11B X 1371

2015Viral video / cryptographic puzzleclassic

Also known as: The Plague Doctor Video · 01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101

11B X 1371 is a 2015 black-and-white cryptographic viral video of a plague doctor in an abandoned Polish asylum whose hidden GPS coordinates and messages were decoded by Reddit crowdsourcing.

11B-X-1371 is a cryptographic puzzle video from 2015 featuring a figure in a plague doctor costume standing inside an abandoned Polish asylum. The two-minute black-and-white clip went viral in October 2015 after Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ posted about receiving a mysterious DVD in the mail, triggering a massive crowdsourced decoding effort on Reddit that uncovered hidden messages, GPS coordinates for the White House, and disturbing spectrogram images1. Three months later, an anonymous Polish-American artist using the pseudonym Parker Warner Wright claimed responsibility and revealed the project was an elaborate piece of cryptographic art3.

TL;DR

11B-X-1371 is a cryptographic puzzle video from 2015 featuring a figure in a plague doctor costume standing inside an abandoned Polish asylum.

Overview

The video is two minutes of grainy black-and-white footage showing a person dressed in a long dark hooded cloak and a beaked leather mask, resembling a plague doctor from the Black Death era. The figure stands in a crumbling brick building with trees visible through window openings, holding up one hand to reveal an irregularly blinking light in the palm6. A harsh, discordant buzzing noise plays throughout. The figure makes deliberate hand signals, points at the camera, and executes a series of unsettling jump cuts before standing motionless against the wall10.

What made the video infamous wasn't the footage itself but what was hidden inside it. Using steganography, the creator embedded coded messages in the audio spectrogram, the video's metadata, and even the figure's movements. Decoded content included GPS coordinates pointing to the White House, morse code messages, binary strings in Spanish, and graphic images sourced from real murder investigations2. The title "11B-X-1371" came from decoding a base64 string written on the original DVD6.

On May 9, 2015, a YouTube account called AETBX uploaded a video titled "01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101," which translates from binary to "muerte" (Spanish for "death")5. The clip sat mostly unnoticed for months. On September 15, 2015, another YouTube channel under the name Parker Wright uploaded the same footage with the title "11B X 1371"5.

The story didn't break wide until October 12, 2015, when John-Erik "Johny" Krahbichler, editor of the Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ, published a post about a "creepy puzzle" he'd received in the mail1. An envelope postmarked in Warsaw and addressed to "Johny K." at the site's Helsingborg P.O. box contained a DVD with a long alphanumeric string scrawled on it. Krahbichler initially assumed it was a product key for software sent for review. Instead, he found the video6. "I was unsure what to think of it, but I found it very odd," he told *The Washington Post*6.

The AETBX uploader, contacted by *The Washington Post*, identified himself only as "Daniel from Spain" and claimed he too had received the video via email from an unknown woman who said she found it on a park bench6. He denied creating it.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (initial upload by AETBX), GadgetZZ.com (viral publicity)
Key People
Parker Warner Wright
Date
2015
Year
2015

On May 9, 2015, a YouTube account called AETBX uploaded a video titled "01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101," which translates from binary to "muerte" (Spanish for "death"). The clip sat mostly unnoticed for months. On September 15, 2015, another YouTube channel under the name Parker Wright uploaded the same footage with the title "11B X 1371".

The story didn't break wide until October 12, 2015, when John-Erik "Johny" Krahbichler, editor of the Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ, published a post about a "creepy puzzle" he'd received in the mail. An envelope postmarked in Warsaw and addressed to "Johny K." at the site's Helsingborg P.O. box contained a DVD with a long alphanumeric string scrawled on it. Krahbichler initially assumed it was a product key for software sent for review. Instead, he found the video. "I was unsure what to think of it, but I found it very odd," he told *The Washington Post*.

The AETBX uploader, contacted by *The Washington Post*, identified himself only as "Daniel from Spain" and claimed he too had received the video via email from an unknown woman who said she found it on a park bench. He denied creating it.

How It Spread

On October 13, 2015, Redditor TropicalJohnsons submitted the GadgetZZ article to r/creepy, where it exploded. The video pulled in over 700,000 views within seven days, and the Reddit post generated more than 2,200 comments as users organized a crowdsourced decoding effort.

A few days after the GadgetZZ post, Gizmodo ran a story that pushed the video further into the mainstream. Outlets including *Metro*, *Shortlist*, and *Slate* followed with their own coverage. *Slate* writer Lily Hay Newman compared watching the video to the experience of viewing the cursed tape from the 2002 film *The Ring*.

