66: The Jeff The Killer Mystery (w/ BlameItOnJorge) | Red Thread
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They said he was just a story. Bleach white skin, a carved smile, eyes that never closed. Jeff the killer whispering, go to sleep into your ears late at night. But the truth was buried deeper. He wasn't a monster born in the shadows of mere story. He was a man made in plain sight. The mansion, the island, the secrets. And when they finally looked too close, Jeffrey went to sleep one last time.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Red Thread. That's immediately going to make no sense to Jorge here, who is our guest of Red Thread this week. Call me Jorge is his username online. How's it going, dude?

Pretty good, man. Thanks for having me. How are you guys doing? Good, thank you. Did you see, do you understand the twist of that little short story narrative there or did it fly over your head? I heard mansion and island and I put two and two together and I was like, oh no. We're getting demonetized. Yeah, immediately. This is the most unsuccessful series of all time due to the fact that I cannot stop inserting Jeffrey Epstein into every single one of these introductions.

I didn't think you were actually going to name drop him. I wasn't going to say it, but yeah. Well, I'm fine with it. It's already over and done with now. People already know. We've done this a million times by this point of inserting Jeffrey Epstein into the narrative of every Red Thread story. Why stop now? But this episode and many others, in fact, all of them apart from one, are not about Jeffrey Epstein. They are, in fact, about internet mysteries and weird things out in the world. Cryptids, cults, conspiracies, all those kinds of cool things. So I thought...

But no better guest than to have you on the show. It's a pleasure to have you here. Would you like to tell the audience specifically what we are going to be tackling today?

Oh man, so yeah, this is a big one. We're going to be tackling the Jephthah Killer image mystery and the Kree positive, of course, because that's also worth discussing. So I cover lost media on my channel and in terms of what's the biggest rabbit hole, the biggest search going on right now, I would say the search for the original Jephthah Killer image is really, really high up there. I mean, there are bounties, there's endless amounts of videos

a discord server, like a subreddit just to find mysteries. Quite a handful of documents. So this is actually like the largest manhunt on lost media at the moment, in your opinion? There's quite a few going on right now. There's a few, but like this is up there. I think this is like the next big hunt. You gotta tell us what the bounty is, surely. Yeah, how much are we gonna earn from this?

Once we find... Oh, God, dude, it's like $11,000. Last I checked, it's like $11,600 and something. So, Jordan, that's USD. That's about $500,000 Australian dollars, probably. Oh, my God, that's incredible. We can buy an eight of a house. No, that is pretty big for Lost Media. I mean, that's just money put up front from... I'm assuming it's like crowdsourced money, right?

There's some money from the community. I think Scare Theater put $1,000. Strangely, the thing that started people submitting bounties for this thing was Mudahar from Some Morning Gamers. I think he made a few videos on the topic. And then at the end, he's like, you know what? I'm putting down $10,000. If you could find the original image. Yeah.

$10,000 and people added $1,000 and people added $100. I think someone threw in $1 just for funsies. Imagine being that powerful. Imagine being that powerful like some ordinary gamers though, Jordan, where you just put down $10,000 on this bounty just like that.

Yeah, like you're a sheriff in the old west or something. You don't have to put down bounties anymore. It's so cool. I love this. It is really cool. I love this subsection of the internet based around like lost media, like what Jorge is talking about here, where people go out of their way

years, decades even, with this granular focus on trying to uncover the origins or uncover the existence of certain things that may or may not even exist in the first place. It's like a level of dedication and extreme scrutiny that I just find like

just so impressive that people are able to dedicate their lives or a portion of their lives anyway to uncovering that kind of thing. And the amount of, what would you call it? Like online archival of these things. Yeah. Sleuthing as well as just like the information that they, they compile online about it is just,

The rabbit holes are so impressive to go down, basically. It's so funny because these are the most inconsequential good-for-nothing mysteries. What does it matter if we do find the Jeff the Killer original image, for example? There's nothing in the world that's going to inconsequentially change. I'm not trying to belittle them or anything. It's an insane amount of dedication. I respect for people who go out of their way to do this.

No, I love it. I love it. It's absolutely incredible. It's a great passion that people have for these kinds of mysteries. And the passion that they have for it just kind of rubs off on me. I can't not be impressed by it.

And it's just so much fun as an outsider to then go in at the end of their investigations or, you know, when the investigations have reached their crescendo and then just kind of read through it all and see how they got to the point where they did, which is why I love it. It's a very fun rabbit hole. Jordan, you, on the other hand, have no kind of experience with the internet at all, really, as a whole. Not really. So you don't know what Jeff the Killer is, I'm assuming. Look,

I've looked at the photo. I swear to God, I've seen it. Yeah. But again, I do feel like I'm just getting brought into a police station and them saying like, did you see this man? And you're kind of just like, I don't know. It was a long time ago. Like that's. Yeah. I would hope not. Like I don't want to see this man. Yeah. This is another face you want to see in a police lineup. Um, regardless. Yeah. That, that experience I feel is an experience that is going to be echoed by a lot of people. Um, yeah.

Maybe not in our audience. So it's old school stuff, is it? I mean, it's old school in the sense that it's from like 2010. That's not really that old school, but it's still... I don't know. Good Charlotte was around. I guess that is old school. It's quite a while ago. Yeah, it is quite a while ago. It is like the wild west of the internet, right? I don't know about you guys, but I think I got home internet by like...

time I was like 12, 13, 14. So it was pretty early for me before I became like super modernized and serialized, I guess you could say. Yeah, I would say like... Yeah, in terms of like the social media world, don't you feel like that 2008, 2010 period was the real formative years of it? I know that it existed before that, but that to me seems like the nether nether time where there wasn't even a civilization being formed yet. To me, there's just pre-lonely Ireland and post-lonely Ireland. Ha ha ha!

It's the MySpace era. Yeah. I think that is the formative years for us, at least, because we're kind of like of the same generation. Well, maybe not the same generation with you and me, Jordan. But regardless, like we probably entered the internet at the same time, like 2008. Yeah. Yeah. So we had the same formative experience. But I think like most people refer to the Wild West of the internet as like the early 2000s.

Oh, yeah, but man, come on, that Wild West is just, that's just, the web is the dark web, right? It's not the dark web, there was the surface web. There was still the surface web in the early 2000s, but it was like a lot of like MapQuest pages and shit like that, like very obscure IRC channels. So it wasn't as accessible. I feel like there was a lot more forums too. Yeah, oh, so many forums. Yeah, like Google, not Google Groups, what's it called? There was

There was like a Google forum that was kind of popular in like early, early 2000s that funny enough comes up in a lot of these lost media mysteries and searches. Yeah. The entire internet was basically forums at that time. Basically websites where you can make posts. But then social media, social media like was invented, invented in the modern terms in like 2008. And then the internet kind of shifted to that kind of ecosystem. Yeah.

