I had recently spawned a new world in single-player Minecraft. Everything was normal at first as I began chopping down trees and crafting a workbench. I noticed something move amongst the dense fog (I have a very slow computer so I have to play with a tiny render distance). I thought it was a cow, so I pursued it, hoping to grab some hides for armor.
It wasn’t a cow though. Looking back at me was another character with the default skin, but his eyes were empty. I saw no name pop up, and I double-checked to make sure I wasn’t in multiplayer mode. He didn’t stay long, he looked at me and quickly ran into the fog. I pursued out of curiosity, but he was gone.
I continued on with the game, not sure what to think. As I expanded the world, I saw things that seemed out of place for the random map generator to make; 2×2 tunnels in the rocks, small perfect pyramids made of sand in the ocean, and groves of trees with all their leaves cut off. I would constantly think I saw the other “player” in the deep fog, but I never got a better look at him. I tried increasing my render distance to far whenever I thought I saw him, but it was to no avail.
I saved the map and went on the forums to see if anyone else had found the pseudo-player. There were none. I created my own topic telling of the man and asking if anyone had a similar experience. The post was deleted within five minutes. I tried again, and the topic was deleted even faster. I received a PM from username ‘Herobrine’ containing one word: ‘Stop.’ When I went to look at Herobrine’s profile, the page 404’d.
I received an email from another forum user. He claimed the mods can read the forum user messages, so we were safer using email. The emailer claimed that he had seen the mystery player too, and had a small ‘directory’ of other users who had seen him as well. Their worlds were littered with obviously man-made features as well, and described their mystery player to have no pupils.
About a month passed until I heard from my informant again. Some of the people who had encountered the mystery man had looked into the name Herobrine and found that name to be frequently used by a Swedish gamer. After some further information gathering, it was revealed to be the brother of Notch, the game’s developer. I personally emailed Notch, and asked him if he had a brother. It took him a while, but he emailed me back a very short message:
I did, but he is no longer with us.
— Notch
I haven’t seen the mystery man since our first encounter, and I haven’t noticed any changes to the world other than my own. I was able to press “print screen” when I first saw him. Here’s the only evidence of his existence:
The original Herobrine post on 4chan by an anonymous user.
Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. It was posted on the 4chan’s /v/ board and gained very little attention. It stated how Herobrine had appeared in someone’s single-player game, littering the map with various pyramids and tunnels. It is the first media to name him as Herobrine.
It was only later that Herobrine grew in popularity when the Brocraft streamer “Copeland” photoshopped Herobrine into several screenshots to show to his chat. He had recently taken a liking to the story and wished to be a part of it. After getting largely good reactions, he decided to stage a hoax. He has explained exactly how that took place in an email.
Copeland had played through the world as a normal lets-player would, deliberately avoiding the work-in-progress room he had set up for the hoax. Herobrine was introduced to the stream here (at 20:45). He is confirmed to be a retextured painting. Copeland then screamed and ran out of the room, promptly ending the stream.
Copeland pretended to be shaken up in the chat and later posted a message onto the forums, linking to the video to spread it around, in the hope to get similar reactions.
After a while, Copeland removed the painting and reverted to normal textures. He proceeded to stream further, pretending to be scared. He announced that he would delete the world to never meet Herobrine again.
Later on, Patimuss made a video showing Herobrine in a user-made lava field. This Herobrine was free-standing, unlike the previous video. Due to this, it is likely he was a retextured door. The livestream went down after Patimuss ran away and saved his game, only to resume ten minutes later, where Herobrine had disappeared.
Later on, during the second stream, Patimuss can be heard talking to his wife, stating he was trolling. This flooded the livestream chat with outrage. He then faked a game crash. Copeland disliked that Patimuss outed Herobrine as a fake.
It is unknown when exactly it happened in relation to Patimuss’s video, but Copeland then posted links in chat, leading to http://ghostinthestream.net/him.html(archive). This is likely where the nickname “Him” originated from. The page features Steve’s face, but with real, frantically rolling eyes in the place of his block eyes, modified to be completely black.
Below the face, there are a jumble of characters and letters. After removing all non-alphabet characters, the following message is revealed:
“It has been reported that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not WAKE UP. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to WAKE UP was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to WAKE UP. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and PLEASE WAKE UP.”
The message keeps telling the viewer to “wake up”, implying they’re living in a fantasy world, and this text hidden in the page is their “note”. The above text is from another Creepypasta, entitled “Wake Up”.
The stream proceeded later with no further Herobrine sightings. Copeland continued to adamantly state Herobrine was real for about a year onwards.
Since the stream, there has been a huge increase in his popularity, propelling Herobrine to meme status, and making him an icon of the community. There are several mods, animations, pieces of artwork and constructions of Herobrine that have been created.
Herobrine is a human entity, with exactly the same skin as “Steve”. However, Herobrine has bright white eyes that glow in the darkness, as if they are a light source. Herobrine can sometimes be seen holding tools, such as pickaxes. This stems from the widespread community belief that Herobrine was a miner. Usually, his hands are empty.