Reddit's code-breakers made rapid progress. Using spectrogram analysis of the audio track, they found hidden text reading "You are already dead". They uncovered hex-encoded GPS coordinates (38.897709, -77.036543) pointing to the White House. A morse code sequence was decoded as "RED LIPSLIFE TENTH," which some noted could be rearranged as an anagram for "KILL THE PRESIDENT" if one letter was swapped. Binary code beneath the title translated to "Te queda 1 año menos" ("You have one year or less" in Spanish). The spectrogram also revealed disturbing images that appeared to show women being tortured, with some sourced to real crime scene photos from cases like the Boston Strangler.

Internet investigators tracked the filming location to the former Zofiówka Sanatorium outside Otwock, Poland. Built in the early 1900s as a Jewish mental health facility, the sanatorium had a tragic history during the Holocaust before eventually closing in the mid-1990s and falling into disrepair. *The Daily Dot* obtained exclusive photos confirming the location match.

How to Use This Meme

11B-X-1371 isn't a meme template in the traditional sense. It's referenced and shared rather than remixed. People typically:

- Share the original video as a "scariest thing on the internet" challenge or recommendation - Reference the plague doctor imagery when discussing creepy internet mysteries - Use the decoded messages ("You are already dead," "muerte," White House coordinates) as shorthand for elaborate internet puzzles - Bring it up in discussions about steganography, ARGs, or internet horror culture

The plague doctor costume from the video became a recognizable visual shorthand for internet mystery culture. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the imagery saw renewed circulation as plague doctor masks became more culturally visible.

Cultural Impact

The 11B-X-1371 saga was one of the largest crowdsourced decoding efforts of the mid-2010s internet. Major outlets including *Gizmodo*, *The Washington Post*, *Slate*, *Metro*, and *The Daily Dot* covered the mystery. The investigation demonstrated how Reddit's collaborative problem-solving could dissect a complex multimedia puzzle in days, combining spectrogram analysis, cryptography, geolocation, and forensic image matching.

The video also raised genuine alarm. The combination of decoded messages mentioning "Kill the President," White House coordinates, and references to death in Spanish led some to treat it as a potential security threat rather than an art project. This tension between art and perceived threat made it a case study in how context-free cryptic content can be interpreted in the age of crowdsourced investigation.

Wright's eventual reveal as the creator highlighted questions about anonymous artistic intent on the internet. His use of physical media (DVDs left in public, USB drives at GPS coordinates) alongside digital distribution was unusual for 2015 and anticipated later trends in immersive puzzle experiences.

Full History

The initial wave of theories ranged wildly. Some users on Reddit believed the video was a genuine bioterrorism threat aimed at the United States. Others argued it was viral marketing for an upcoming horror film or video game. A few speculated it was simply an elaborate student film project. The mixture of coded coordinates for the White House, threatening Spanish-language messages, and graphic spectrogram imagery gave the puzzle an air of genuine menace that set it apart from typical internet mysteries.

The origin story itself was tangled. Parker Warner Wright later revealed that he had seeded exactly three copies of the video into the world on May 9, 2015. Two were physical discs left in Poland. One was placed on the metro, the other in a park. The third copy was posted as a file on 4chan. This explained how the video appeared to surface independently from multiple directions, with 4chan users, a Spanish man named "Daniel," and a Swedish tech blogger all encountering it through seemingly separate channels.

One investigative thread focused on the plague doctor mask itself. Since such masks aren't mass-produced, detectives theorized that identifying the seller on Etsy or eBay could unmask the creator. That hunt went nowhere because, as Wright later revealed, the mask was entirely handmade. He issued a public challenge for anyone to create an exact duplicate, knowing no one could.

By late December 2015, the trail had gone cold. Dozens of copycat plague doctor videos flooded YouTube, all riding the hype of the original. Then on December 31, 2015, the Parker Wright YouTube channel posted a sequel titled "11B-3-1369" featuring the same plague doctor figure and a new set of encrypted clues. The sequel racked up over 211,000 views in less than three weeks.

On January 19, 2016, *The Daily Dot* published an exclusive interview with the creator. Speaking via direct message and encrypted email, the person behind the pseudonym Parker Warner Wright confirmed the videos were a cryptography-inspired art project. Wright claimed to live in Poland and hold U.S. citizenship, though he wouldn't be more specific. He described his work in characteristically cryptic terms: "I see my work as waves on the ocean. Some people look for shells in it, some surf, others dive".