You never really surf the web anymore. I don't know about you guys, but it's just all social media and emails and stuff. You just open up. Your browser is basically just to go to places that you have already been to. There's no browsing necessarily. It's just you open it up, go to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, whatever your drug of choice is.

and then go there and you know that's all that the internet is used for basically or you just google a question and click on the first reddit post that you see because they'll have the answer that's basically it right that's the internet these days

That's the internet now, and that's all I know, and that's all I understand. Yes, so you don't... And frankly, this photo disturbs me immensely because it doesn't seem to slot into one of those four mega companies. No, this is... Yeah, I guess this is early internet kind of culture at its greatest when these kinds of things just popped up and took a life of their own. Jeff the Killer is best kind of...

by the phrase go to sleep. These words haunted many internet users in the early 2010s, a story that was propelled into popularity in 2011 after being posted on Creepypasta, which was a Wikia at the time. Many are familiar with the legacy and story of Jeff the Killer, apart from Jordan. Creepypastas themselves have been around since the early 2000s, its origins rooted in email chains. The

The name itself evolved from copy and paste to copy paste to copy pasta and then creepy pasta because a lot of these copy pastes were just, you know, jump scares or scary stories, basically. So creepy pasta was the logical conclusion of that kind of name evolution. Most of the email chains I got back in the day were just like, send this on to 10 friends. Otherwise, you'll have bad luck forever. Yeah, basically shit like that.

Bad luck forever. You got off easy on that one.

Wasn't it usually the ring girl would come and kill you? Yeah, there was that as well. It was more pathetic because I was young enough to think, oh no, maybe she will. Yeah, I was genuinely scared a lot of the time. That's how stupid like 10 year olds are. Yeah, I got someone that's like, oh, your mother will die or you'll be like forever alone if you don't send this to like 10 people or something. And then like, there would be like attached like an image of like, like the ring girl, like, like, or what was another one? Like Carmen Winstead or something. Like this is like, now we're talking like 2007, 2008 internet, like,

This is before our smartphones that had a little Motorola Metro PCS phone. Yeah, oh man. My first flip phone. I remember I would usually think that I could game the system by just marking the emails unread and then I would be totally fine because technically I hadn't read it even though that's not how curses work. That's like wearing a rabbit paw around you. Yeah, yeah. That's not bad, really. That's how I was able to avoid bad luck for life. I just constantly click markers unread.

I probably wouldn't believe that. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. You did it, man. Yeah, I'm here. I made it. Yeah, you lived. So, yeah, basically creepypastas, they're a form of digital short story designed to be copy, pasted, and sent on to terrify friends. Very popular in the early 2000s. It's an

It's an incredibly popular medium that still receives active fascination to this day. Jeff the Killer, the title of this Red Thread episode, wasn't one of the first creepypastas, but the particular story did become one of the most famous examples of the medium, most likely due to the terrifying image that accompanied the story that I'm sure is instantly recognizable to everyone in the audience. Like Jordan said, even if you haven't, even if you don't know the story, you've probably seen the picture at some point.

throughout the history of your online activity because it is used as like a jump scare thing or a meme a lot of the times, especially in the modern era. So you probably have seen the image and I'm very sorry to the people in our audience who watch this video on YouTube and stuff because you are seeing the image right now probably or at some point in this video and you will probably be scared by it.

if you've never seen it before. So very sorry about that. Pass this video on to 10 friends. Otherwise, this is Jeff the Killer Guy. We'll show up and kill you. We'll get you. Yeah. So you've seen it probably. You probably know what it is.

But yeah, he wasn't one of the first creepypastas, definitely not the story that created the creepypasta medium. But when you Google the words Jeff the Killer, or if a friend does send you the image randomly, you will immediately be confronted with an up-close face of a bleached-skinned person with no nose, circular wide eyes with black rims, black hair, and a creepy stretched smile with blood-colored lips. What is it about people with no noses that is so scary?

That's a great question. I never thought about that. Why? What is it? What is it about not just that empty space there? That's probably the scariest part of the image to me is just the empty vacant space in the middle of the face. And I'm not sure why. You know what for me? That's the part I appreciate the most, huh? Yeah, the eyes are fine. They're just like cute little raccoon eyes and then the smiles, whatever. Like I've seen, I've been to England. I've seen bad dental before and my own teeth. Yeah, bro.

So I know what to expect there. But no nose is just weirdly terrifying.

I was about to bring up that the eyes are the thing that get me in and we'll get to the, the origin of the eyes later. Cause that's also kind of a thing that I think people were able to trace like where the eyes, um, specifically came from. Yeah. Which is a pretty funny conclusion for if we're thinking of the same thing. That is incredible. Yeah. I'm pretty impressed by that. The fact that they've got like a body part down pat. Hmm. It's like having a fingerprint. Well, it's hard to say for sure. Cause it is just like a, a circle with a, with a black dot. Right. Uh,

But they were, it's pretty convincing. I can't remember if it was in the script or not, but yeah, they were able to track down the eyes to my knowledge. Yeah, I think so. I think it is in the script. We'll get to it eventually. That is if we're thinking about the same thing, because the Jeff the Killer rabbit hole goes extremely deep. So there is a lot of different things.

So yeah, the story itself, the story of Jeff the Killer isn't groundbreaking literature and that is to put it lightly. The writing talent isn't anything to write home about, but that did not impact the spread of the story across the internet.

It tells the tale of a young 13-year-old Jeff who, along with his parents and his brother Liu, moved to a new town. The family are immediately met with drama with Jeff and Liu encountering three bullies that threaten them with knives. Jeff ends up beating up the bullies who report the attack and Liu ends up taking the blame for it and gets taken by the police to Juvi. After another encounter with the bullies just days later, Jeff is attacked with alcohol and bleach which results in a disfigured bleached white face. This

This is the turning point in Jeff's mind. Jeff immediately becomes different, seeping into insanity. The doctor tells his parents it's because of the large dose of painkillers they gave him. That's not what painkillers do, right? They don't make you go insane.

Yeah, you know what? There are some parts of the story where I think he's also lit on fire. Well, okay. Yeah, that'll do. How did he live this? Like this 13 year old just refuses. Refuses to die. Yeah, but no, I don't think painkillers do that. Yeah, they don't make you insane as far as I know. Being lit on fire probably makes you insane.

And so, yeah, the doctors allow him to go home, even though he is constantly laughing maniacally. The first night back, Jeff's mother was woken up by a strange sound at night, like someone was crying. After investigating, she would find her son with a knife and a bloody Chelsea smile. Now he could smile forever. A bloody Chelsea smile is like the Joker, right? Where you like carve a giant smile into the corners of your lips, basically. Yeah.

Yeah, that was a clear inspiration. And this was right after The Dark Knight came out. I want to say, I think that was like 2008. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys called it Bloody Chelsea. I think that's just what it's called. Or sort of was like a Glasgow Smile. Oh, Glasgow Smile. Yeah, that's another word for it. Glasgow Smile? Yeah, I've heard that. I haven't heard about that one. It might be Bloody Chelsea, is it? Okay. I've heard both. I've heard both. I think Glasgow Smile might be us specifically, Jordan, over here in Australia, perhaps. Another Australianism. Yeah.

She looked closer. His eyes were ringed with black. Jeff explained that he burned his eyelids off so he could see forever. What's wrong, mommy? Aren't I beautiful? Jeff asked. Moments later, Jeff killed his whole family, whispering to his brother, go to sleep before murdering him. So, yeah, you missed out on a compelling narrative there, Jordan. If only you could have read it yourself. Yeah, man, like, honestly, yeah.

