How to trap an Enderman in Minecraft

Endermen are one of the creepiest mobs to appear in Minecraft. They walk around the place, stealing placed blocks, and attack you if you look them in the eye. The thing about them, though, is that they teleport on a whim. If they are attacked, touch water, or sometimes just if they feel like it, they will teleport themselves away. This can make trapping them for a museum extremely difficult. Here is how we have found to trap an Enderman in Minecraft.

Unfortunately, we have not found a great way to trap an Enderman in Survival, so capturing them by those means may not be worth the effort. Leads and Name Tags do not work on Endermen, so you can’t catch them, and getting them to go into a specific area is way more effort than you should consider putting in. Enderman sometimes will go into a Boat or Minecart so you can keep them there, but that’s no fun. That being said, if you are okay with using Creative Mode to catch them, we have a good method.

To trap an Enderman in Creative Mode, first, find an ocean biome. You need to build a containment area underneath the water that has water on all sides of it for at least 32 blocks. 32 blocks is the maximum distance an Enderman can teleport. If there is water in all directions of it, the Enderman will not teleport.

When you have your location picked out, use Sponge blocks to clear out the water inside your containment area and fill it with whatever you want to decorate. Place an Enderman Spawn Egg, and now you have a trapped Enderman on display, although only underwater.

It should be noted that since you cannot put a Name Tag or Lead on an Enderman without mods, it will likely despawn if you get too far away, meaning you will probably need to supply more spawn eggs to refill the area.