Wright's reveal didn't satisfy everyone. Many demanded further proof, suspecting another hoax riding the original's fame. To prove himself, Wright created a Facebook page where he demonstrated the handmade plague doctor mask from multiple angles, and he took real-world engagement further by hiding USB drives at various GPS coordinates and posting clues online, sending puzzle hunters on physical scavenger hunts across countries.

The video's legacy extended beyond internet sleuthing. Horror outlet *Dread Central* featured it in a recurring column about genuinely unsettling footage, calling it one of the most alarming discoveries to emerge from YouTube's darker corners. The puzzle format, combining video, audio steganography, and real-world distribution, influenced a wave of ARG-style horror content in the years that followed.

Fun Facts

The binary code in the video's original YouTube title (01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101) spells "muerte," the Spanish word for death.

The video was filmed at Zofiówka Sanatorium, a former Jewish psychiatric facility outside Otwock, Poland, where nearly 400 patients were murdered during the Holocaust in 1942.

The chess notation "E2-E3 D1-F3 F1-C4 F3xF7" hidden in the video describes Scholar's Mate, a four-move checkmate.

GadgetZZ received the DVD at their Swedish P.O. box despite also having a U.S. address, suggesting the sender specifically chose the European location.

Wright's plague doctor mask was entirely handmade, and his standing challenge to duplicate it has never been met.

Derivatives & Variations

11B-3-1369

Wright's official sequel video, released December 31, 2015, with a new set of encrypted clues and the same plague doctor figure. It accumulated 211,000+ YouTube views within three weeks[5].

Copycat plague doctor videos

Dozens of imitators flooded YouTube by late December 2015, creating their own black-and-white plague doctor clips to piggyback on the original's virality[3].

Real-world GPS scavenger hunts

Wright hid USB drives at coordinates posted online, turning the puzzle into a physical treasure hunt that drew participants from multiple countries[5].

Parker Warner Wright's social media presence

Following the reveal, Wright maintained a Twitter account (@ParkerWWright) and Facebook page where he continued posting cryptic content and interacting with puzzle solvers[3].

Frequently Asked Questions

11B X 1371

2015Viral video / cryptographic puzzleclassic

Also known as: The Plague Doctor Video · 01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101

11B X 1371 is a 2015 black-and-white cryptographic viral video of a plague doctor in an abandoned Polish asylum whose hidden GPS coordinates and messages were decoded by Reddit crowdsourcing.

11B-X-1371 is a cryptographic puzzle video from 2015 featuring a figure in a plague doctor costume standing inside an abandoned Polish asylum. The two-minute black-and-white clip went viral in October 2015 after Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ posted about receiving a mysterious DVD in the mail, triggering a massive crowdsourced decoding effort on Reddit that uncovered hidden messages, GPS coordinates for the White House, and disturbing spectrogram images. Three months later, an anonymous Polish-American artist using the pseudonym Parker Warner Wright claimed responsibility and revealed the project was an elaborate piece of cryptographic art.

TL;DR

11B-X-1371 is a cryptographic puzzle video from 2015 featuring a figure in a plague doctor costume standing inside an abandoned Polish asylum.

Overview

The video is two minutes of grainy black-and-white footage showing a person dressed in a long dark hooded cloak and a beaked leather mask, resembling a plague doctor from the Black Death era. The figure stands in a crumbling brick building with trees visible through window openings, holding up one hand to reveal an irregularly blinking light in the palm. A harsh, discordant buzzing noise plays throughout. The figure makes deliberate hand signals, points at the camera, and executes a series of unsettling jump cuts before standing motionless against the wall.

What made the video infamous wasn't the footage itself but what was hidden inside it. Using steganography, the creator embedded coded messages in the audio spectrogram, the video's metadata, and even the figure's movements. Decoded content included GPS coordinates pointing to the White House, morse code messages, binary strings in Spanish, and graphic images sourced from real murder investigations. The title "11B-X-1371" came from decoding a base64 string written on the original DVD.

On May 9, 2015, a YouTube account called AETBX uploaded a video titled "01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101," which translates from binary to "muerte" (Spanish for "death"). The clip sat mostly unnoticed for months. On September 15, 2015, another YouTube channel under the name Parker Wright uploaded the same footage with the title "11B X 1371".

