Imagine going about your day-to-day activities in Minecraft only to realize that someone is watching you from the shadows. This would be a normal occurrence on the best Minecraft servers, but it sounds like nothing less than a nightmare in the single-player mode. If you have felt something like this in Minecraft, you aren’t the only one. For over ten years, a scary entity has threatened the Minecrafters of all ages, and if you didn’t know about it yet, we are here to change that. So grab your sword, as it’s time to dive into the story of Herobrine in Minecraft.

The story of Herobrine takes multiple turns and has various iterations. Hence, to keep it simple, we’re only focusing on the most important events. Use the table below to explore everything you need to know about the legend of Herobrine in Minecraft.

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Herobrine is easily the most infamous myth of Minecraft that has been a creepy representative of the game for over a decade now. It first appeared as a canonical story (a creepypasta) but soon developed into one of the most celebrated stories in the Minecraft community. Leaving the debates around its existence for a later part of the guide, let’s first understand Herobrine as a character.

Over the years, Herobrine has gone through various iterations since its canonical appearance. Compiling the most popular myths around him, you can expect the following characteristics in Herobrine:

The first time someone talked about Herobrine was more than a decade ago in August 2010 in a post on 4chan’s paranormal board. You can read the whole story in the screenshot above. The user explained that they were chopping wood and making a workbench (crafting table) when they noticed someone watching them. On close inspection, that entity turned out to be someone with default Minecraft Steve skin but with blank white eyes.

Things only get spookier from that point. Following this strange encounter, the user allegedly went online to ask others about the incident. But soon they found that their post was deleted, and a user by the name of Herobrine left them a message saying “stop”. Lucky for us, they didn’t stop there and started finding other players who allegedly had similar encounters in-game.

Then, alongwith other players, this user looked into the username Herobrine, which they believed to belong to a Swedish player, who is the brother of Notch, a senior Minecraft developer.

At this point, the mystery of Herobrine was about to become bigger than the in-game encounter. When this user allegedly emailed Notch to confirm if he has a brother, Notch replied and said, “I did, but he is no longer with us.” This is the point where the user ends the 4chan post stating that they didn’t see the mysterious creature again in Minecraft. They even attached a screenshot of the first time they encountered it in-game. That’s where the canonical story of Herobrine ended. But this moment was just the beginning for Herobrine as a character.

As the original post started receiving more attention, Herobrine started showing up everywhere. One of the more popular sightings was in the live stream by a creator called Copeland, who found Herobrine inside one of the structures he was working on. This led to a series of debates over the authenticity of the same. You can watch a clip from the live stream here and judge it yourself.

Copeland took it a step further by sharing a creepy webpage (check the archived version here) with the viewers. This page had the face of Herobrine with text beneath it referring to a Creepypasta post that asked the readers to wake up from the fantasy they are living in. While the story didn’t gain much traction, the webpage with the title “him.html” ended up popularising Herobrine as “him”. Not to forget, the face on the webpage wasn’t only a regular Steve’s face but also had randomly rolling eyes instead of white space.

The Herobrine gag would have lasted longer in the world of Copeland if it wasn’t for Patimuss, another live streamer who tried to cash in on the hoax. He apparently retextured a door and claimed to “find” Herobrine. Unfortunately, in another stream, fans heard him confessing to his wife after staging the hoax. This angered the community and led to an end to all Herobrine discoveries, including Copeland.

Eventually, Copeland came clean and explained the entire story of Herobrine to his community. You can find the entire confession/ FAQ in the link here. But even though it was a hoax, the success of Copeland made it clear that the community loves Herobrine content, so it wasn’t long before other creators jumped on the trend. This led to:

Mojang, the developer studio behind Minecraft, is known for its community service. So yeah, it wasn’t long before the developer joined the Herobrine discussion. The most noticeable example of it is the statement “Removed Herobrine,” which appeared in their almost official patch notes until Java Edition 1.16.2. (You can see an example of such a changelog here)

However, the changed log entry is just one example where Mojang directly refers to Herobrine. The devs have gone as far as showing him in official images a number of times. You can go through the slideshow and spot Herobrine in various subtle but clear locations. Though, don’t take the said images as a confirmation of Herobrine’s existence. At least, not before reading what the developers had to say about the whole incident.