That to me doesn't sound that different to virtually every horror film I've ever seen. No. In terms of plot events, I agree with you. It's generic horror, right? But at the same time, you've got to read how it's written because it is very, very... It reads like it was written by a 13-year-old edgelord, basically. It's quite over the top.

Is there such a thing, Jorge, as good creepypasta or is creepypasta kind of inherently meant to be bad?

You know, it's funny because I think it's funny that like Jeff, the killer of all creepypastas is like the face of it almost. Yeah. Like it's so associated, like it kind of gets a bad rep. And I'm not defending it. Like, yeah, the story isn't, you know, it isn't great. I think the image does a lot of heavy lifting. 100%. Yeah. But there are some that were genuinely, excuse me, that were genuinely pretty interesting back in the day. I got it.

The one that comes to mind, the one that sticks to me a lot because I was kind of there for it was the Ben Drowned

Oh yeah, Ben Drowned. About the Majora's Mask, because that one has gameplay footage. You think an image is bad, watch five or six videos of gameplay where apparently this guy is being haunted by this gameplay cartridge. That's always the funnest creepypastas or those kinds of rabbit holes to me is the ones that tie themselves to actual media, like video games. Yeah, like the ones with things that connect it back to reality. I think that's why, even though this...

this kind of counts the back rooms took off because there is a real image and I think a lot of people could picture themselves in such a world

It's been a while since I've reread Ben Drowned or gone down that rabbit hole. But yeah, like you were saying, it's always fun when the thing ties into reality almost, like our reality, like experiences that we've had. And video games are such a unique category of it because you could believe that the developers slip in something into the games which are...

which most people won't experience, for example. Because back then, at least... Which isn't too outlandish because developers have done that. Nothing extreme, of course, but... Well, actually, there are a few cases of like...

kind of like not risque but like just weird images being left over in like the project files that I guess weren't supposed to be there but some developer forgot it doesn't happen often of course but it isn't completely 100% impossible no and that's why video games are such a unique kind of aspect to it I think it's such a believable aspect or more believable than other other aspects of this community um

For example, you played Grand Theft Auto a lot probably as well, right, Jordan, back in the day? Man, look, I really have to admit, I more or less live in the 19th century with Facebook. That's what I have. I've done it. You know what Grand Theft Auto is. I played Grand Theft Auto 3 a bit. You know what it is, though. I remember one of the most chilling moments

mysteries in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was the ghost hills, the ghosts of Mount Chiliad, like ghost cars and things like that. And people would just spend forever out in those mountains in the game, just hunting for ghosts, basically, because there were rumors that they existed. As well as Bigfoot, obviously. Bigfoot in San Andreas. I was about to bring up Bigfoot. That was the one that I remember a lot because for me, this is like...

This is pre like going to the game files and dumping all the data. That's why gaming is so boring now. There's no mystery. There's no mystery. Yeah. Sucks. I love that. I know ghost in the machine. Yeah. Like before, like I, like when I was a kid, kid playing like Zelda games,

Like, everything with Ocarina, Majora, even Wind Waker, like, there was so much mystery because we didn't know everything about those games. Yeah. I remember there being rumors about, like, the Light Temple and fighting the fourth piece of the Triforce. Just, like, stuff like that that, as a kid at least, like, reading these creepypastas, like, I...

Gave it some air of credibility. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know for sure. It's not like you can look it up and be fact and logic or anything like that by people like data scientists going, well, actually we analyzed the game files and there is no evidence of any ghostly activity within these, within the game. Um,

which is unfortunate. I miss those days so much. I guess I just miss being a stupid kid, really, at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, I was about to say, it was 2010, so we were young and naive, at least for me. So, like, that obviously helped a little bit. Like, nowadays, you know, if you look and re-adject the killer, it's like, okay, whatever. Yeah. Right, but it came out kind of like at just the right time where the internet was being used, but we weren't

super like what's the word just like we didn't just brush it off immediately yeah we were more naive at the same time I do wonder what kids these days like what that experience is like for them like what do they have that's

that could have that same impact because I genuinely don't think that is there. Liminal spaces? I guess maybe, yeah. But I only really ever see people our age talking about liminal spaces, but maybe that's just because of the circles I run in. Maybe analog horror? Maybe that's like the thing? That's another one that I even see my little siblings talk about. Do they believe that it's real though? Or is it just fun horror?

That's I mean I that's a good question because I know like the back rooms that was like 2019 yeah my tripping was it that recent? Sounds about right. I'm not an expert You'd know more and that led to the whole liminal space phenomenon that let's like dream core and now we have a Analog horror and aries and like the Walton files and stuff like that. So I think that's their version of creepypastas Hmm. Yeah

I guess. If I had to guess. If anyone wants to correct me, go for it, because I'm honestly out of my element here. We're aged out of that, yeah. Yeah, unlucky. Yeah.

giggling to yourself, Jordan. You've been aged out of it for 20 years, my friend. You're long gone. Dude, you guys, you know what that was? That was just sitting in a physics lecture at university being like, dude, I'm in an arts major. Like, I shouldn't be here. Well, that's why you are here. You're kind of like, you're like the, uh...

uneducated audience member basically which wouldn't exist everyone watching this right now would know exactly what you guys are talking about you're actually right everyone in the audience knows more than you it's incredible honestly I'm very impressed by you boys okay so you're the trope then you're the character in the show that everyone in the audience can point and laugh at basically you're the comic relief yeah I'm the comic relief there we go

We've nailed down your character arc. That's good. That's important. Yeah, we need someone to laugh at.

Sick. I'm Jack Black, man. All right. So again, Jeff the Killer, not the best written piece of literature, but it's undeniable that Jeff the Killer didn't have an immediate impact on the internet and the subculture that was forming very quickly around the concept of creepypastas. It even spawned more and more derivative creepypastas form around the, what I'm calling the JTKCU or the Jeff the Killer cinematic universe over the years that would follow. Yeah.

These were created by fans across the globe who sought to add their own creative spins onto the preceding work. They include such artistic classics as Jane the Killer, Jeff the Killer vs. Slenderman, and Homicidal Liu as some of the more famous examples. What? Okay, sorry.

Alright, alright, walk us through it. What is Homicidal Liu? I was about to say, I have not heard of that until I read this. What the hell is Homicidal Liu? So I believe the story, the plot point of that one, that side story, is that Liu becomes homicide. He survives his encounter with Jeff the Killer, and that in turn makes him also homicidal. So he chooses to start killing. Is he standing to the eyes of madness? Yeah.