The story didn't break wide until October 12, 2015, when John-Erik "Johny" Krahbichler, editor of the Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ, published a post about a "creepy puzzle" he'd received in the mail. An envelope postmarked in Warsaw and addressed to "Johny K." at the site's Helsingborg P.O. box contained a DVD with a long alphanumeric string scrawled on it. Krahbichler initially assumed it was a product key for software sent for review. Instead, he found the video. "I was unsure what to think of it, but I found it very odd," he told *The Washington Post*.

The AETBX uploader, contacted by *The Washington Post*, identified himself only as "Daniel from Spain" and claimed he too had received the video via email from an unknown woman who said she found it on a park bench. He denied creating it.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (initial upload by AETBX), GadgetZZ.com (viral publicity)
Key People
Parker Warner Wright
Date
2015
Year
2015

On May 9, 2015, a YouTube account called AETBX uploaded a video titled "01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101," which translates from binary to "muerte" (Spanish for "death"). The clip sat mostly unnoticed for months. On September 15, 2015, another YouTube channel under the name Parker Wright uploaded the same footage with the title "11B X 1371".

The story didn't break wide until October 12, 2015, when John-Erik "Johny" Krahbichler, editor of the Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ, published a post about a "creepy puzzle" he'd received in the mail. An envelope postmarked in Warsaw and addressed to "Johny K." at the site's Helsingborg P.O. box contained a DVD with a long alphanumeric string scrawled on it. Krahbichler initially assumed it was a product key for software sent for review. Instead, he found the video. "I was unsure what to think of it, but I found it very odd," he told *The Washington Post*.

The AETBX uploader, contacted by *The Washington Post*, identified himself only as "Daniel from Spain" and claimed he too had received the video via email from an unknown woman who said she found it on a park bench. He denied creating it.

How It Spread

On October 13, 2015, Redditor TropicalJohnsons submitted the GadgetZZ article to r/creepy, where it exploded. The video pulled in over 700,000 views within seven days, and the Reddit post generated more than 2,200 comments as users organized a crowdsourced decoding effort.

A few days after the GadgetZZ post, Gizmodo ran a story that pushed the video further into the mainstream. Outlets including *Metro*, *Shortlist*, and *Slate* followed with their own coverage. *Slate* writer Lily Hay Newman compared watching the video to the experience of viewing the cursed tape from the 2002 film *The Ring*.

Reddit's code-breakers made rapid progress. Using spectrogram analysis of the audio track, they found hidden text reading "You are already dead". They uncovered hex-encoded GPS coordinates (38.897709, -77.036543) pointing to the White House. A morse code sequence was decoded as "RED LIPSLIFE TENTH," which some noted could be rearranged as an anagram for "KILL THE PRESIDENT" if one letter was swapped. Binary code beneath the title translated to "Te queda 1 año menos" ("You have one year or less" in Spanish). The spectrogram also revealed disturbing images that appeared to show women being tortured, with some sourced to real crime scene photos from cases like the Boston Strangler.

Internet investigators tracked the filming location to the former Zofiówka Sanatorium outside Otwock, Poland. Built in the early 1900s as a Jewish mental health facility, the sanatorium had a tragic history during the Holocaust before eventually closing in the mid-1990s and falling into disrepair. *The Daily Dot* obtained exclusive photos confirming the location match.

How to Use This Meme

11B-X-1371 isn't a meme template in the traditional sense. It's referenced and shared rather than remixed. People typically:

- Share the original video as a "scariest thing on the internet" challenge or recommendation - Reference the plague doctor imagery when discussing creepy internet mysteries - Use the decoded messages ("You are already dead," "muerte," White House coordinates) as shorthand for elaborate internet puzzles - Bring it up in discussions about steganography, ARGs, or internet horror culture

The plague doctor costume from the video became a recognizable visual shorthand for internet mystery culture. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the imagery saw renewed circulation as plague doctor masks became more culturally visible.

Cultural Impact

The 11B-X-1371 saga was one of the largest crowdsourced decoding efforts of the mid-2010s internet. Major outlets including *Gizmodo*, *The Washington Post*, *Slate*, *Metro*, and *The Daily Dot* covered the mystery. The investigation demonstrated how Reddit's collaborative problem-solving could dissect a complex multimedia puzzle in days, combining spectrogram analysis, cryptography, geolocation, and forensic image matching.

