The Corridor

Have you ever, just out of curiosity, tried playing on a Minecraft world with your username as the seed?
That's all I was trying to do when I booted up Minecraft, feeling bored, and set up a new world in 1.16.4. I set the difficulty to hard, flipped a few switches in the settings, set the seed to "Spinosaurus4", and was soon generating a new world.
I spawned into a jungle. Not exactly my favorite biome, to be honest. Jungles are very overgrown and more difficult to build in as a result, plus, the leaves of the jungle trees shelter hostile mobs from the sun. I dug up an oak tree and crafted a boat, along with a wooden sword and pickaxe, to get out of there, but not before taking a few screenshots - I figured I might make a post about exploring the world with my name as a seed and encourage other people to do the same.
I should note that I use a texture pack that turns my hearts orange by default, but it doesn't do anything else.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. If I'd known what this post would end up being about instead, I would have shut off the game. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyways, I found a nearby mountainous biome, with some spruce trees for me to cut down. I much preferred the look of Spruce to Jungle wood anyways. I decided to make my home here and got to work cutting down more trees and carving out some stone for building. These mountains were full of caves exposed to the surface, so I was able to grab some coal pretty early on as well. I dug into the side of a hill and carved out a basic shelter to spend the night in, along with crafting a stone sword, axe, and pick.
I heard some sheep above my house so I went out to find them and killed three in order to craft a bed. I also had to fight a spider, but was able to slash it to pieces pretty quickly, reaping some string as a reward. I then mined for most of the rest of the night before my pickaxe broke, then I took another screencap and went to bed. When I awoke, I explored the region a bit more, picking up some rotten flesh from zombies that had burned away, and killing a skeleton taking shelter under a tree, before quitting the world as I had to get up for a moment.
When I came back, I had lost my sense of direction a bit. I wandered over to this area with these two large stone pinnacles jutting out of the ocean. There was one floating block just hovering in between them. 
I thought it was pretty strange. For some reason, I got a peculiar urge - I really wanted to hit that block with an arrow.
Thanks to the spider I'd killed previously, I could craft a bow. The skeleton I'd killed also dropped an arrow. I crafted the bow and lined up my shot. Perhaps surprisingly, I hit the block on my very first attempt. I took a couple screenshots but the resolution is so low you can hardly tell. I definitely hit it, though.
Unfortunately my mind was quickly too occupied to celebrate, as something very strange happened when I hit that block.
As soon as the arrow made contact, I heard the sound of a bell. 
I recognized the sound, it was the same sound the bells added in 1.14 make. There was no reason for it to be playing now. This was pretty unusual. I thought about firing another arrow at the block but I had no more left. I soon decided I had wasted enough time messing around here, not really even having gotten anything done that day. I decided to head back, and thankfully, found some sugarcane, which would probably be useful later, at least that's what I thought at the time.
As I started to head back, I kept feeling like I was hearing an extra set of footsteps besides my own. When I would stop, the footsteps would continue just a little bit longer than they should. I was armed with a stone sword so I stood my ground and looked around, peering behind hiding places in case a mob was stalking me, but I seemed to be very alone. In fact, most of the cows and sheep I had seen on the way here seemed to be gone, with only one or two still visible off in the distance (and those were too far off to be causing the noise, if that's what you were thinking).
It was already starting to get dark, so I headed inside. A bit weirded out by the footsteps, I secured my entryway by putting a sturdy spruce door on the outside block and putting two trap doors on the inside blocks so that all three would have to be opened to get in or out.
I slept in my bed to skip the night and the next day seemed fairly normal. I delved into the exposed caves in hopes of finding iron, but I didn't find anything aside from coal down the first two I checked. The third lead down a long and winding cavern to what I think was a ravine, but unfortunately two skeletons attacked me while I was down there. I was able to kill the first, but without a shield, I ended up forced to retreat from the second with just a few hearts remaining.
Low on food, I looked around for some animals to eat. As mentioned earlier, their numbers seemed oddly low. I found a brown sheep I'd seen earlier and killed it, but that wasn't very much. I continued looking for food in the nearby areas but was unable to find anything. When I returned to just cook up my mutton and make due, I saw a chicken near my base.