And then he's like 10 back. Yeah. I mean, but Jeff, the killer himself is like 14 or whatever, right? He's also just keep going back and back. Like they just get younger. Yeah. Yeah. But it's pretty funny. It's the JTKCU expanded into a lot of different territory after the creation of Jeff, the killer. It kind of has that SCP vibe where, you know, it's kind of,

People come in and start writing their own stories based off that universe. That's basically what's happening. Same thing with the back rooms. People made levels and different beings and a whole lore to the back rooms. It started off as just an image about liminal space and being trapped. Yeah, it's a continuation of the whole fan fiction subculture. Once these things exist, then it's kind of the community's property at that point and they can do whatever they want with it, even though the creation...

the creators especially in this case the Jeff the Killer creator trademarked Jeff the Killer to try to stop other people from monetizing it which was interesting wait aren't there like fan films and like I can't no I don't think it was Jeff the Killer nevermind I was gonna say that someone was trying to make a movie of it but I think that was like Momo or something maybe remember the Slender Man movie exists that's a great example of that and then the stabbing happened and people were like no don't don't upload this or don't upload don't release this yeah

Which is, yeah, Slender Man's a very interesting one. We've got a video on Red Thread already about Slender Man that you guys can watch in the audience if you're so interested. So yeah, this is all well and good. Jeff the Killer is something almost everyone knows about. But does anyone know how it started or where it came from and what the source of the image is? Well, that's a more complicated topic. A topic spanning years of vigorous investigation and effort by internet sleuths and lost media experts alike.

It's a story that is twisted and turned through multiple revelations, and those invested in the origins of Jeff the Killer have created millions. That might be an over-exaggeration there. Have created millions of possible theories. I don't know about millions. Perhaps slightly less than that. There's a handful. Yeah. Handful. Maybe ten. Ten theories. Ten!

So far off. As is the case with many topics on Red Thread, this is still... And my fiance, the researcher of Red Thread who writes these documents for us, she wanted me to put this point in here specifically because she felt bad

This is still a developing story with breakthroughs and discoveries occurring as time marches on. Even now, within the construction of this document, events have occurred that have produced new theories. We'll do our best to cover everything we can in a reasonable time, but there is undeniably a lot of information and history behind this image, even if ultimately we still don't know where it came from.

And luckily for us, we also have an expert on the topic with us today to kind of fill in the gaps if there are gaps in the document. So I'm very happy to have you here with us for this one, Jorge, because I couldn't think of anyone better, honestly.

Yeah, what a guy. Yeah, you made the video that really kicked this all off in terms of people taking it more seriously. It was a thing before your video. I didn't break any new ground in that video. I just kind of wanted to talk about it because I was like, oh, this is way deeper than I thought it was. Because even before my video, there were people talking about it. The mystery has always kind of been around. But again, we'll get to it with Sessoir and the...

And his, his reasoning, I think people were just satisfied. And then once like, like, like it just kind of like once I, God, I don't even know how to phrase it. Like, I think once people realize, no, there's still a lot more to it. It goes further and further back right now. We're in, we're going to start in the, in the 2010s, but we're going back and back in, in terms of years. Yeah. It just spiraled out of control. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't imagine the rabbit hole would go as deep as it did upon reading this document. Like I knew there was a manhunt underway because I had seen some ordinary gamers video as well as your own video three years ago about the topic. So I knew that there was a rabbit hole. I just didn't know the extent to how deep that rabbit hole went. Jordan, I'm going to throw it over to you right now to make your prediction on

how far back the image goes and perhaps your own theory, just before we even start, just a theory on how it was created. Here's my theory. I think that this was made at exactly the same point that it started to become popular in 2010. And I say that purely because it just looks like a standard emo kid to me.

I don't think there's any photo shot. That's it. Yeah, yeah, none. None at all. None at all. That's your theory. Very unfortunate disfigurement without being born without the nose, and that would cause somebody to turn into madness. I think that the circular eyes probably are real. The mouth looks a bit fake. Yeah, okay. The corners of the mouth, at least. The corners of the mouth have been somewhat exaggerated. Yeah, where they've been blurred into oblivion, so you can't see any regular details. Oh, you don't like that distortion? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It does look very emo era, doesn't it? It looks like something from 2010. I mean, it's very clearly extremely Photoshopped, let's put it that way. The corners of the lips are smeared into oblivion using like a Gaussian blur in Photoshop. I can immediately tell by the pixelation into a smile. So...

No Glasgow smile there. That is just Photoshop. Whereas the raccoon eyes, I'm not really quite sure. I don't know if they've been painted in Photoshop onto the canvas or if they're maybe being like... Do you know about the eyes? Am I just talking nonsense? No, I do know. I don't know which eyes I know about. Let me scroll down to both.

Okay, I might know JTK1's eyes more. Okay. Yeah, we'll get there then. Sorry for all the build-up, but there's just so much going on. Even the clothes in the back, that's an important thing that'll come up later. The little closet you see back there. Yeah, well, again, if the details don't immediately emerge in the document, please do weigh in and add your additional information.

For sure. I would love to hear more details. All right. So, chapter two, the hunting down of the origins. The story of Jeff the Killer begins before its creepy pasta post, which itself was actually plagiarized from a post uploaded onto Newground in 2008 by a person with the username Killer Jeff, titled, quote, Hi, I'm Killer Jeff. Which is just such a friendly sounding title. What a nice guy. Yeah.

Well, it continues. Attached to the post of the creepy picture we all recognized was an intro that simply read, I'm a nice guy, which has shifted in the years. Let's say that quote, whenever you hear someone say, I'm a nice guy, usually an immediate red flag that that person is probably not a nice guy. Like the whole nice guy movement. God, so obnoxious. Wait, are you saying that that's like an internet thing? Yeah. Have you not heard of nice guys?

No. Okay, so it's... I think we've been through this. I haven't heard of literally anything. Jorge is now discovering just how off the grid you are, which is impressive. I thought I came to that conclusion myself. That's so bad. So it is just a massive meme.

I sound resentful, but it's because I'm jealous that you don't know what nice guys are. They're a very obnoxious group of people online. They're basically incels who believe that... They are basically incels before they turn bad. Yeah, they believe that they've been denied...

vagina, essentially, because women only go after tough guys or mean guys. It's that kind of guy. Yeah, they only go after dicks and they are a nice guy in their own head. See, this is something that I always... That's incredible. I've always noticed anybody that ever goes out of their way to say I'm nice, it's just like...

I don't believe you. Immediately. Don't you reckon? Yeah. Particularly the word nice. Yeah. Which is hilarious. It's just a whole thing. Sorry. Go on. It's very, yeah. It's the, it's the hypocrisy. It's very hilarious, which is why I think you are actually a nice guy, Jordan, because you go around calling yourself a piece of shit constantly, like a mean man. Yeah. I mean, but you know, facts are facts. Come on. Deep down there's a nice guy in there, Jordan. Well,

While I sit here twirling a gun. You can't see, but that's what I'm doing right now. So Jeff the Killer... This is cool. Sorry, I'm really glad that you guys are here. It's...

Thank you for the education. No, this is the information that you probably don't need. This whole thing, this is like all internet lore. Like this, this is all like online, just investigation and stuff. Like there's, there's a lot of internet lore here. Yeah, a lot. He's going to be inundated. He's going to turn into a nice guy by the end of this. It's going to shift his personality. Oh no.