The video also raised genuine alarm. The combination of decoded messages mentioning "Kill the President," White House coordinates, and references to death in Spanish led some to treat it as a potential security threat rather than an art project. This tension between art and perceived threat made it a case study in how context-free cryptic content can be interpreted in the age of crowdsourced investigation.

Wright's eventual reveal as the creator highlighted questions about anonymous artistic intent on the internet. His use of physical media (DVDs left in public, USB drives at GPS coordinates) alongside digital distribution was unusual for 2015 and anticipated later trends in immersive puzzle experiences.

Full History

The initial wave of theories ranged wildly. Some users on Reddit believed the video was a genuine bioterrorism threat aimed at the United States. Others argued it was viral marketing for an upcoming horror film or video game. A few speculated it was simply an elaborate student film project. The mixture of coded coordinates for the White House, threatening Spanish-language messages, and graphic spectrogram imagery gave the puzzle an air of genuine menace that set it apart from typical internet mysteries.

The origin story itself was tangled. Parker Warner Wright later revealed that he had seeded exactly three copies of the video into the world on May 9, 2015. Two were physical discs left in Poland. One was placed on the metro, the other in a park. The third copy was posted as a file on 4chan. This explained how the video appeared to surface independently from multiple directions, with 4chan users, a Spanish man named "Daniel," and a Swedish tech blogger all encountering it through seemingly separate channels.

One investigative thread focused on the plague doctor mask itself. Since such masks aren't mass-produced, detectives theorized that identifying the seller on Etsy or eBay could unmask the creator. That hunt went nowhere because, as Wright later revealed, the mask was entirely handmade. He issued a public challenge for anyone to create an exact duplicate, knowing no one could.

By late December 2015, the trail had gone cold. Dozens of copycat plague doctor videos flooded YouTube, all riding the hype of the original. Then on December 31, 2015, the Parker Wright YouTube channel posted a sequel titled "11B-3-1369" featuring the same plague doctor figure and a new set of encrypted clues. The sequel racked up over 211,000 views in less than three weeks.

On January 19, 2016, *The Daily Dot* published an exclusive interview with the creator. Speaking via direct message and encrypted email, the person behind the pseudonym Parker Warner Wright confirmed the videos were a cryptography-inspired art project. Wright claimed to live in Poland and hold U.S. citizenship, though he wouldn't be more specific. He described his work in characteristically cryptic terms: "I see my work as waves on the ocean. Some people look for shells in it, some surf, others dive".

Wright's reveal didn't satisfy everyone. Many demanded further proof, suspecting another hoax riding the original's fame. To prove himself, Wright created a Facebook page where he demonstrated the handmade plague doctor mask from multiple angles, and he took real-world engagement further by hiding USB drives at various GPS coordinates and posting clues online, sending puzzle hunters on physical scavenger hunts across countries.

The video's legacy extended beyond internet sleuthing. Horror outlet *Dread Central* featured it in a recurring column about genuinely unsettling footage, calling it one of the most alarming discoveries to emerge from YouTube's darker corners. The puzzle format, combining video, audio steganography, and real-world distribution, influenced a wave of ARG-style horror content in the years that followed.

Fun Facts

The binary code in the video's original YouTube title (01101101 01110101 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100101) spells "muerte," the Spanish word for death.

The video was filmed at Zofiówka Sanatorium, a former Jewish psychiatric facility outside Otwock, Poland, where nearly 400 patients were murdered during the Holocaust in 1942.

The chess notation "E2-E3 D1-F3 F1-C4 F3xF7" hidden in the video describes Scholar's Mate, a four-move checkmate.

GadgetZZ received the DVD at their Swedish P.O. box despite also having a U.S. address, suggesting the sender specifically chose the European location.

Wright's plague doctor mask was entirely handmade, and his standing challenge to duplicate it has never been met.

Derivatives & Variations

11B-3-1369

Wright's official sequel video, released December 31, 2015, with a new set of encrypted clues and the same plague doctor figure. It accumulated 211,000+ YouTube views within three weeks[5].

Copycat plague doctor videos

Dozens of imitators flooded YouTube by late December 2015, creating their own black-and-white plague doctor clips to piggyback on the original's virality[3].

Real-world GPS scavenger hunts

Wright hid USB drives at coordinates posted online, turning the puzzle into a physical treasure hunt that drew participants from multiple countries[5].

Parker Warner Wright's social media presence

Following the reveal, Wright maintained a Twitter account (@ParkerWWright) and Facebook page where he continued posting cryptic content and interacting with puzzle solvers[3].

Frequently Asked Questions