Herobrine has become the staple urban legend of Minecraft, but where, canonically, did his legend begin?
Those white, hollow, piercing eyes belonging to a skin similar to the friendly, well-known Steve has been rumored to wander the player’s Overworld. Herobrine can create random constructions that litter the area. These include sand pyramids decorated with redstone torches or two-by-two tunnels that, if followed, lead to a dead-end. He’s also been known to cut all the leaves off of surrounding trees.
Even creepier — his most common sightings have been him watching the player from afar.
The First Herobrine Sighting
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<p>The first sighting of Herobrine dates back to 2010. This came in the form of a single image detailing the encounter. The image was posted on <a href=)
4chan’s /v/ board and the user’s recollection of the encounter went as such:
“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 render distance tiny).
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 perused out of curiosity, but he was gone. I continued on with the game, not sure what to think.
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As I expanded to world I saw things that seemed out of place for the random map generator to make; two-by-two tunnels in the rocks, small perfect pyramids made out 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 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 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.
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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 I have of his existence.”
Unfortunately, the post didn’t receive much attention online, though it was the first piece of media to name Herobrine.
The Brocraft Stream
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<p>Herobrine’s popularity exploded just months after the original 4chan post. This was due to hoaxes created by Brocraft streamer “Copeland.”</p>
<p>Copeland himself confirmed these sightings as fake in an email <a href=)
here.
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It begins with Copeland finding the original 4chan post about Herobrine and taking a liking to it. Just for fun, he photoshopped Herobrine into pictures of his current Minecraft world to show his stream chat. When the photoshopped pictures garnered positive reactions from his viewers, Copeland decided to stage a stream that included the hollow-eyed character.
The stream began with Copeland playing through his world as any player would. He played through deliberately avoiding the room where he had set up a re-textured painting to look like Herobrine.
Twenty minutes and forty-five seconds into the stream, Copeland entered the room set up for the hoax.
Copeland saw the re-skinned painting, screamed, and ran out of the room. The stream promptly ended once he had left the room with Herobrine in it.
While the stream was down, Copeland removed the painting and reverted to normal textures. When he went live again, there was a faux feeling of unease throughout his demeanor. Copeland would announce on the stream that he would delete the world in order to never encounter Herobrine again, and did so while live.
Later on, Copeland posted a link to the stream chat leading to http://ghostinthestream.net/him.html
The page consists of a gif of Steve’s face with two sunken, hyper-realistic eyes rolling frantically around in place of the eyes on his original skin. Below the image is a jumble of letters and characters.
When you remove the non-alphabetic characters from the block, the following message is revealed:
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“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 above message is from another Creepypasta titled “Wake Up.”
Since the stream, Herobrine has boomed in popularity over the years. He’s reached the level of becoming this iconic urban legend for the Minecraft community. Though mods and texture packs in the game bring this urban legend to life, his origins were not those of truth.
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