| “ | Go. To. Sleep | „ |
| ~ Jeff the Killer's famous catchphrase |
Jeff the Killer, born Jeffery Woods, is the titular main protagonist turned to the main antagonist of the 2011 (and 2015 revamped) Creepypasta story of the same title "Jeff the Killer" and "Jeff the Killer 2015"
He is an adolescent serial killer and registered Creepypasta. He was disfigured after being set on fire while fighting a gang of bullies and lost his sanity after witnessing his "new" and "beautiful" face.
Origin
Jeff was a 13-year-old who moved to a new neighborhood with his brother, Liu, and their parents. On their first day of school, they were accosted by 3 bullies named Randy, Keith, & Troy, whom Jeff brutally beat up after they threatened them with knives. Liu took the blame for it and was arrested, sending Jeff into a deep depression. The bullies later attacked Jeff again at a party, and Jeff killed one of them, but not before getting covered in bleach and lit on fire by Keith. During this fight, Jeff's mind permanently snapped.
When Jeff woke up, he was at the hospital and his head was wrapped in bandages. When the bandages were taken off, it was revealed that his face had become disfigured and ghastly pale from the burns, with bright red lips and a leathery texture. Jeff said that he liked his face this way and laughed hysterically, but the doctor foolishly thought that this insanity was merely a side effect of the painkillers and let Jeff go home.
Later that night, Jeff's mother found him carving his face into a permanent smile so that he would no longer have to exert energy to smile, as he put it, and burning off his eyelids so he could always see his face. Jeff's mother went to her husband to tell him that their son had gone completely mad and needed to be killed, but Jeff caught them and stabbed them to death. This woke up Liu (who was recently released), with Jeff telling him as he was about to plunge the knife into his body, "Go to sleep".
Jeff then went on a serial killing rampage, killing those who refused to sleep at night, and as the story continued, Jeff renamed himself "Jeff the Killer".
Derivative Works
Jane the Killer
Due to Jeff's popularity, many fans made different expansions to the Creepypasta, the most well known expansion being a character named Jane the Killer, featured in a story titled Jane's Letter created by DeviantART user FearOfTheBlackWolf. A short story about a woman who views Jeff as her nemesis and kills those before he can, telling them "Don't Go To Sleep, You'll Never Wake Up.". Although this Creepypasta story was short, she became well-liked among the Creepypasta fan-base and many created fan arts of her, and a full audiobook style written Creepypasta was created with the two rivals encountering.
Eventually a detailed backstory was written explaining the details of Jane's background and motivation for wanting Jeff killed. In this story, Jeff, when older, murdered the parents of Jane Richardson, causing Jane to become an immediate enemy of Jeff. Jane had sworn to hunt Jeff and murder him for doing the same to her parents.
In another fan-adaption, "Jane The Killer: The Real Story," Jeff murdered Jane Arkensaw's entire family, friends, and as well as his own family. He lit her on fire by using bleach and gasoline, leaving her scarred and disfigured. Thus, the beginning of their rivalry. However, this particular version of Jane the Killer plagiarizes the character (such as changing her surname from "Richardson" to "Arkensaw"), and the fan-base took it as canon, which displeased the creator of the character.
Despite numerous stories, videos, and artwork, neither Jane Richardson or Jane Arkensaw has a canonical connection to the Jeff the Killer, and are merely derivative works of the Creepypasta.
Slender Man
There are many different ways in which fan content portrays Jeff The Killer and Slenderman in relation to each other. Most fan-works depict Slender Man as mortal enemies on-par with Jeff, showing off one another's skills. Depictions of Jeff typically show him going into combat with Slender Man using his knives, while Slender Man is typically shown using his tentacles.
There are even some various fan-works that depict Jeff the Killer as one of Slenderman's proxies, often painting Jeff's image as some kind of super-proxy that was discovered by Slender Man shortly after murdering his family and escaping to the forest. However, many fans do not exactly approve of this particular fan-work, because they tend to argue and state that Jeff would be 'too insane' to be controlled by Slender Man.
While all of these concepts are non-canon to both Jeff the Killer and to the Slender Man mythos, it is nevertheless an immensely popular combination of the two in numerous fan-artworks.
Homicidal Liu
Another popular expansion is "Homicidal Liu" created by DeviantART user VampireNote13, a story about Jeff's brother Liu surviving his encounter with Jeff in the Creepypasta and developing a split-personality, becoming a serial killer himself and contemplating whether to get revenge on Jeff or spare him. The expansion also claims that Liu is the older brother, even though it was never stated in the actual Creepypasta itself which sibling was the oldest. This expansion was also the origination of the last name "Woods" as Liu is named "Liu Woods" in the expansion. Even though the creator made the story as a "what-if" scenario for a role-playing group, and even acknowledged that Liu dying may have been canonical, a majority of the fanbase took her expansion as canon.
