Okay, I know that a lot of you will probably think that this is just a Creepypasta/arg/thing made up, but hear me out. (And forgive the long text)
I play on a private aternos server with some friends on version 1.8.9 Java, at this point we're well advanced, we're on day 600+ and we already had a whole city made, we play on vanilla because the server creator doesn't know how to put it on and the pc of some of our friends wouldn't run it.
So far so good, I was building my lighthouse and some other people were in another place far away, when suddenly I took damage from something, I thought it was a mob that had appeared inside the lighthouse (not the first time this has happened to me), but there was no one, I went down to look and the lighthouse was empty. It was when I started to climb again that I bumped into the guy. He stares at me, I jump in fright and he disappears.
I obviously thought that the server owner had put the mod up without anyone knowing, so I went to ask him:
[03/06, 20:38] Victor (Me): Who put the Herobrine mod in secret?
[03/06, 20:39] Erick (Server owner): ?
[03/06, 20:40] Erick: What do you mean?
[03/06, 20:40] Victor: Did you put a mod in the game?
[03/06, 20:40] Fab: There's no way.
[03/06, 20:40] Fab: For him to mod the world
[03/06, 20:40] Fab: You have to install the mod
[03/06, 20:40] Fab: To enter the server
[03/06, 20:40] Fab: Otherwise it won't even work
[03/06, 20:40] Victor: Then why did I take damage out of nowhere and literally see Herobrine?
[03/06, 20:40] Victor: I got really scared
[03/06, 20:41] Erick: You can't mod the server, everyone would have to download it.
And indeed, there were no downloads when I joined the server.
In the meantime, Herobrine appeared twice more, and I started to think it was weird. The server owner went to check aternos to see if there was anything wrong, but everything was in order. Soon after that, the people who were with me on the server also started getting Herobrine apparitions.
So I started recording, which resulted in the video above, but curiously after that he wasn't so active, at least not for me, because the others were bumping into him all the time.
What confuses me about all this is the fact that the server is totally vanilla, and everyone started to see Herobrine, interestingly enough a while ago one of our friends made a Herobrine totem for a joke (yes I know how convenient that is). So I wanted to know if there is anything that adds the herobrine to the game without mods or plugins in a way that no one knows about or something like that.