About

Jeff the Killer is a creepypasta character depicted as a noseless, grinning, white-skinned man with no eyelids and a black ring around his eyes, with red lips, black hair and exposed teeth. The character is frequently used as a popular Internet Screamer, along with becoming a notorious creepypasta story. The character is also frequently associated with the phrase "go to sleep."

Jeff the Killer first emerged on the Japanese website pya.cc in September 2005 before spreading to sites like YouTube, Newgrounds and 4chan in 2007 and 2008 as additional derivatives and lore surrounding the character expanded. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, the character became a highly recognizable internet figure, appearing in numerous memes, video essays, fan art and other content.

In August 2026, following the success of the Backrooms movie, a Jeff the Killer movie adaptation was announced, with content creator and TikToker Savanah Moss and the studio Tongal developing the film.

Origin

The first known instances of the Jeff the Killer image come from a Japanese site known as pya.cc, dated September 10th, 2005, where there were two distinct versions (shown below). The discovery was marked on a Pastebin, complete with links to the early instances of the image.^[11]

On August 2nd, 2007, a video was uploaded to YouTube titled "NNN臨時放送," which featured the image at the 4:11 mark (shown below).

On August 14th, 2008, user killerjeff^[1] posted the image on the Newgrounds forums and claimed that the image was, in fact, a picture of himself.

On October 3rd, 2008, YouTube user Sesseur uploaded a video presentation of a creepypasta based on the character. Over the next eight years, the video gained over 700,000 views. It has since been removed, though reuploads of it have been reposted.

According to various accounts online, Sesseur created the name "Jeff the Killer" and linked it to the infamous image of the character with the creepypasta story, though the claim is somewhat disputed.^[12]

Sesseur's 2008 Creepypasta

Sesseur's original version of Jeff the Killer is notably different from the 2011 creepypasta.^[16] In Sesseur's story, Jeff is an adult named Jeffrey C. Hodek who begins as an ordinary person before suffering a life-changing accident. While carrying a container of acid into his bathroom to clean his bathtub, Jeff slips on the soapy floor and spills the acid over his face.

His screams alert someone nearby, and he is taken to a hospital, where doctors reconstruct his badly damaged face. The accident and its aftermath gradually cause Jeff to lose his sanity and develop violent tendencies.

Sesseur's early material also presented Jeff as the subject of an urban legend similar to Bloody Mary. According to the legend, a person could summon Jeff by sitting in a dark closet, repeating a phrase three times and calling his name. Jeff would then supposedly appear in front of them, screaming, and could only be dismissed by complimenting him.

Sesseur later characterized Jeff as a psychopath who targets people he considers wicked but may also torment innocent people for amusement.

Creepypasta Wiki 2011 Version

The more widely known 2011 version of Jeff the Killer, published to the Creepypasta Wiki by GameFuelTV and reportedly written by his brother Travis, reimagines Jeff as a teenager who moves to a new neighborhood with his parents and older brother, Liu.^[17]

Soon after moving, Jeff and Liu encounter three bullies named Randy, Keith and Troy, who threaten them with knives. Jeff suddenly experiences a strange, violent feeling and brutally attacks the group. When police investigate, Liu takes responsibility for the fight and is sent to juvenile hall, leaving Jeff increasingly withdrawn and disturbed.

Jeff later attends a neighborhood birthday party, where Randy, Keith and Troy return for revenge. Another violent fight breaks out, during which Jeff kills Randy and severely wounds the others. During the struggle, Jeff is covered in alcohol and bleach before Keith throws a lighter at him, setting him on fire. Jeff survives but is hospitalized with severe burns.

After his bandages are removed, his skin is unnaturally pale and his face badly scarred, but rather than being horrified, Jeff becomes obsessed with his new appearance and descends further into insanity.

After returning home, Jeff mutilates himself to complete his transformation, cutting a permanent smile into his cheeks and burning away his eyelids so that he can supposedly always see his face. His mother discovers what he has done and realizes that he has become dangerously unstable.

Jeff subsequently murders his parents before entering Liu's room and attacking him, delivering the phrase most closely associated with the character, "Go to sleep." The story ends with Jeff becoming the pale-faced serial killer depicted in the famous image, establishing the backstory that became the dominant version of the character online.

Spread

The creepypasta later spawned a number of derivatives as it spread in the late 2000s and 2010s, with over 1,600 results on Creepypasta Wiki^[7] and over 3,700 on Creepypasta.com.^[8]

On November 29th, 2011, YouTube user MrCreepyPasta later uploaded a video, titled "Go To Sleep – 'Jeff The Killer,'" in which he read the creepypasta (shown below). The video received over 8.3 million views, 80,000 likes and 32,250 comments in 14 years.

A video of a rap battle between Jeff The Killer and Slender Man was uploaded by YouTube user Keyblade on November 1st, 2014 (shown below). In 11 years, the video has gained over 180 million views, 2 million likes and 167,500 comments.

The screamer site known as "anne.jpg" featuring Jeff The Killer accompanied by a gunshot sound, was created on September 9th, 2008.^[9]

Over the next 8 years, the site was visited over 23 million times. An Urban Dictionary definition for the screamer was later created on July 30th, 2013.^[10]

Debunkery

The image is commonly believed to be a photoshopped image of Katy Robinson, a girl who was bullied to su-cide by 4chan users for her weight in the fall of 2008.^[5]

The rumored photo of the 4chan girl known as "Katy Robinson" first began to spread as it appeared on the Christian parody site TrueChristian.com's hate emails section. The girl's name is actually Heather White (as shown on the page here).

