In anthropology, liminality (from Latin *līmen* 'a threshold') is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes). In Internet aesthetics, liminal spaces are empty or abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, and often surreal. Liminal spaces are commonly places of transition, pertaining to the concept of liminality. Research from the Journal of Environmental Psychology has indicated that liminal spaces may appear eerie or strange because they fall into an uncanny valley of architecture and physical places. An article from Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture has attributed this eeriness to familiar places lacking their usually observed context. Broadly, the term liminal space is used to describe a place or state of change or transition; this may be physical (e.g. a doorway) or psychological (e.g. the period of adolescence). Liminal space imagery often depicts this sense of "in-between", capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people. The aesthetic may convey moods of eeriness, surrealness, nostalgia, or sadness, and elicit responses of both comfort and unease. Research by Alexander Diel and Michael Lewis of Cardiff University has attributed the unsettling nature of liminal spaces to the phenomenon of the uncanny valley. The term, which is usually applied to humanoids whose inexact resemblance to humans elicits feelings of unease, may explain similar responses to liminal imagery. In this case, physical places that appear familiar but subtly deviate from reality create the sense of eeriness typical of liminal spaces.