Exploring Horror in Minecraft (Creepypastas, ARGs, Lost Media)

Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you soo much man.

something about playing creative mode as if it was survival feels so cursed

As of writing this comment, ScareTheater was live streaming and I mentioned Casey's Cave to him. He said he was very fond of it as part of his childhood. He used to get around 20k views on those vids, which was surprising since he used to only get around 100. I then asked him if he had any of the deleted videos saved, and he said that he didn't. If he did, he wouldn't mind sharing them

Every copy of Herobrine is personalized

Imagine Mojang puts out a secret halloween update, like they do with april fools day, but instead they just add herobrine for a day lmao

One ARG I highly recommend is Minecraft Lilypad, or Minecraft Alpha 1.0.16 Versions. It's an ARG about how Minecraft at a certain point had a branch of development, leading to other people developing the game in secret. At this point, the game version(that you can play btw!) is so wildly disconnected from Minecraft as a whole that it feels like a whole other game. It makes me so uneasy seeing these other mechanics, and textures, that look like they belong in the game but at the same time.. don't. It's like looking at Minecraft from a parallel univese. It freaks me out. I love it so much.

You say Herobrine isn't scary to us anymore but, whenever I'm reminded of him and I'm playing Minecraft, it sends shivers down my spine and makes me go slightly paranoid. Same thing I'd say about Gmod dark figures tbh. Even if it's been around 10 years since I learned about Herobrine and I am now 19 years old, it still gets me sometimes.

i remember watching the Casey's Cave series YEARS ago, i remember the final entry ending with a shot of a cave with redstone on the floor (to represent blood) alongside a Steve head by the mess on the floor

Honestly, I never thought of Herobrine as a creepypasta. I always saw him as a sort of tradition or kind of an inside joke. Also, a friend. I always imagined he watched over you to protect you.

I think one of the reasons Herobrine was so scary compared to other creepypastas was the ability for it to happen to *you*. A common trope of other iconic stories like Sonic.exe and Ben Drowned was "I found this strange second hand copy of the game" or "my friend gave me a weird ROM". Herobrine on the other hand was ambiguous enough that a naïve kid could blame any unexplained glitches in the game as "herobrine is visiting me personally". Not only was it more believable because of the way many people online portrayed him (plus Mojang's sly references that a kid wouldn't understand is a joke), but it was a lot more intimate horror since it was a game basically everyone owned and he wasn't exclusive to a single copy. However I think the Achilles Heel of the myth dates all the way back to the original post, when it claims Herobrine is Notch's dead brother. Such an extremely specific claim could be so easily disproven (and in fact was when Notch tweeted that he had no brothers) which removed some of the potential credibility.

I was also partial to creative mode. As in blow everything up into smithereens. I mainly played the console versions which had tutorial worlds. Especially the Wii U version which had a Mario world. It was so much fun to blow up Peach’s castle.

I remember actually watching Casey's Cave as a kid. I'm pretty sure for a period of time, Scaretheater actually had the channel that Casey's Cave was uploaded to showcased on his main Youtube page, under that old "Channels" tab that used to exist, and that's how I found out that ScareTheater actually made Casey's Cave. It's a shame to see that it's become lost.

I agree with the points of not making "Minecraft Analog Horror", the medium just doesn't fit, but the route I've seen some more recent series take is the new route of "Digital Horror", similar in idea, but execution including Windows 7, XP, Movie Maker, Unregistered Hypercam 2, whatever else you can think of, it's there.

Similar to Error 422, there's a mod that translates what people said Herobrine does (stalking you, popping up behind you, making structures, leaving signs, etc.) in a mod called "From The Fog" which is a brilliant mod/datapack that has a resource pack to go along with it.

Back in my day before version 1.13 everything was always feel off, survival feels being hunted by something that shouldn't be exist and creative just feel like in survival. And you feel always being watch and you don't even know what is watching you

that part where you talked about FNF kinda came outta nowhere tbh

I love watching footage of people build stuff in minecraft that is almost impossible to determine what it is

It's rare for an analog horror to interest me, but I love Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. Its free-roam approach to storytelling is fresh

WOAH! Pausing at the mention of ScareTheater! I thought that guy had quit years ago and stopped watching. Crazy that this is how I find out he's active again. Kudos to you, Peter.

I remember the day they released the first update to minecraft post-herobrine that did not have the "Removed Herobrine" text in the patch notes. Everyone lost their minds and thought Herobrine was back or that Mojang planned to add a Herobrine mob for that update.