Along with her photos being shown, the owner of the site mocked her and made her fall for the trick, which was being told that she was on a parody site, not just a religious one. The primary image of Heather has been on the net since 2004 or 2005.

A video by YouTuber and Creepypasta debunker Gage revealed the discussion between him and Heather on Messenger about the Jeff the Killer image and the 4chan rumor of her alleged "su-cide." However, the video has since been deleted.

A Pastebin^[13] of his convo was later created as an archive. What Gage knows so far is that he discovered the fact that Heather had nothing to do with the 4chan rumor going about on /b/ back in 2008, nor was she the girl behind the iconic photoshops of Jeff the Killer.

Rumors

According to some old 4chan users, they said in posts that the girl in the Jeff the Killer Photoshop unedited is some Stickam girl who used to cam on sites for attention back around 2005. Despite her face looking unappealing to some, she ended up being made fun of on /b/ and impersonated by an anonymous user who stole her pic that was sent to a few users who have entered her chat.

Along with the impersonator trolling with the image, they wrote in the captions, "Am I pretty?" Considering the fact that the monitor flash of her face turned out to be white, she looked kind of creepy and was brutally and progressively photoshopped by numerous anons.

Others say it could be the attention-seeker herself, but we cannot confirm this yet. As the impersonator/girl complained about the shops, many more were apparently made until the time they left the forums.

One person said the thread was epic and humorous, but to many, they stated the post, including OP's photo, was not hilarious enough or interesting. The thread was recorded back to at least 2005 before one of the photoshops was crossposted to the Pya.cc site.

A user from another post claimed that there was a much larger and uncropped photo of the girl in a dark, messy room with clothes in the dresser's cabinets.^[14] A mirror on top was shown, along with her sitting or standing on a bed.

Furthermore, most of the info (that came from the 4chan post) was about the girl's appearance. Her appearance is supposedly either curvy or overweight, nationality is Hispanic/Latina and Caucasian; she has strawberry blonde hair, freckles, a mole, crooked teeth and big gums.^[15] All of this happened back in 2005 when /b/ was infested with a lot of camgirls who had joined there, such as Cracky-chan. However, none of this has been confirmed.

Helpful Threads

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Movie Adaptations

In late 2015, independent filmmaker Vitaly Podolyak launched a crowdfunding campaign for a Jeff the Killer film adaptation through his production company, Purity Films.^[18] The project was abandoned after raising just around $400 total.^[19]

Interest in adapting the creepypasta resurfaced in 2026, with an adaptation from the content creation platform Tongal announced on August 11th.^[20]

According to an exclusive article published by The Wrap^[21] on August 11th, 2026, Tongal and TikTok creator Savanah Moss will create a feature-film adaptation of the Jeff the Killer creepypasta, with Moss serving as a producer and helping shape the project's creative direction.

The film is intended to present a grounded horror interpretation of the internet character while remaining faithful to its online origins, with Tongal also inviting independent creators to contribute concepts during development. Moss will produce alongside Mark Korshak and Michael McKay, with the project marking Tongal's first original feature-length horror film.^[21]

Following the announcement on August 11th, 2026, Savanah Moss posted about the new project on her TikTok^[22] account, sharing a video calling for people to help with the development of the adaptation. The post received over 6,600 likes and 180 comments in two days.

Various Examples

Related Memes

AI Anime Girls as Creepypasta Images

AI Anime Girls as Creepypasta Images refers to a series of pictures primarily made on the AI art website Stable Diffusion using img2img in which notable creepypasta imagery is remade to look like cute, anime girls and lolis. The most notable creepypasta images made into anime girls were Jeff the Killer, Smile.jpg, Squidward's Suicide and Trollge. The images trended in early 2023 across social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit and 4chan, among others.

The Creepypasta Song

The Creepypasta Song, also known as THE CREEPYPASTA SONG: The Scariest Song In Decades, refers to a song by YouTuber The "Porcelain Pal" Collective about creepypastas which was posted in March 2025. Notable lyrics include, "Ed, Edd n Eddy Purgatory Theory," "I'm Slender Man! Find my pages," "I'm ProJared and I cheated on my wife," "I'm SlendyTubby, ah!" and "Phineas and Ferb are dead!" Another notable moment is when the Elegy of Emptiness Statue is shown as the "Tails scream" from Sonic.exe is remixed, followed by a voice repeating, "I'm Jeff the Killer!" The song quickly went viral on Twitter / X and TikTok after its original upload. Meme creators made animations and posted reaction videos to the track in the following days.

Kenpokun's Jeff the Killer Edits

Kenpokun's Jeff the Killer Edits refers to a series of viral videos and exploitable memes featuring the work of YouTuber Kenpokun(9w9), a Japanese YouTuber known for posting cryptic and oddly edited videos using Jeff the Killer imagery. In 2025, Kenpo-kun's videos came to be used alongside DJ Toenail soundtracks in a series of notable TikTok and X memes.

Search Interest

External References