It was strange that I hadn't seen it before, I was looking pretty thoroughly, but whatever, I figured I'd eat it. Pressing F2 to take screenshots of this was sort of instinctual, I'd done it with a bunch of other mobs I'd killed so far - not like it served much purpose usually, other than filling my screenshots folder with nonsense, but in this case, I caught something on camera.
When I hit the chicken, it made the usual chicken dying sound and flopped over dead, flashing red, as normal. That's when it happened - the chicken, instead of disappearing in a puff of smoke and dropping useful items for me, just layed there, still red-tinted, still making horrid noises, and struggled on the ground, as if it were having a seizure.
Even more disturbingly, the head model of the chicken seemed to disappear after a second or so, leaving the headless chicken still thrashing on the stone.
All of that may sound pretty disturbing to you, but what really made my skin crawl, was when the chicken got back up.
No head.
The headless, mutilated chicken rose up from the ground. Its skin was no longer tinted the red color of damage. If it weren't for the missing head, it would look just like any normal chicken. I took a screen shot of it as, without that, I'm sure no one would believe me.
The thing moved much slower than any normal chicken in the game. It had stopped making noises now, all noises aside from footsteps that is; But even those didn't play quite right. It was like the footstep sound effects would cut out randomly for a few moments, before cutting back in. The chicken also moved with an... unnatural gait. It would walk forwards and often turn to the side while still walking in the original direction, as though it were walking sideways.
I was mesmerized and a bit creeped out by this unnatural, eerie creature - I followed it to see what it would do, but tried to keep my distance. Once it went out of sight and I ran over to catch up with, only to see it coming towards me. I lashed out with my sword in response, but found it was immune to my blows.
This thing unnerved me pretty greatly. I hated that I couldn't seem to damage it and I was worried that it would end up walking into my house when I opened the door. I ended up digging a hole in the ground under it and burying it alive, just to get it away from me.
I ended up eating the mutton and some rotten flesh just to regain my health. As I sat in my house, I could hear what sounded like those unnatural, creeping chicken footsteps. Though the sounds were faint, I could hear them in all directions, as if there were chickens in my walls, above me, and below me. I went into accessibility settings and turned the subtitles on, but it didn't detect any of the sounds, as if they weren't even there; Despite this, I could still adjust the volume settings and effect how loud or quiet the steps were. It didn't seem to make sense.
After sleeping another night, I went caving again and ended up finding some iron ore. The whole time, I couldn't stop thinking about that chicken. It was really creeping me out. I ended up googling stuff like "Minecraft headless chicken" thinking it might be some sort of oddly gruesome easter egg added in 1.16, but couldn't find anything relevant.
I decided whatever it was, I wanted it gone. I dug up some gravel from the hills, and smelted up my iron into ingots. Using the first ingot I got, I crafted some flint and steel. My plan was if stabbing the chicken didn't work, I'd burn it. If I couldn't burn it, I'd drown it. If that didn't work, I'd crush it with an anvil. If that still didn't work, I'd make a portal and kick it down into the lava pools of the Nether. Thankfully, I didn't end up having to get very far into my series of backup plans.
I dug up the hole and saw the chicken still there. I lit the block below it on fire, and it erupted in flame. It made no noises as it went, but silently succumbed to the inferno. I buried the burn pit but let the fire keep going until it went out on its own, just for good measure.
For the rest of the day, things seemed normal, but as night fell, I heard the bell once again ring out. Being a bit oblivious and not always thinking things through (except when it comes to various ways to kill chickens, at least), I immediately charged out into the evening, thinking I might be able to locate the source of the sound. Soon enough it was night and I was thankfully smart enough to head back inside instead of dying. I would just have to wait to see what the sound was coming from. I slept another night away...
The next dawn, I trekked back to the two stone pinnacles. That strange block I had shot with an arrow before? It was now gone. It had seemingly disappeared into thin air. I took a screenshot to prove as much to myself. That was the only lead I'd had as to where I should look to find the source of that mysterious ringing, and there was nothing there. I even tried swimming down below where it had been hovering, and couldn't find anything.
