We study the formation of long-lived states near avoided resonance crossings in open systems. For three different optical microcavities (rectangle, ellipse, and semi-stadium) we provide numerical evidence that these states are localized along periodic rays, resembling scarred states in closed systems. Our results shed light on the morphology of long-lived states in open mesoscopic systems. 05.45.Mt, 32.80.Rm Understanding the properties of long-lived, quasi-bound states in open mesoscopic systems is of central importance for many research subjects, e.g. semiconductor ballistic quantum dots [1,2,3,4], photoionization of Rydberg atoms [5], microwave systems [6,7], quantum chaos [8], and optical microcavities [9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. In several of these studies the long-lived states are scarred. The original scarring phenomenon has been discovered for closed systems in the field of quantum chaos [16]. It refers to the existence of a small fraction of eigenstates with strong localization along unstable periodic orbits of the underlying classical system. In open systems, however, scarred states seem to be the rule rather than the exception. The nature of the mechanism behind this scarlike phenomenon is not yet understood.Avoided level crossings in closed or conservative systems are discussed in textbooks on quantum mechanics. They occur when the curves of two energy eigenvalues, as function of a real parameter ∆, come near to crossing but then repel each other [17]. This behaviour can be understood in terms of a 2 × 2 Hamiltonian matrixFor a closed system this matrix is Hermitian, thus the energies E j are real and the complex off-diagonal elements are related by W = V * . The eigenvalues of the coupled system,differ from the energies of the uncoupled system E j only in a narrow parameter region where the detuning from resonance, |E 1 (∆) − E 2 (∆)|, is smaller or of the size of the coupling strength √ V W . The parameter dependence of V and W can often be safely ignored.The matrix (1) also captures features of avoided resonance crossings (ARCs) in open or dissipative systems if one allows for complex-valued energies E j . The imaginary part determines the lifetime τ j ∝ 1/Im(E j ) of the quasi-bound state far away from the avoided crossing |E 1 −E 2 | 2 ≫ V W , where the off-diagonal coupling can be neglected. Keeping the restriction W = V * allows for two different kinds of ARCs [18]. For 2|V | > |Im(E 1 ) − Im(E 2 )|, there is an avoided crossing in the real part of the energy and a crossing in the imaginary part. At resonance Re(E 1 ) = Re(E 2 ) the eigenvectors of the matrix (1) are symmetric and antisymmetric superpositions of the eigenvectors of the uncoupled system. If one of the latter corresponds to a localized state then such an ARC leads to delocalization and lifetime shortening [19]. For 2|V | < |Im(E 1 ) − Im(E 2 )|, there is a crossing in the real part and an avoided crossing in the imaginary part. This kind of ARC has been exploited to design optical microcavities with unidirectional light emission ...