You're gonna Yeah you're gonna regret signing on to this episode Of Red Thread it's gonna change your entire life And so the origin of I'm a nice guy Right here No I don't think this is the origin of that It's just unfortunate phrasing maybe Okay okay It's like the guys who like I was gonna say it's like the guys who like Hold a door open for a woman Why haven't you fucked me yet It's those kind of guys Yeah

Yes, yes. People that haven't grown up beyond like, you know, end of high school kind of mentality. So Jeff the Killer went on to post the original image multiple times onto 4chan, attempting to propel the story into popularity. There also came a YouTube video uploaded by the channel Cessia. Is that how you pronounce it? Cess-a? Cess-a? I think I say Cess-a. Cess-a. Cess-a is fine. Yeah, Cess-a, run by a man named Jeff Case.

In 2008, who was seemingly the creator of the whole story, as this YouTube video predates the famous creepypasta by several years. And if you remember, Jordan, the creepypasta was uploaded in 2011. But now I'm letting you know that a guy named Sessoir, or Jeff Case, posted a video in 2008, which kind of contained the bare bones of the story. Let's say like the details of the story, the Jeff the Killer kind of angle.

The plot thickens. Okay. So already we're going back further. The original video has since been removed, however, taken down by copyright issues, likely stemming from the fact that the video contained the song, I guess you're right by the posies. It can still be found. And it's linked in the, uh, the, the, the script for this video, uh,

If you're in the audience, you can go down to the description to find the script and all the research which includes the sources as well as vital links like this. So it can still be found although seemingly not exactly the same as the original. Many to this day don't know that Sessoir was the origin behind the story itself, at least the bones of the story and the character, and he has continued to argue vehemently that he deserves credit for creating the story. In Sessoir's original story, Jeff, an

an adult is disfigured from an accident while cleaning his bath where he slipped on a bar of soap and acid covered his face. You guys ever cleaned your bath with acid? That's a deep claim. Yeah, that's very, what was he doing? Sulfuric acid. Forbidden cleaning. Yeah, why would you do that?

And he slipped on a bar of soap. What is this? You're asking to get disfigured. Yeah. This was written by a man who's never cleaned a bathroom in his life.

This is different from the 2011 version that would follow the video years later as that particular story involved themes of bullying as opposed to bathroom accidents. Bathroom related accidents. I will say the 2011 version is marginally better than the 2008 version considering the fact that there were no slipping of soap bars. Yeah, one of the rare instances where the sequel improves on the original. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Yeah.

There is also minimal talk of the whole family in the 2008 version, but it also included Liu as an adult brother who was very successful with women. And actually I did watch the video and he does, Jeff the Killer or the script of the video does kind of seem resentful to the fact that Liu was very successful with women. So maybe the I'm a nice guy thing actually is a incel cat call or whatever you want to call it, like a incel kind of phrase used in that kind of

way even then because the video itself does come across as like kind of resentful that his older brother is getting laid and he's not

It's got that kind of... Which is like a very nice guy thing to do. Like, why is he getting it and not me? I'm nice. Yeah, and Liu in the video is portrayed to be all cool and charismatic and a bad boy as well, whereas he's just the quiet, nerdy brother that doesn't get laid. So yeah, actually, I've kind of come around on this. Maybe this was the creation of a nice guy as that kind of... I mean, I think that behavior has kind of existed throughout time, though, probably. Yeah.

men resentful it's kind of weird because it seems like there's two 2008 versions like there is the YouTube video we're talking about but there's also like a post on Newgrounds I believe where it's more like a Bloody Mary kind of thing yeah do you know if that came after the video or roughly around the same time

I don't know for sure. I'm pretty sure they're both 2008. So it's kind of odd just how many variations there are before like the well-known Creepypasta and then it was narrated on YouTube and that's like the version most people know. Yeah, what's undeniable is the 2011 Creepypasta version is the one that propelled the entire story to being well-known.

Yeah, but I swear it's also like a Bloody Mary kind of version. Yeah, it could be. Yeah, so the 2008 version of the story is somehow even worse than the 2011 version, but ultimately the 2011 version took the DNA from the original and expanded on it to create a more fleshed out story.

Arguably not a good one, but still a better story than the 2008 one. However, it would appear that Sessoir is at least correct in his argument that the 2011 version was created from the bones of his concept without giving the original YouTube video credit. The earliest publication of the 2011 version, by the way, was posted by a user by the name of GameFuelTV on November 21st, 2011 on the Creepypasta wiki, where it was then eventually removed for failing to meet quality standards.

but not after amassing a cult following who spread the story. So I was thinking about this, Jonah. We should, like maybe for Patreon members or something, we should do a dramatic retelling of the story or whatever, like a dramatic reading of the story, basically, you and I. Oh, very happy to do so. I think that would be hilarious. That'd be great. What's also great is...

How the hell can that be removed for failing to meet quality standards? That's what I'm saying. How is that possible? Yeah. I don't know. Well, that seems very likely. The story isn't that great. I'm not sure where the bar is, but yeah, that seems reasonable. I mean, yeah, there's going to be quality standards, but there's so many creepy passes out there still on that website that are just...

Maybe not just as bad. Maybe this does hit that new level. But still, I don't know what the quality standard is for Creepypasta. So in the Creepypasta phase, there was a thing called... I don't know if I can say this, but there was a thing called Shitpastas. Where it's exactly what you expect. It's like the most horrible stories written by 10-year-olds. So I guess it might have qualified for that. I'm sure there were also stories that were intentionally bad too.

Yeah, yeah. You see, it's kind of shifted in recent years. It's moved to subreddits. Have you seen two-sentence horror and things like that? I have, actually, yeah. And then there's derivatives of that shit two-sentence horrors and stuff, which are just the dumbest versions of horror.

I actually haven't read that, but that sounds really funny. I don't have any examples offhand, but yeah, I mean, they're hilariously bad. Obviously, the latter is intentionally bad, but there are plenty of stories in True Sentence Horror that are just like, oh my god, someone actually thought this was scary. I can't remember the story off the top of my head, but there was one that like

My buddy told me that he had to like narrate for his channel. It was called like The Block That Killed Me or something. It was so like clearly like a shitpasta, but that title alone was like, what the hell? I'm going to look this up. The Block That Killed Me, two sentence horror. Oh, no, no, no. It was a shitpasta. Oh, it was a full shitpasta? All right. I don't even know it's online anymore. Like again, like we're talking like 2012 or something. I want to find...

I want to find it. Oh, I'm not finding it anymore. It might have been long gone. That's lost media right there. But I swear, the block that murdered me, I think that's what it was called. I'm looking at Two Sentence Horror again. I love going down this rabbit hole. So here's an example, Jordan, of Two Sentence Horror. So basically, it's people trying to take horror concepts...

or make basically two sentences scary. Basically, it's an art form. So here's one. It says in the top line, for sale, baby shoes never worn. And then the bottom line is the baby's not dead or anything, but the shoes are evil. It's so bad. I love it. It's my favorite art form. It's so good.

Do you guys know when the Jeff the Killer story was removed? I'm actually kind of like, it was up in 2011. How long until it was taken down? I don't know exactly when it was removed, but I think they took their time on removing it. They must have, yeah. That's odd. Because it was able to amass a cult audience of its own, basically. God, the hindsight must have kicked in. Like, oh wait, this is actually not great. We should remove this. Yeah.

