Minecraft: My Uncle, the Serial Killer

Do you ever really know someone? I mean really really? Super really?

Sometimes we can talk and be with people normally for years and then bam: five people dead, house on fire, dog missing. All the while people shake their heads and regret that if they had just put the little clues together all of this could have been averted.

Well, such a clue has come. 

My wife and I play Minecraft with my uncle. He is a great guy: funny, outgoing, will bend over backwards to help you, and always cheerful. Around two months ago, we introduced him to Minecraft. He's in his late forties, but he's beaten Half Life 2 thirty times, and is almost done with the Starcraft 2 single player campaign.

He didn't get it at first. I showed him the game, ran around and explained to him basic crafting and survival techniques. I told him what people have done with the game and how people approach things in unique ways given basic materials. I left him with an extra Minecraft account I had, just in case he was curious, but his first impression of the game were not good.  A week passed and by surprise, he called me up and told me that he has been playing nothing but Minecraft and had a lot of questions! By that point, we told him to play on our multiplayer server so that we could share and help each other.

The server we are on is a private multiplayer server. Only eight people or so are white listed to enter, and being new to the game, we only had a week's head start before my uncle joined. My wife and I made a small house with a nice courtyard:

Most people build nice, pretty, or large things when they try a building type game. A nice little house, a tall glass skyscraper, a beautiful garden, a tremendous sculpture carved into the side of a mountain, a great transportation project, anything. Not my uncle.

A day after he joined us, we noticed a new structure to the side of our house

What was this monstrosity? It's dug into the hill, made of stone, and only one window? In comparison, most of the people in the server built beautiful sandstone structures and gardens for their first homes:

But my uncle:

What kind of structure is this? An all stone square warehouse with one window and no doors? Just to be sure, let's take a closer look:

Oh god, he is going to kill us all. 

This is the type of house serial killers would love to own and work in. It has the "there is stuff going on in here and at night I will creepily stare out this window directly at your courtyard" type look. Circling the Jeffrey Dahmer retreat we noticed there were no doors, so we broke inside:

Hmm.. 

What the hell uncle, it's just as bad inside! What real life number do I use to turn you in?

But maybe it's just an overreaction; let's just objectively describe what's going on:

• Size of a warehouse, but only one person lives there
• Severe lack of light—any light
• Lack of furniture or decoration
• One window
• Said window looks directly into our house
• No exits
• It has a basement
• Lava in the basement
• Built to withstand World War 3
• Uncle looks like this when playing Minecraft:

Just as a poem or a drawing can reveal a lot about the true nature of a person, so can the actions of what you choose to build or do in games. In this case, we are going to turn a blind eye to what is going on, in the hopes that we will be spared or lucky enough to be left for last. Family, it will kill you.