# 11B X 1371 > 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[1]. 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[3]. ## Origin 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 mail[1]. 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[6]. "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 bench[6]. He denied creating it. - **Platform:** YouTube (initial upload by AETBX), GadgetZZ.com (viral publicity) - **Creator:** Parker Warner Wright (pseudonym, claimed creator and artist) - **Date:** 2015 ## 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[6]. 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[10]. 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[2]. The title "11B-X-1371" came from decoding a base64 string written on the original DVD[6]. ## How It Spread On October 13, 2015, Redditor TropicalJohnsons submitted the GadgetZZ article to r/creepy, where it exploded[5]. 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[5]. A few days after the GadgetZZ post, Gizmodo ran a story that pushed the video further into the mainstream[2]. 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*[6]. Reddit's code-breakers made rapid progress. Using spectrogram analysis of the audio track, they found hidden text reading "You are already dead"[1]. They uncovered hex-encoded GPS coordinates (38.897709, -77.036543) pointing to the White House[1]. 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[4]. Binary code beneath the title translated to "Te queda 1 año menos" ("You have one year or less" in Spanish)[7]. 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[8]. Internet investigators tracked the filming location to the former Zofiówka Sanatorium outside Otwock, Poland[9]. 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[9]. *The Daily Dot* obtained exclusive photos confirming the location match[3]. ## How to Use 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[2][4]. 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[1]. 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[7]. 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[3]. ## 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[5]. - 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[9]. - The chess notation "E2-E3 D1-F3 F1-C4 F3xF7" hidden in the video describes Scholar's Mate, a four-move checkmate[1]. - 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[1]. - Wright's plague doctor mask was entirely handmade, and his standing challenge to duplicate it has never been met[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is 11B-X-1371? 11B-X-1371 is a two-minute black-and-white viral video from 2015 showing a figure in a plague doctor costume inside an abandoned Polish asylum, containing hidden coded messages, GPS coordinates, and disturbing spectrogram images embedded using steganography[6]. ### Where did 11B-X-1371 come from? The video was first uploaded to YouTube on May 9, 2015, by a user called AETBX. It went viral in October 2015 after Swedish tech blog GadgetZZ posted about receiving a mysterious DVD containing the footage in the mail from Poland[1]. ### What does 11B-X-1371 mean? The title comes from the plaintext decoding of a base64 string written on the DVD that was mailed to GadgetZZ. The hidden messages within the video reference death, bioterrorism, and include coordinates for the White House, though the creator later revealed it was an art project[6][3]. ### How do you use 11B-X-1371? The video is shared as a reference to internet mysteries and creepy online puzzles rather than used as a traditional meme template. People reference it in discussions about steganography, ARGs, and the "scariest things on the internet"[7]. ### Is 11B-X-1371 still popular? While the active puzzle-solving community wound down after Wright's 2016 reveal, the video is still widely discussed in internet mystery and horror communities, and it's considered one of the landmark cryptographic puzzle videos of the 2010s[7]. ### Who created 11B-X-1371? An anonymous Polish-American artist using the pseudonym Parker Warner Wright claimed authorship in January 2016. He proved his identity by revealing the handmade plague doctor mask and releasing a sequel video, 11B-3-1369[3]. ### What was hidden in the audio spectrogram? Spectrogram analysis revealed text reading "You are already dead," a skull and crossbones symbol, and graphic images that appeared to show tortured women, some sourced from real crime investigations like the Boston Strangler case[2][8]. ### What are the GPS coordinates in the video? Hex-encoded coordinates 38.897709, -77.036543 were found hidden in the video, pointing to the White House on West Executive Avenue NW, Washington, DC[1]. ### Where was the video filmed? Internet investigators traced the filming location to the abandoned Zofiówka Sanatorium outside Otwock, Poland, a former Jewish psychiatric facility that closed in the mid-1990s[9]. ### Was 11B-X-1371 a real threat? Despite messages that were interpreted as implying bioterrorism against the United States, the creator Parker Warner Wright confirmed in January 2016 that the entire project was conceived as a cryptography-inspired art piece[3]. ### What does "muerte" mean in relation to the video? The binary code in the video's original YouTube title translates to "muerte," the Spanish word for "death." Additional Spanish text hidden in the video reads "Te queda 1 año menos" ("You have one year or less")[7]. ### What is the "RED LIPSLIFE TENTH" morse code? A decoded morse code sequence in the video produced the phrase "RED LIPSLIFE TENTH." Some investigators noted that with one letter substitution (F to K), it could be rearranged as an anagram for "KILL THE PRESIDENT"[4]. ## References 1. [Can You Solve the Creepy Crypto-Puzzle That's Consuming the Internet?]() 2. [Unraveling the mystery of 11b-x-1371 with Parker Warner Wright]() 3. [11B X 1371 - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia]() 4. [11B-X-1371 - Know Your Meme]() 5. [11B-X-1371]() 6. [Zofiówka Sanatorium - Wikipedia]() 7. [Wanna See Something REALLY Scary? 11B-X-1371 aka The Plague Doctor Video]() 8. [Mysteriöses Video per Post - Mikrocontroller.net]() 9. [This Creepy Puzzle Arrived In Our Mail (11BX1371 Original Post)]() 10. [Nobody Knows Who Made This Video But It’s Seriously Scaring The Internet | Shortlist]() 11. [Can you solve the riddle behind this scary binary code YouTube video? | Metro News]() 12. [Unraveling the mystery of 11b-x-1371 with Parker Warner Wright]() 13. [11B-X-1371 Explained]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/11b-x-1371 Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library