Defeated, I headed back to my house.
But, if you remember how I said I'd turned on subtitles? They're supposed to tell you what noises are playing and what direction they're coming from, it's an accessibility feature for in case you're deaf or for some other reason can't listen to the sounds yourself.
Well, that's when I noticed the subtitles were reading out the following sound:
"Bell rings"
Though I couldn't hear anything, the subtitles insisted that a bell was regularly ringing. Even better, they told me which direction it had come from, so I followed. Eventually, I came up against this cliffside. There were moderately tall cliffs with a floating island above. I investigated the tops of these landforms but found nothing.
My search was also hindered by lag, which had strangely grown more and more prevalent fairly quickly. I had experienced barely any after first generating the world, but now I was getting fairly bad framerate drops.
It was only after a convenient fall caused by this very lag, that I happened to notice the small 1 block by 1 block corridor leading into the mountain. It was obscured behind some grass, and too small to fit through. I immediately tried to mine through to see what I could uncover.
Unfortunately, that's where block lag stepped in and stopped me. Every time I would break the block, it would simply flicker back into place. Usually this is something I've only encountered on servers, it was bizarre to see on a Singleplayer world. I kept trying for a while, to no avail. I tried digging around the hole to make an alternate path following the tunnel, but the block lag prevented that too. I left and rejoined the world, but that fixed nothing.
I eventually noticed that the block lag only affected blocks nearby to this corridor. They got progressively more and more laggy the closer I got. I could break blocks far away with no trouble. Blocks in the surrounding dozen or so blocks got more laggy, and the closest blocks I couldn't keep broken at all.
I circled around and looked for an alternate entrance, but there was none.
I headed back to my house as night set again, hoping to devise some way into the passage. I considered TNT, but decided it would be easier to slide in using a trapdoor to crawl. I accidentally crafted a few more sets of trapdoors than I had intended, but it didn't matter too much. I deposited most of my useless items into my chest and departed.
I was worried the trapdoor wouldn't be able to be successfully placed, due to the lag, but it was. I was able to close it over the top of myself and begin spelunking through the narrow passageway. 
The tunnel continued inwards and then to the right. I followed the bed until, I reached a passage going straight up. I figured there must be, maybe, one room at the top here, since there was little room in the mountain for anything else. I still couldn't break blocks, so I had to craft some ladders and climb up. I also placed another trapdoor here so I could get back out.
I found a more open area of the corridor at the top. This room had another small one by one passage leading out of one side of the room.
This... Didn't seem to make sense, from a geometric standpoint. Going straight out here should lead out of the top of the mountain. I had seen the terrain earlier, there was nowhere to go, and there were clearly no tubes protruding outwards that I could travel in. Very curious now, I placed another trap door and headed through this new passage. It winded and stretched far beyond what I imagined possible.
After following the labyrinthine corridor as it twisted through what should have been the sky, but was very much underground, I tried to break my way through some blocks. The block lag was still overwhelming, and my framerate was suffering as well. Once or twice, it even did that annoying thing where you get teleported backwards. I hate that.
For the brief moment before the blocks returned, after I'd broken them, I could only see more stone beyond them. I also noticed the lack of diorite, andensite, granite, or ores, while exploring this cramped, dark cave. I did eventually spot one other block though, down a side tunnel.
This ugly block looked as though it were made of some kind of organic material. It weirded me out, but I wasn't very familiar with the new Minecraft update, 1.16. I figured that this must be some strange new block added in that update. It didn't look like it would be completely out of place in the Nether, at least.
Unable to proceed down that branching passageway, I continued forward on the main path I'd been crawling through. I couldn't hear any sounds other than my own movement, there were no ambient noises or music tracks playing as I made my way deeper into this enigmatic tunnel system. 