Or once they realized it involved a minor getting shot and acid thrown on them or bleached or whatever the story was. Yeah, I don't know why they removed it. They say quality standards. I don't know if it was because it was controversial for young people killing or being disfigured. I doubt it. If I remember correctly, anyone could submit a story. I was actually kind of surprised that there was a bar to me because there are some pretty awful creepypastas out there like Jeff the Killer. Yeah, 100%.

So Jeff the Killer has spawned many fans who have expressed their admiration through fan art, cosplays, and even rewrites of the original story as we've gone on. But it was also heavily criticized, especially over the years, as people realized it just wasn't very good.

As previously mentioned, the 2011 version of the story even got removed from Creepypasta Wiki as it didn't meet the website's standards. It had originally been left on the website as it was considered a pretty iconic story, but other users were not happy about this. Once the story was removed from the website, predictably those who thought that the story should have stayed on the website spoke out and rallied behind their cause.

As a solution in 2015, the site and community decided that the best way forward was to hold a rewrite contest, allowing the story to be uploaded to the website by authors who put time and effort into their work. Such a... Wars have been fought over. Now, here's some internet praise that I know. What? I love this community. Like, that's mad. It's so good. These guys... It's great.

This is kind of oddly beyond me. I did not know there was a rewriting contest in 2015. I had no idea. Yeah, I don't know how popular it was. We're about to find out. With five judges and a total of 15 submissions, the winner was an author named Banning K1979. Which means, what would that mean? 15 submissions, Christ. 1979, if that's their birth year, how old would they be? 45 years old, if that's their birth year?

40, yeah, 45, 46. It was 31 into 2000. And then 15 years later, it would be like, yeah, 45, 46. Oh, man. He could be dead now. Wait, no, actually, they'd be 35. You know, heart attacks and all. They'd be 35 at the time of writing the story, which is still kind of insane, like, writing...

Yeah. And it's still being bad. Oh, yeah. My math is way off. No, you're right. Yeah. I don't know why I thought 40s. You've got at least 20 years of writing fiction if you're interested in doing this kind of stuff and it's still bad. Well, actually, I don't know. Do you think it's redeemable? Sorry? Do you think it's redeemable? Like, is there a way to fix it? I mean, can you keep the bare bones like basics of the story? No. Conceptually, it's pretty stupid.

Conceptually, it's a stupid story. Without adding a lot of additional detail and a lot of things that kind of step out of the box of what Jeff the Killer is. And at that point, you're basically making a new story anyway. So you may as well just make a new story. Yeah, you're basically writing the whole thing. Yeah. So, no, I don't think that you could make it good. But I mean, the original and the 2011 version are really bad. Like, having read them, they're written very poorly, even in just, you know, the narrative sense itself.

in terms of writing things that just it doesn't seem like someone who knows how to write in general let's say but regardless I need to read the 2015 version yeah I haven't read the 2015 version so that one could be good I don't know we'll see but like it could be like amazing what if Ben and Kane 1979 is like actually just a pseudonym for like Stephen King or something

yeah he's like that's like his like that's his all and he's like you know what i'm gonna see what i can do with it yeah and no one gave a shit no one gave a shit

The story is darker, but it still follows Jeff, his brother, and his parents into a new neighborhood where they still encounter bullies. The key points of Jeff the Killer are now written into a more cohesive and understandable short story. Jeff's mental state deteriorates throughout the story, recognizing that he has an anger inside of him, and at first, he represses it. Then he almost craves it, but he tries to push past, even stuck in a situation where everyone is against him, and his patience is getting repeatedly tested. But after the bullies accidentally shot Jeff's face with a flag...

accidentally how do you accidentally do that yeah why would you why did they bring a flare gun to a bully fight why did you bring i believe it was i think in the original story it was like lou's birthday or something i might have actually read this now i think about it but it was lou's birthday the bullies yeah why would you bring a flare gun why would you bring a flag onto it like a fight like why would you even have that if you weren't in the wilderness

Such a weird way of changing the story. Yeah. I kind of prefer the butt slipping on the soap in the bathtub as opposed to this. That's like the most simplest one. Yeah. I'll say that. But boys, what do you think about the backstory? Do you think that that's helped out? Now that we've evolved, we've given it more of a sympathetic undertone. Huh?

Yeah, I suppose. Are you talking about like his mental state kind of deteriorating throughout the story? His mental state sort of deteriorating. Do you think that he deserved to win the competition on that slash do you think that's what it was? Because the flare gun's not doing him any favors. Yeah. If I was a judge, frankly. I think the reason it won is because it turned Jeff the Killer into a more sympathetic character.

That's what I think too. Like, damn, I feel bad. He should kill his family. I can relate. And when was this again? Like 2015? Yeah. Breaking Bad was in. It was that whole thing of just like, it's the anti-hero. Yeah. Yeah. He's a villain that I can relate to. I can change him. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.

Yeah, you guys are right. This is like a really fun rabbit hole. Yeah, you'd love more of this creepypasta stuff, I reckon. Yeah, it's great. This is now the official Jeff the Killer story to many, which is an interesting way to handle art in general.

just change which the official version is based off your own preferences. Jeff the Killer has evolved over the years, the official story changing a few times with many other variations available to read. So to recap, as best as we can tell it, there was an original 2008 video and post by Cessia, which were then taken and rewritten by presumably Game Fuel TV in 2011. And ultimately the community itself chose to rewrite it into a 2015 version. So there you have it. The origin of the Jeff the Killer mystery solved.

I'll take that $11,000 right now, please. But what's that? The video length. Oh my God. There's still more.

The red thread will go on much longer. Unfortunately for us, we haven't even scratched the surface on the true mystery of Jeff the Killer. Where on earth did the picture come from? That's right, the picture, the horrifying image that has intrigued internet sleuths and fans of the creepypasta for a long time, with each discovery adding new details about where it could have come from. And this really is just the entire mystery, right?

This is like the bread and butter. This is like the real, real thing. I don't think there's much mystery about where the story came from. Or like, I guess like, like all the different versions of the story are like kind of interesting. Like just to see how it's evolved. But like, we're talking like an F to like an F plus. Like, I don't know if there's like a, like a true definitive version. I guess there is, but sorry, I know this is off track, but now that you bring it up, I don't know anything about the American schooling system. Is it possible to get an F plus?

No. No, because F is just fail. You can't get an F+. F is just fail. Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. You know what I mean, though. I thought D was a little too high. I'm just wondering if it's like a figurative speech or if it actually is a thing. No, it's not, actually. I can't recall ever getting an F+. No, well, you can't, because F is just fail. You can't fail the distinction. F is just fail, so you can't get it. But this is the...

Jackson in Australia we don't get the A B C D do we? hang on does it just go A B C D F there's no E yeah we for some reason I'm not the guy to answer this that's a question for God we skip E yeah wait what system do we use I know Mike Libbets is a YouTuber I'm pretty sure no I did get in high school I did get A's and B's did you? yeah

And then university is obviously distinctions and such on. So, and so forth. And so on and so forth. Yes. As someone who went to university. You guys don't have the ABCDF system? What do you guys have? It sounds like Jackson had it. I don't have that. Maybe Queensland has it. I think I just had a sticker that said good job or a sticker that says needs more effort.