Sesseur's Version
On October 3rd, 2008, a YouTuber named "Sesseur" uploaded a video called "Jeff the Killer [Original Story]". This video came out before the famous Creepypasta was even written. In the original video, the song 'I Guess You're Right', by The Posies, can be heard playing in the background. Sesseur claims he is the one who created Jeff the Killer and that every internet story about Jeff the Killer is fake, including the famous Creepypasta story. He claims Jeff never had an incident with bullies or bleach. Instead, he claims that Jeff was hauling a gallon of acid into his bathroom to clean out his bathtub but slipped on a bar of soap and the acid splashed all over his face and he was taken to a hospital when the neighbors heard his cries. And apparently, in Sessuer's original version of Jeff the Killer, Jeff never murdered Liu or his parents and his full canon name is Jeffrey C. Hodek, not "Jeffrey Alan Woods".
(NOTE: killerjeff's YouTube channel has been terminated due to his violations of YouTube's community guidelines, which took the video down with it. When questioned, his response was that his account was taken down due to the disbelief of him being the original creator of the Jeff the Killer character. Fortunately the video was re-uploaded by a YouTube user called PhenomenonPoltergeist, however, the original audio was not kept, which was the song I Guess You're Right by the Posies playing in the background for a majority of the video. Later on, YouTube user Bob's Brother would come in to re-upload the video with its original audio.).
Jeff the Killer - 2015 Remake
Because the 2011 Creepypasta story was criticized by many for its poor quality and it was even protested that it should not have been allowed on the Creepypasta wiki for not meeting the actual required standards. Because of this, it was taken down from the Creepypasta wiki a year later. However, users constantly re-uploaded it, objecting to the idea of it being taken down due to it being one of the most popular Creepypastas at the time. In late 2014, the community finally decided that the story was banned from the Creepypasta wiki entirely and officially be moved to the Spinpasta Wiki, however, the story was taken down there as well. The story can be found on the official Creepypasta Website, Trollpasta Wiki (now a closed Wiki), and Just The Kittens Wiki (originally "Jeff The Killer Wiki", a Wiki dedicated to all Jeff the Killer fandom stories, but later renamed for unknown reasons).
As a result of the Creepypasta being taken down from the Creepypasta wiki, a competition was made to remake the story entirely and create something more realistic and frightening that could be featured on the wiki. Admin K. Banning Kellum's story won first place, however, it had to be cut down to half its size due to the contest's word limit, the uncut version can be viewed on the Spinpasta Wiki.
The remake stays true to the original Creepypasta with the same characters, with Jeff and his family moving into a new neighborhood as well as a fight with between Jeff and a trio of bullies. However, the result of Jeff's deformed face is different from the one in the original Creepypasta. Unlike the original Creepypasta, Jeff and Liu's ages are stated, with Jeff being 15 years old and Liu being 14 years old. However, this is only revealed in the uncut version of the remake.
K. Banning Kellum became proud of his remake, and soon after Wiki user Kevin Tierney made a Jane the Killer adaption to the remake, he decided to continue the Creepypasta by making a sequel.
The Controversial Image
Not many people know the true origin of the original Jeff the Killer image. Many people believe it was a photoshopped picture of a woman named "Katy Robinson", who allegedly committed suicide due to excessive cyberbullying after visiting 4Chan's /b/ board around the year 2008, and it was believed for several years that the picture of the girl was apparently the now famous Jeff the Killer image. However, this claim is entirely false and has been debunked numerous times, as there are no records of it actually happening. Around 2015, during an interview with YouTube user ScareTheater, the original creator of Jeff the Killer, Sesseur, claims that the Katy Robinson suicide is a - "bogus story", and confirms that the image is actually a picture of himself wearing a white latex mask. However, what was even more strange is that this is also false, even though he did write the original story.
The Jeff image has been seen in places which date to 2005. It has been seen in a Japanese video published on YouTube on 2 August 2007 entitled "NNN臨時放送", which is apparently for a horror film project entitled Victims of Tomorrow or something to that effect, wherein a series of names and ages are listed. After Jeff's face appears for a split second, there is text that says "good night", which might be a precursor to "go to sleep".
The earliest confirmed sighting of the image was on 16 November 2005, on a Japanese message board named pya.cc along with another image that Sesseur also posted, where he claimed that the alternate version was his original design concept. Sesseur's earliest known internet presence was 14 August 2008 where he made a Newgrounds account called "killerjeff" where he acted as if he were Jeff. The original Jeff the Killer video was uploaded on 3 November 2008.