No hostile mobs seemed to spawn in this area, probably due to it being only 1 block in width and height, too small for most mobs to fit into. At first I was relieved, but the feeling of loneliness started to creep in. Not "loneliness" in the sense of having no allies with which to face adversity alongside, but loneliness as in the idea of being in place being completely and utterly devoid of life aside from yourself. It's the feeling I imagine you'd get from travelling to another planet, all by yourself. Just being lost on some alien world and knowing there's nothing out there but you.
Even having to kill some monsters would make me feel a bit less... isolated.
Unfortunately, I wasn't as alone as I thought.
After rounding one corner, I saw a side tunnel emanating light in the distance.
Seeing anything down here I hadn't placed felt... Wrong. 
It's hard to explain but, going back to my planet analogy, it would be like the first manned mission to the moon finding an alien monolith. It would come with a sense of unease, which is what I got. I suppose that was a bit, silly, right? It was only a game, after all, and I didn't even know what this place was.
I guess sometimes it's a good idea to trust your instincts.
But I didn't, because I heard that bell again. Curiosity overwhelmed me, and I pressed onwards, down that side passage, and into what I immediately recognized as a village. Aside from being underground, it was a classic, pre-1.14 village, complete with wooden houses, those black wool lamp things with the torches on them, and, of course, villagers.
But after I placed my trapdoor down and went up to them, I noticed that something was very wrong with these villagers in particular.
Though they resembled any other villager from a distance, these villagers had one very creepy distinction - Their eyes, along with their eyebrows, were missing. They weren't replaced by sockets or anything, just smoothed over as if they had never been there to begin with.
I tried to initiate a trade with the villagers, but they just slowly shook their heads from side to side. Apparently that's something normal villagers do too, now, but these ones did so much slower than ordinary, and made no noises while doing so. These villagers unnerved me, though they seemed harmless enough.
I was startled when I heard a cackling laughter. My body, having tensed up from the creepy happenings, surged with a brief shot of adrenaline before I quickly placed the sound as simply being a witch's laugh, allowing me to calm down a bit. Sure enough, I soon spotted a witch, who attacked me by throwing a splash potion.
The witch was similarly deformed, like the villagers. Apparently her lack of eyes did not impair her aim, however, and she lobbed another potion at me. Thankfully, I was able to charge her and hack her to death with my sword. After the first blow, she was focused on trying to heal with a healing potion, so she wasn't able to kill me before I killed her. As I heard more laughter, poisoned and low on health, I had to retreat. I scurried into the tunnel and down the right path, which I had not yet explored.
The sound of the witches faded behind me as I healed from the battering I had taken. Keep in mind I didn't have a shield or any armor. It was a good thing I had at least brought some steak.
I crawled further down the cold passage, and was beginning to weigh the possibility of turning back - I wanted to explore that village some more, and see what else was there. Those villagers were really creepy. Were those added in 1.16 as well? I hadn't heard of anything like that. And why would they put something like that in Minecraft anyways? It didn't seem to fit in or serve much purpose. I figured I might get an answer if I headed back.
But then, the bell rang out again, dead ahead. I knew I wanted to keep going that way now.
As I headed forward, my sense of unease intensified. Once again I felt as though I was encountering something very unnatural. As though I should be alone, but wasn't. My muscles tensed up as I headed further and further down the passage. My ears strained to listen for any sound, however minute - but none came. The sound of my slow crawling was all that rang out in the blackened stone corridor.
Eventually, I came upon another light.
The passage took another turn and, down this tunnel, the stone was replaced by those disturbingly organic blocks. They were easier to get a view of this time - fleshy and reddish, with deeper red roots or veins slithering through the flesh. They look as if they were made of meat, or still-living muscle tissue.
Once I'd stepped on the blocks, my footsteps were more like squishing noises, as though I was walking over something that partially gave way under my feet. The sounds were the same as those used if you walk on nether wart blocks. My anxiety was intensifying more and more with each block I crossed.
As I crossed over the threshold of the corner and turned to go right, I heard the loudest bell yet ring out through my headphones, much louder than it should have been, as I saw a face pop around from another bend on the opposite side of this hallway.
