Backrooms Entities Explained: The Ones That Will Actually Find You

What are the entities in the Backrooms?

Entities are the creatures that live in the Backrooms. In the fan-written Backrooms Database, they range from animals and parasites to things that used to be people, and the exploration group M.E.G. gives most of them a number so wanderers can warn each other about them.

That numbering belongs to one version of the Backrooms only. Kane Pixels’ YouTube series and the 2026 A24 film don’t use numbered entities at all; they have a handful of creatures of their own (covered below). If you’re not sure which version you’re reading about, start with which Backrooms is canon.

How many entities are in the Backrooms?

There’s no fixed number, because anyone can add to the fan database. On October 17, 2026, its Entity List gave entries to roughly 150 numbered entities between Entity 1 and Entity 700, about 50 unnumbered ones that only appear on the level they live on, and about 20 “anomalous” one-of-a-kind beings. The database’s entities category held 196 pages that day.

The numbers have gaps. Dozens of slots between 100 and 199 are empty, and a site rule currently forbids creating new numbered entities past 499. Expect all of these counts to change.

The main entities at a glance

These are the ones the database and its levels mention most, and the ones you’d most likely meet in the first few levels. All of them are from the fan-written Backrooms Database.

Entity	What it is	Where	How it gets you	What helps
Smilers (Entity 3)	A shapeshifting shadow with a glowing grin; smarter than a human	Dark areas of any level	Ambushes and traps; hunts in groups, apparently for sport	Light hurts them, fire kills them
Deathmoths (Entity 4)	Moths with a wingspan of about 1.5 m	Most levels	Females are the hunters and attack by brute force; a syringe-like mouthpart punctures skin	Males can be tamed with almond water
Clumps (Entity 5)	A ball of human limbs hiding in vents	Cramped indoor levels, notably Level 2	Dangles an arm as bait, then grabs and drags	Stay 10 feet away and keep quiet
Dullers (Entity 6)	Tall, faceless, dark humanoids	Most levels	Psychological torture for hours, then the kill	Avoid at all costs
Hounds (Entity 8)	Once-human dog-like hunters	Most levels, including Level 1	A bite that turns you into one	Almond water on the bite within about five minutes
Skin-Stealers (Entity 10)	A predator wearing a dead wanderer’s skin	Many levels, most notably 1–3	Joins your group and picks people off	Check everyone’s blood daily
Wretches (Entity 15)	Wanderers lost to a mental illness of the Backrooms	Most levels	Attack out of fear and pain	Almond water slows it; rest and company help
The Thing on Level 7 (Entity 20)	A sea creature too big to measure	Level 7	Probably the waves it makes when startled	Don’t disturb it
Partygoers (Entity 67)	Victims of a virus, hidden under stained sheets	Level Fun’s Party Rooms	Hunt by sound and spread the virus	If you can hear them, you’re too close
Lamenting Sinners (Entity 99)	Flesh creatures that collect brains	Uncommon, indoor levels	Paralysing sting; a giant eye that entrances	Never look at the eye; fire hurts the pylons

Smilers

Smilers are the Backrooms’ signature monster: a pitch-black, fire-like mass that can take any shape, with glowing eyes and teeth. They’re rated 5 out of 5 for aggression, intellect and danger, have no natural predators, and records of them go back to prehistoric times. Physical attacks pass through them.

Their weaknesses are light and fire. Light makes them wince, and a burning Smiler slowly dissolves until nothing is left. Some put up with more light than others, though, and they’re smart enough to dodge a flashlight beam. They can communicate with each other telepathically, so if one has seen you, more are probably coming. Once you see a glowing face in the dark, your next choices are crucial.

Hounds

Hounds were people. A rabies-like virus, Egremond Syndrome, rebuilds a bitten person into a Hound about 20 to 30 minutes after the first symptoms, and there’s no known cure. The best-known treatment is to douse the bite in almond water within roughly five minutes; if the virus has been in the body for over ten minutes, the most recommended course of action is “neutralizing the bite victim”.

They’re genetically close to humans, use simple tools, recognise faces, and seem to resent people in particular. They can hear up to two miles away, claw their own faces down to the bone, and can only bark and whine. Unlike Smilers, they’re drawn to light, so turning the lights off helps you avoid them.

Clumps

A Clump is a mass of human limbs about six feet across that folds itself into vents, pipes and closets. Usually all you see is an arm hanging down, left there as bait. It can wait motionless for hours, days or longer, and when it’s hungry it moves at up to 20 miles per hour. Stay at least 10 feet away, ignore any waving or clapping, and stay quiet, because Clumps react to sound.

Skin-Stealers

Skin-Stealers (Homo capgras) hollow out a wanderer, keeping only the skin and the brain, then wear the skin and inherit their victim’s memories. Some live inside settlements for years, picking people off one by one. They pass on the change through saliva. The tell is their blood, which runs clear, so survivors check each other’s blood at least once a day. They usually hunt alone, which is the one piece of good news.

Partygoers

Partygoers are wanderers in the last stage of the Sanguine festivus virus, which the Party Rooms of Level Fun seem to produce. Under a yellowed sheet, their self-inflicted wounds bleed through into a smile-shaped stain. They’re starving, half-blind and find you by sound. The infection can still be stopped in its second stage by quarantining, but by stage three there’s almost no way back.

Where you’d meet them first

Level 0, the Lobby, has no entities at all (see the Level 0 guide). Level 1 is where they start: Hounds, Clumps, Facelings, Dullers and Deathmoths live there, and in its blackouts entities come out to hunt. On Level 2, Clumps, Hounds, Smilers and Skin-Stealers have all adapted to the level. On Level !, almost every entity chases you at once, at nearly the same speed. The levels guide covers each level, and how to survive the Backrooms covers what to do about it.

Can entities be killed?

Many can. Fire kills Smilers, Hounds are best brought down at range with crossbows or rifles, a Skin-Stealer’s heart sits where a human’s does and is its weak point, and Lamenting Pylons are highly susceptible to fire. Others can’t really be fought: the Thing on Level 7 doesn’t react even when people cut meat off it.

Kane Pixels’ creatures (a different canon)

Kane Pixels’ series has no numbered entities, no Smilers and no Hounds. Its Backrooms, which the fictional Async Research Institute calls the Complex, has a few creatures of its own:

Creature	What it is	Where it appears
The Lifeform	A tall hunter (presumably about 11 feet) made of mutated bacteria, which imitates human voices and chases you at your own speed	The first Found Footage video, Pitfalls, Found Footage #2
Still Lifes	Flawed copies of real people that the Backrooms makes, with duplicated or rearranged body parts	Found Footage #3, Everything Must Go, the film
The Growth	Nests of the same bacteria, which take over dead bodies and grow to fill rooms	Found Footage #2

If you’re searching for “the Howler”: no entity by that name appears on either the Backrooms Database or the Kane Pixels Backrooms pages on Fandom. If you mean the tall creature that chases Kane in his first video, the closest match is the Lifeform, which makes loud, wailing sounds somewhat recognizable as human voices. Neither site calls it the Howler.

Does the Backrooms movie only have one entity?

Spoilers for the A24 film Backrooms (2026). No, but one is the main threat. The film’s monster is Pirate Clark, a Still Life copy of the furniture-store owner Clark in his pirate-mascot costume. It kills Naren Warne, Bobby and Clark himself before Async scientists capture it. Other Still Lifes appear too, including a bearded one, a red-haired one and one that looks like Mary Kline. The Lifeform isn’t among the film’s creatures.