Markus Persson aka Notch, a Minecraft’s senior developer and the supposed brother of Herobrine, first talked about the entity in Minecon 2010. He claimed that while Herobrine was a myth, there might be a possibility that he is real, he further added jokingly. Later, in reply to a question about Herobrine’s existence on Twitter, Notch said, “It’s not real. But it might be soon!”

Both of these incidents confirm that Herobrine is, in fact, a hoax and not a real entity in Minecraft. But the ambiguity around its eventual addition to the game was still confusing to the community. So, a Minecraft Wiki administrator allegedly requested Notch to clear up the confusion, to which, Notch replied, “I have no plans of adding Herobrine as is, but I do like the rumors, haha.” Again, the presence of “as is” fueled gossip around the internet about a new version of Herobrine coming to Minecraft.

Addressing the confusion and frustration in the community, the same Wiki user again reached out to Notch. Fortunately, this time the Minecraft developer clearly stated that he had no plans of adding Herobrine to Minecraft in a tweet. Since then, Notch has refuted the existence of Herobrine multiple times.

Getting loads of tweets and emails about Herobrine again. I don't have a dead brother, and he never was in the game. Not real. Never was.— notch (@notch) May 26, 2012

While Herobrine still makes occasional cameos in various Youtube videos, his days in the Minecraft world are long gone and there is no hope for a return. Notch is no longer a part of Minecraft and the last time Mojang talked about Herobrine was in August 2012. Back then, Dinnerbone, the joint developer of Minecraft, stated in an official tweet, “We have no plans at all to add Herobrine. I doubt this will ever change.“

@Kizzycocoa We have no plans at all to add herobrine. I doubt this will ever change.— Nathan Adams (@Dinnerbone) August 22, 2012

So, unless the developers decide to revive the days of peak storytelling with a hint of chaos, Herobrine isn’t going to disturb your mining or building expeditions ever again. There are no official plans to bring Herobrine into the game. Moreover, there is nothing in the game’s code that relates to Herobrine in any way. Not to forget, none of the claims of his existence had any credible evidence, to begin with. But you still don’t have to take our word for it.

Thanks to the Minecraft@Home project, you can now visit the world where Herobrine was first discovered. As described in our list of best Minecraft seeds, each world in the game is made up of randomly generated integers known as “seeds”. You can recreate any world by using the right seed with the correlated version of Minecraft.

The Herobrine seed was discovered by andrew_555 (Kminster) with the help of the original screenshot. They explained their journey on Reddit, which took them 50 hours of coding and months of debugging to reach here. Alongside Kminister, Neil, BoySanic, polymetric, Dutchen18 & MC (PseudoGravity) were also major contributors to this project.

If you want to test the existence of Herobrine yourself, you can recreate his world in your copy of Minecraft with the following details:

You can access this old version of Minecraft by creating a new installation in your Minecraft launcher on your Windows PC. But since the earlier versions of Minecraft didn’t support custom seeds, you either have to edit your save file or you can download a ready-to-use world file here. This seed spawns you directly at the spot where the screenshot was taken. You just need to press the “F” key three times to match the fog settings. We have tested the saved file as well, and to no one’s surprise, didn’t find Herobrine in that Minecraft world.

While the vanilla (unmodded) version of Minecraft doesn’t have any version of Herobrine, you can still add him to your game. But this is only possible in the Java edition of Minecraft, which supports the best Minecraft mods.

So, if you want to meet Herobrine in Minecraft, you may install one of the following mods:

Once you have downloaded the mod, follow the steps below to meet Herobrine in Minecraft:

1. First download and install a mod in Minecraft using Forge. You can use any Herobrine mod but the steps might change accordingly. For our tutorial, we are relying on The Legend of Herobrine.

2. Then, launch your modded game and create a new world. Make sure to set the game mode as “creative” to make your first encounter with Herobrine a bit simpler.

3. After that, dig a one-block deep hole that’s 3 x 3 in area. After that, put a Netherrack block in its middle with gold blocks on all its sides. Finally, empty buckets of lava in all four corners of the hole.

4. Then grab a cursed diamond, four Redstone torches, and the Altar of Herobrine from your creative inventory.

5. Next, place the Redstone torches on top of blocks of gold and the Altar of Herobrine on top of the Netherrack.

6. Finally, place the cursed diamond into the altar to make Herobrine spawn.