I barely got a look at this... thing, before I took off in the opposite direction. Even looking at the screenshot now is anxiety-inducing. The entity looked somewhat like what you might imagine a burn victim's corpse to look like, with blackened skin and partially exposed bone visible through gashed red flesh. I had had my finger over the F2 key to take a screenshot of the shroomlight that was illuminating this room, I just happened to slam my finger down on it out of muscle memory before whirring my hands back to the controls and spinning my character around to flee in terror from whatever was after me.
I couldn't go very fast in crawling mode, but I got as close to dashing out of that hall as anyone crawling possibly could. I was horrified when the lag caused me to be pulled backwards, ever closer to the horrible thing following me. I didn't dare turn back, but could hear its footsteps, the same as mine, now not far behind me.
I frantically crawled out of the fleshy side tunnel, nicking the corner with my flint and steel as I fled in hopes of warding off or harming my pursuer.
I scuttled through the tunnels as fast as I could force my character to move. I ignored the village and cut every corner as close as I could, jamming down the ctrl key uselessly even though it was impossible to sprint while crawling. Despite the length of the tunnel, everything seemed like a blur on my return trip. The lag also got more and more intense on my framerate, but I was blessed enough not to be yanked back by walking lag again.
As I fumbled my way down the ladder, I could hear footsteps approaching from above. The sound of that damned bell rang out yet again. I closed the trap door on myself and slid through the final stretch back to the outside. I didn't hear the trapdoor open or close again with the monster's arrival, but I could hear it clawing against the stone to get to me.
When I was finally free from that tomb, I was thankful to see the sunlight again, but that was pressed to the back of my mind as I was cognizant of the fact that I was not the only one trying to leave that wretched place. I spun around to face the corridor and slammed down a block of cobblestone right up against the entrance.
I waited, sword in hand, heart pounding.
After a few seconds, my eyes went wide as the block started to crack.
Freaking out, I did something I probably should have before, and slammed down the esc key, before hitting "Save and quit to title." From there, I shut down the whole program.
I sat, jittering a bit with adrenaline.
Soon enough I started to rationalize things to myself, tried to write it off and conclude it was just something from a new update that I didn't know about - I had been whittled down by unease and then gotten too worked up over what was ultimately just a game. I mean, I had a sword anyways, I elected to just restart the game and put the monster down. That seemed like the best way of concluding with what I was thinking of as childish fear.
But when I went to the worlds screen, my world was gone. The world at the top of the screen was just my creative world in superflat. I scrolled down through the menu, through old worlds, modded worlds, and adventure maps. The world I'd been playing in that whole day, had vanished.
Now that, that disturbed me.
But I didn't just give up that easily, I was trying to face my fears after all, right? So instead of giving up, I opened my .minecraft folder, and went down to "saves."
Sure enough, I found the folder I was looking for, where my world should have been.
However, upon opening it, I was greeted by an unwelcome surprise. While most save folders consist of a few sub-folders, icon.png (the thumbnail next to your world), a file called level.dat, a file called level.dat_old, and lastly a file named session.lock.
Instead, all I found here was a single file, named "level.png"
I opened it.
I recoiled a bit upon seeing it, and quickly closed it out. After posting it here, I'm deleting it and emptying the recycle bin. On top of that even, I'm going to make some random blank file and give it the same name, then put it in the same place, just for good measure.
I considered re-creating the world but... that picture... It really put me off from trying anything more.
I guess that's it. My world was gone and there was really nothing I could do about it. I looked back through those screenshots I took though, I imagine you can guess which one disturbs me the most - it's the one of that monster in the corridor. Looking more closely, I can see it had a nameplate, with the name "DATORFEL". All capital letters, of course.
Upon Googling it, I actually found some relevant results this time. Apparently, that's Swedish, and it translates to something like "DATA ERROR."
There's not much of a conclusion beyond that, but if you want to explore the world, you're free to do so. I certainly won't be going back there any time soon. If you do try it out for yourself, and you get the feeling that something's not right, it's a good idea to trust your instincts.
Category:Stories
Category:Pages by Spinosaurus4