NO ONE ELSE ALONG THE WAY.”
“Denver airport is I think in the top 10 most haunted airports,” another viewer added.
Via email, The Daily Dot has requested a statement from DIA but it’s safe to say they won’t be surprised or even disappointed by Hollis’ video. The Airport has been leaning into its macabre reputation for some time now.
@hollow_hollis Mind you its 12:30 in the morning 😵💫#backrooms #conspiracy #denverairport ♬ Creepy and simple horror background music(1070744) – howlingindicator
The DIA even held a party to celebrate its weird rep according to an October 2016 press release. The airport held exhibitions, ran “conspiracy tours,” and even held a “free screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on the airport’s open-air plaza,” encouraging guests to come “dressed as your favorite
conspiracy characters.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Hollis via TikTok messenger for further comment.