Either good job or bad job. That's way more relaxing. You went to the school that was just like a caravan at the back. Like a trailer. Good job, Jordan. Yeah, man. You were given a smiley face or a frowny face? I was in the special school. Actually, you did go to an art school, didn't you? You went to like a more cultured school. Yeah, but that was high school. So I was more thinking about your elementary school because...

Most of my understanding of American school comes from Arthur the show. And I'm not even sure. It might be Canadian. I'm not sure. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're right. In primary school, I'm pretty sure we just got rated on like passing the, you know, they weren't even really tests. It was just like, yeah, I did a good job basically. But then in high school, it moved to like the grading system of A's and B's for me.

I was about to say, I don't remember that being used in primary, but like it was forever ago. I think middle or high school for me is when they started using A, B, C, D, and F. How did this even come up? What's this got to do with Jeff the Killer? Because I was grading the stories. It just used the phrase F plus and then it just like triggered, again, just an image of Arthur getting a bad mark and going, oh man, I don't want to show my mom. And then I had to ask. Yeah, right. Yeah.

I don't know why I said F+. That doesn't make any sense. Congrats, you failed, but not as bad. I failed good. You were good at failing. A solid attempt. My entire history with the grading system is just ranking videos on YouTube. Basically, S-ranking videos. Tier lists. I thought you were talking about the star system. That's a throwback. The five-star system way, way back in the day. It's a flawless system. No.

Oh. Could I just imagine someone saying stars? No, no, on YouTube, yeah, you could rate videos. Like forever ago, there was a star system. Oh my god, you guys are veterans. What the fuck? Really? You're a YouTuber. You don't remember that? You've been a YouTuber since like 2010.

It's pathetic because you have to understand, in my mind, I'm not a YouTuber. In my mind, I'm an ABC Kids 3 host. I barely think the internet exists. Yeah, it's impressive. I'm always impressed by YouTubers who don't know about the internet. It's like your entire job. It's the way you exist and yet you don't know anything about it. I'm impressed by it too, honestly. I don't know how the fuck I've gotten by this song. It's really weird. I don't know how I made it this far. That's how impressive his life is.

No, I'm actually low-key a little jealous. Like that's kind of cool to be that disconnected. Yeah. Put no effort into it. Basically just existed on the internet and was wildly successful.

Yeah, unaware while doing it, but it's incredible that you guys have got this incredibly extensive knowledge of the entire culture that is the internet. I don't know if it's that impressive. Well, I wouldn't say the entire culture, because we're talking like, that's like back in the early 2000s and even kind of the late 90s. That's way before my time. There's a lot of internet. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, you're basically internet historians, you know? You get it. To some degree. The older I get, the more it becomes. Yeah. Internet historian. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cool. But back onto topic. So the picture. So where did the picture come from? Well, so there's two original... Sorry, there are two versions of the image that right now stand as proper and authentic Jeff the Killer images. If they were NFTs, these would be the ones that hold any value, basically. These two originals are often referred to as JTK1 and JTK2. JTK1 is an earlier version of the now famous Jeff the Killer image.

But where did it truly originate from? The answer is seemingly still unknown, but let's try and trace it back. But before we do that, Jordan, would you like to describe the differences between JTK1 and JTK2 for us here? Yeah, I'll tell you right now. JTK1 looks like an adorable raccoon. I wouldn't mind seeing that at all jump out at me in the closet.

JTK2 I've heard people say it's even frightening It's more frightening than JTK2 I find JTK1 creepier than JTK2 Honestly Sorry, explain yourselves, both of you Well, JTK2, I can see the Photoshop I can see the elements Where they've edited it And the eyes You can't see the fake googly eyes in JTK1 Well, I can, but still For some reason, the fact that they're looking off to the side Creeps me out even more Really? Yeah

I think also JTK1 has like less shadow. Like if you look at the JTK2, there's like some darkness in between, like in the middle of the face and under the eyes, whereas that's not, like clearly that was added on. I'm just saying JTK1 is scarier than JTK2. I still don't find it's necessarily scary. I feel like how this could potentially be scary is if you just remove the eyes in general, just leave it all like a blank white kind of blur.

blur that would be weird that would be scary to me just the mouth and nothing else there that always freaks me out it's the the less information the scarier it gets it's like with the nose as soon as you remove things that's when it becomes scary to me but when you like morph them into like dumb blurs and shit like that and you know googly eyes then yeah it loses me a little bit in terms of scariness

You know what? I've changed my mind. JTK1 is much scarier. No, stick to your guns. You can't change your mind like that. No, I'm a coward. I'm out. I'm changing due to peer pressure. I want to appear cool. That's why I've changed. Oh, yeah, so cool being scared of Photoshop.

He had more time to examine it. The coolest fucking guy. Yeah. Getting scared of something I did to 10 year olds in 2004. I'm wetting my pants right now. That's what I always find funny. I don't know if I'm just desensitized, but whenever I read comments being like, oh, Jesus Christ, please change the image. Don't put this on screen. I can't look at it. It's too scary. It's like, I just don't get it. It's not...

Like maybe when I was 10, sure, I would have been shaking in my boots. But right now as a big, strong adult man, it's nothing. They could take on anything. Yeah, I could take on JTK1 and JTK2. You could kill Jeff the Killer. Yeah, I could put him in a... He's 13. Easily. True. I could fight him. Yeah, I'll put him in a... Yeah, I'll choke him out.

I think I'm also desensitized, but, like, I've seen the image way too many times where it doesn't, like, hit me anymore. But, yeah, I'll be the first one to admit, as, like, a stupid, like, 14, 15-year-old, it scared the hell out of me when I first saw it. Yeah. All right, but, like, come on. Like, what are we just saying? That all images that you ever see on the internet now, you're not scared of? You're just that 4chan-y at this point. Oh, no, I've seen this image, like, enough where it doesn't even, like, hit anymore.

Oh yeah, this one specifically, but is there anything that you see that is within your realm of expertise that does give you a bit of a... I know there's something, but I just can't think of it right now. Are you saying it has to be creepypasta adjacent? Or just any photo online? Because I've seen photos online that I wish I could unsee. Oh yeah, surely you've seen that. Or even just more innocent. Anytime a video of a centipede shows up, I have to scroll past it.

