Exception

Well, I never thought I'd be writing this, but here it goes.

I was playing Minecraft like any other player would, in a singleplayer world, starting off like everyone usually does. Y'know, chopping wood, making tools, torches and a shelter. The very first steps to a successful map. I always did this over and over, until at one point I decided to look at the game's code, I just wanted to check it out of sheer curiosity. Nothing suspicious, just like all other Java games I played.

Later on, a couple of years at most, I got bored of Minecraft and left it for about 1-2 years. Then I came back due to nostalgia, pretty silly, I know. That's when I started to experience some weird events.

I created a world and did the steps as mentioned before, I reached around the sixth night, and then the events started. I realized there were a couple of lava source blocks placed 1 block deep in the ground. And they were placed randomly, one being next to my house that I quickly collected with my bucket. They continued appearing until they were above 13 almost, I put that aside from my mind like a total idiot I am, thinking that it was a new feature that was added in the updates that I have missed.

After I removed those lava spots, I continued to expand my house, making it look decorative for once. That's when I realized I was missing some iron ingots for my anvil. So obviously, I went mining. Halfway down, I realized that there was a wall of cobblestone that was blocking my path. Now this wall, I was certain I never put it there. I was one of those players who don't like blocking pathways. Now this is where things started getting really weird. I had an iron pickaxe that was still new, so as soon as I used it to open up the cobblestone wall, it broke within one block mined. I thought this was a bug, but at this point, I was getting really suspicious. I continued on, more events were occurring. I was taking notes: Forests were having much less trees, some chunks were failing to load (This one was rare, though.), torches I place were later on gone, random fire was appearing usually around me and more things.

I knew there was something up now, I was terrified, so I exited the world reluctantly and went to the Minecraft Forums and made a thread there about my situation. Many people were replying that I was just full of Baloney and lies. So I gave up that thread.

About 3 hours later, I got a PM from another user, saying he also had the same occurrences, so I contacted him via Skype and we talked. At some point he said he had to go. And he went offline. I thought that it must be impossible for only 2 people among the millions and millions of people playing Minecraft to experience this, right?

So like any sensible person would do, I went to my thread one last time, and, to my surprise, some users were saying they also had the same situation, unlike before. We talked for some time by PM, about what was happening in their worlds, and so on. But then one of them said something... Interesting.

He told us that he encountered a peculiar entity, that he had never saw before on the web or Minecraft or a server. I copied his text and he said the following: "'I found this thing in my singleplayer world, at first I never spotted it. But as I was taking screenshots of the weird happenings in my world like you asked us to, I quickly caught glimpse of something as I was looking at the screenshots. However, at the edge of some of the screenshots, sometimes in the water, on an island, on a tree, was an entity I had NEVER seen before. Not even in the media or the code itself." '

This was when I, or US, the group, realized we were not alone in our worlds. I set up a server for us, most of them joined while a few weren't able to. We started out in my 'haunted' world, which was surprisingly exactly like I left it before. Everything was normal for a while, I guided them around my map, showing all the spots of the weird happenings. Then each of them took turns in showing their maps. (Pardon you, it was very time-consuming and not very fun.) We all had parallel things. Eventually we all went off and we were planning to stay in touch.

It was not long after they disconnected that I went back to my world to find something horrifying. My house was gone, replaced by a blotch of Netherrack. ALL of my buildings were gone. There was lava and fire pretty much everywhere. At some point, I came upon this weird code on 9 signs next to each other in the middle of nowhere: "01000101 01011000 01000011 01000101 01010000 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110".

The biggest surprise was when night arose, I finally encountered the entity, who looked like... a Steve, but was completely white, with the "Missing Texture" words plastered in its torso, just like how blocks or items with no texture are white and have "Missing Texture" written in tiny letters.

However, I failed to screenshot IT the first time. Because as soon as I approached this peculiar entity, my entire screen went black. And in about 2 minutes, the game closed itself, at this point I panicked and went crazy, I went and told the 'Group' about it, one of them responded they also encountered it but as soon as they relaunched the game their world was gone. I quickly went to my world, fearing that it also was deleted. And, to my surprise, it was.

We set up a new server, a new map from scratch, almost everyone, again, joined and we advanced. Built a home, a mineshaft, and a couple of other buildings that were supposed to "attract" this being so it could burn or destroy it, where we could all screenshot it.

At some point, most of us went mining for armor, leaving 2 behind on the surface. Eventually, one of them yelled in the chat that our forest that we use for wood was ENTIRELY on fire. There was no thunder either, and the only one who I knew had flint and steel were 3 of us down in the mine. And then the chat brimmed with another code that I screenshotted: "01010111 01001000 01001001 01000011 01001000 00100000 01001001 01010011 00100000 01000110 01001001 01010010 01010011 01010100 00111111"

At this point, we knew he was here, eventually, both of the players on the surface exited the game. They told us their game went entirely black and closed itself, like mine. And whenever they try to join they get "Connection Refused". As soon as that happened, each one of us was dying one by one, whenever somebody decided to go and try to get something themselves, they would either die or crash randomly. At some point, everyone crashed and couldn't get into the server. Another code appeared: "01000001 01001100 01001111 01001110 01000101 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010111 00101110".

I looked behind me, and there it was. That thing. It was at the end of the mineshaft. I quickly screenshotted it. As soon as that happened, my game crashed and closed, and the server also crashed and closed.

I left the launcher, never touching it again. That entity keeps destroying my worlds over and over, and stalking innocent players. Don't let it catch you. But there's this feeling that tells me the first code tells us something about it, since it came in signs, not in the chat.