The origins of the image and the subject it portrays are still unknown, as well as how it connects to Japan's internet culture. The most likely story is one that is unverifiable. In this version of the story posited by a few /b/ users, the photograph is of a woman whose identity is currently unknown (although it is speculated that her name is Victoria). She streamed on the now defunct website Stickam in 2005 and used /b/ as a means of promoting herself after the SomethingAwful forums started to become obsolete. One user took a screenshot of her face and posted it, acting as if they were her, with the caption: "Am I pretty?" In a successive series of images photoshopped by different users, one said in response: "now you are." After finding out about this series of events, the woman stopped streaming and vanished.
Three images of Jeff are nowadays generally accepted as being from the thread if it did occur: the famous one, the "alternate version" as Sesseur claimed it was, and a much more realistic although lower-resolution version building off the most famous version.
(Credit to the user Alex who found the information regarding the image of Jeff The Killer as well as other appearances relating to the Creepypasta)
Appearance
Jeff has extremely pale skin and burnt off eyelids, giving him an even more ghostly appearance. Jeff later got his most distinctive trait, the Glasgow smile that he had carved into his face. His build is commonly described as thin, but with some lean muscle tone at the same time, and reaching a height of around 5'10" to 6'0". In various fan depictions, he's typically portrayed in his late teens or early twenties. His clothing normally consists of a pair of black dress pants with a white hoodie, like described in the story, which is sometimes stained with fresh and old blood from his victims.
Personality
Before being burnt alive, he was a quiet and fairly antisocial teenager, not that people actually knew him very well. But shortly after the incident, he became torturous, aggressive, bloodthirsty, and violent, making him one of the most dangerous serial killers in his hometown. Jeff is widely known for luring his victims to an eternal slumber, using a kitchen knife and eerie but soft tone of voice. Even though he prefers to murder his victims with knives, he is more than willing to use any weapon when placed in a desperate situation. He is an extremely stealthy and mischievous individual, able to break into victims' houses almost always without getting himself caught in the act.
Powers and Abilities
Despite being an average human, Jeff appears to wield incredible supernatural abilities that only apply to his human attributes, such as incredible stealth, speed, and supernatural strength used to mercilessly slaughter his victims. Jeff is shown to be incredibly durable, being able to overcome his parents and brother simply by gutting them. One thing that makes him stronger is his intense hatred and bloodlust to keep him going, as well as having great stamina. In recent years, Jeff has been depicted as being a charming individual, manipulating people into trusting him, only to betray them later.
Facts
- The original creator of Jeff the Killer is Sessuer.
- The Jeff the Killer Creepypasta story was written by GameFuelTv It still is unknown when this story was first originally published, the earliest possible known date being November 21st, 2011.
- Despite being one of the most famous Creepypastas, Jeff's original story was removed from the Creepypasta Wiki for failing quality standards. However, the remake of the Creepypasta remains on the wiki.
- A reboot of Jeff the Killer, written by K. Banning Kellum, is available on The Chilling Tales For Dark Nights YouTube channel.
- Jeff has been criticized as one of the worst Creepypastas of all time, despite his huge following and being a major birth icon of Creepypastas and internet horror.
- Jeff is also very notorious for having multiple fan adaptations, fan fictions, and most infamously, copycats, being a vulnerable target for other "killers" to make it into the spotlight.
- Jeff is also very popular due to the many fangirls he has, being a main inspiration for other copycat stories.
- Jeff is also very notorious for having multiple fan adaptations, fan fictions, and most infamously, copycats, being a vulnerable target for other "killers" to make it into the spotlight.
- He is 13 years old in the original story. However, it's unknown how old he is now.
- It is unknown if Jeff is older or younger than his brother Liu.
- Jeff is a featured character in the Creepypasta comic "I Eat Pasta For Breakfast".
- Jeff is very often referenced as a Joker rip-off, mostly resembling Heath Ledger's Joker from the 2008 superhero film, The Dark Knight.
- Some fans have made video games based on Jeff the Killer, most of them (if not all of them) are very poorly made (check out John Wolfe's video if anybody wants to see a good example of them).
- Jeff the Killer has zero connection to anything outside of his own singular story, and any other Creepypastas that feature Jeff the Killer are merely works of fan-fiction (i.e. Jane the Killer, Nina the Killer, Slender Man, Homicidal Liu, etc.). Because Jeff the Killer is a copyrighted character belonging to Sessuer, who used Jeff in only one singular story, any products that are released without the permission of Sessuer are non-canon.
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