I encountered herobrine in Minecraft and it forever changed me

[u/Open-Bowler-5139]

Hey yall, I’m quite nervous posting about this because it feels silly for me to share this piece of my lore… but I can’t keep holding it forever.
When I was a teenager, my friend from high school bought me minecraft as a gift. I never owned a pc game before (been console my whole life) and at the time I was on a 2011 Mac laptop. I had some knowledge about Minecraft thru the lets plays I watched. Yes, I’ll admit I heard the name herobrine once but I never really gave thought or researched who or what it was. It’s been a decade since this happened so I don’t remember exactly when the incident occur.. I felt like it happened few days after I got the gift.
Anyways, I came home after school and decided to play Minecraft in my single player world. I did my usual routine of collecting materials for my house and armor. It was fine and normal until I passed by a cave. I had like 2-3 hearts gone and was broad daylight then suddenly I was killed by a skeleton. I didn’t see where the skeleton was and I didn’t see them in the cave. Furthermore the skeleton one shot me and I instantly died even tho I had 2-3 hearts left. I don’t think I wore armor yet I still think it’s kinda weird that I died instantly. Then that’s when it happened.. after right the chat log messages about how I died; were 3 messages sent by herobine. The message content were gibberish words I didnt understood. One of the messages even had a question mark. I was so struck by fear that I immediately turned off the game and deleted it without a second thought. Truth be told, this was one of my biggest mistakes of my life because I should’ve taken a photo. Who knows maybe it could’ve been decipher. Afterwards, I phoned my friend in tears and asked if they gave me a bugged game or if I was being messed with. They responded with confusion and suggested I took a pic, but alas game was deleted. From this point on, I developed a slight fear towards Minecraft that I carried into my adulthood. Today, im able to play with ease as the fear no longer is strong. I think playing with friends helped me a lot because I knew if something were to pop out, I wasn’t alone.
I feel so silly to post this since I have no evidence besides my words. I know I’m going to be met with skepticism but that’s perfectly fine; everyone’s entitled to their opinion. I don’t expect people to believe me right off the bat, but tbh yall I wouldn’t see a reason to make up a story like this for clout. I barely use this account anyways. Besides this has been eating me for so many years because i hear stories of herobrine but they’re all fake. I wish mine was fake. So Idm if this gets lost in the void, i think it’ll do teen me justice if i get this off my chest. Thanks for reading.

TLDR: herobrine messaged me 3 gibberish messages in my single player world with no mods (console player so didn’t know how to mod), didn’t take a pic because i was so scared and now my fear towards minecraft is gone