Oh, you know what? I absolutely... I despise zoomed-in close-up images of bugs. Yeah. Oh my god, yeah, they're so bad, aren't they? That actually gives me a jaw. It's cool if people... It's like one of those scientific things, like, oh, here's a close-up image of a tapeworm or something. That freaks the hell out of me to hell and back. Well, you know, actually, those videos... I mean, we've seen gore videos and...

you know, horrible imagery a lot over the last 10 years just posted on the internet. So I'm kind of desensitized to a lot of things, but videos of people

uh on top of like the burj khalifa like perspective shots of that and the height there always makes my like hands sweaty and uncomfortable yeah i hate stuff like that you scared a heart it kind of intrigues me yeah it kind of intrigues me but i kind of get it too like i don't think i've ever seen someone on top of the burj khalifa but um for me it's like it's like close-up bug photos that's what gets me yeah now put bugs on top of the burj khalifa and we've got a party that's gonna be we've got a problem

Honestly, now that you're mentioning it, the most disturbing thing that I've ever seen was one of those giant centipedes hanging off a cave and catching a bat and eating the bat. That was awful. How would a centipede do that? It was so bad, especially just because-

It just doesn't feel right in your head, does it? It feels like the bat should be eating bugs. Yeah. But the bug doesn't eat a bat. It's a giant centipede. It's really big. Are you sure it wasn't? It's really, really big. Was it real? Yes. No, it wasn't. Yes, they do that. That's how they run. Don't tell me there's giant centipedes that can eat bats. That's terrifying.

I know. I know it sounds like I'm just talking about like it's like some 1700s man talking about like I saw a sea bishop on the ocean. It sounds like you're talking about the Jeff the Killer of the centipede universe. Of the natural world. Of the bug world. It's horrifying. I'm telling you, yeah, I think we're all at agreement, surely. Giant centipedes are so much scarier than Jeff the Killer. I'd rather meet Jeff the Killer. I think it comes down to formative experiences because when I was like a child, when I was like five years old,

I remember this is like the earliest memory I have because it was so traumatic for me. I woke up at like 1 a.m. at night to a cockroach on my head, basically like climbing over my face. Oh, that's horrifying. That's what woke me up. I could not.

it was so traumatic. It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. So now I just, it's horrible, but weirdly enough, I'm, I can like kill cockroaches. I'm not like super squeamish, like a former co-host of red thread, Charlie, uh,

uh is very squeamish around cockroaches i don't have that kind of reaction but centipedes i do i don't know why i have that reaction to like to a little bit like if i see a bug i'm like but you know i have to get rid of it all right sure yeah you'll see that it's dealt with yeah i can deal with i can deal with bugs just not just not um all right but can you boys can you boys uh

kill them with your bare hands like a real man like i actually slap them with your hands yeah slap them with your hands i'll beat them with a shoe yeah if i can't like hold one i don't like germs so no i don't like cowards i don't like you you slap cockroaches in your bare hands well i don't know just one time i was talking to some japanese chef oh just one time yeah i don't know it just happened i was just talking to him but he's just like i

I killed with bare hands. And I was just like, well, that's fucking pimp. This samurai. So you just started to do it? And then I did it. And I started enjoying the squish. Why is that cool? That's not cool at all. You're getting bug guts on your hands. Gross. I don't know. It just, the guy just had one of those, you know, One of those guys that's so cool that anything he says is cool by effect. Yeah, it was, it was that. It was pretty much that.

Interesting. You really do succumb to peer pressure. Hence, that's why I believe in JeffTheKiller1 now. Yeah, it's true. So Sessoir, Jeff Case, the original story creator, was interviewed by a YouTuber by the name of Scare Theater, where he said that the original mask in the photo...

So this is referring to JTK2. This is what says... Because he's the one that used JTK2 primarily. Okay.

Essentially implying that he made it himself, though. Unfortunately, over time, Sessoir has come out as a rather problematic figure in the Jephthah Killer universe. Or even just in our universe, actually. And many people don't believe him. We know now that the image did not come from Sessoir. Its real origins are explored further in this document. But suffice to say, the image itself has been around for longer than the story of Jephthah Killer.

Cessoir himself has been dishonest and lied multiple times throughout the years, along with other problematic behavior. He's claimed he is the legal owner of the Jeff the Killer trademark, though, in an attempt to prevent other people from monetizing the concept. As for the accusations, he, along with his brother, have been alleged to also be involved in horrible and illegal behavior. On the original JTK image subreddit, a moderator posted a link to a doc on 1905...

So the 19th of May 2025, as of recording that is three days ago, about an investigation into Sessoir. There's quite a bit in this document from Sessoir's involvement in the problematic behavior of his brother Brandon, who has been arrested with domestic battery. The accusation is made that Brandon encouraged Sessoir to groom underage fans and send them Brandon's way. There was a lot here and Kira, the writer of the document, recommends...

that you read the document yourselves... as these accusations are extremely recent... and we don't have time to dive into the accusations... in this episode of Red Thread... nor was it the original intention behind the episode. However, it would not be prudent to not include this point... even though they are currently accusations... as it speaks to a general distrust and dislike of Sessoir himself... in the general community... and why many people don't believe him at face value. Regardless, I can boil this all down... this entire little section... to the fact that Sessoir did not create the JTK2 image...

And he's claimed that it was an actual mask is like hilariously dishonest considering it is very clear that this is photoshopped to hell and back. Like it's very clearly not a mask. Yeah, it was such a weird response he gave to a scare theater, I believe. It's such an odd thing to say. I don't understand the blinking thing. He also claimed that the mask is long gone, if I remember correctly. Yeah.

I guess a lot of people like, like we, it was just kind of like, okay, sure. Like it's such an odd thing to lie about in general, considering the fact that it's so easily disprovable. And also he doesn't really lose anything by just saying, yeah, I found this picture online. Like there's nothing really like you still made the story. That's fine. Well, he loses the credit. He loses the credit for the image, but that was going to happen regardless. Cause it's so obviously like, again, disprovable.

I think if he just said, yeah, I created the image forever ago, we probably wouldn't be hunting for it because I think people would have just been satisfied. Well, true. And also, there's nothing that kind of would immediately disprove it if he just said, yeah, I created this image in the early 2000s or whatever on Photoshop. Yeah. But he said that...

He said it was a mask and then he threw away the mask and he even joked about, oh, if I kept it, it would have been worth a lot of money. Something like that. It was just such a, yeah, it's just an odd thing to lie about. Yeah, the fact that he lied about it being a mask itself, like a physical object, is just very stupid. Guys, who the fuck is Sesswa? Sesswa is the original story creator. Yeah, okay. He was the one that made the 2008 version of the story, the video.

Yeah, but like, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on. I know that part, but like, is he famous in himself? Like, for other things? He's rather infamous now. He's infamous, but like, he's not like a content creator or anything like that. No, no, no, no. He just is known as just like a creator. No, he was just a Newgrounds user.

Okay, okay, so that's it. Yeah, he was just a guy online. He was a Newgrounds user, and he made the 2008 story, which then evolved so on and so forth. But he was commonly considered the guy who made the story, who came up with... Yes, yes, for a lot of years. So we don't really know what he professionally does or anything like that. No, he's just an online user of memory service. Well, I'm sure people have docked him. Again, we know his name, and we've seen...

It seems like we've seen his brother's criminal records. Again, I haven't looked too deep into the accusations and stuff. I urge people in the audience to do that. It seems like they know details about his life and who he is. We know his name, Jeff Case, for example. So there are aspects of him that we know about. But in terms of what you're asking, Jordan, he's not like an internet celebrity or a figure online in any capacity beyond just the Jeff the Killer mystery. Okay. Wow. I can't believe that this is just such a...

It's such an entity. And that was very interesting. Now on to the next paragraph. Seamless. All right. So one of the most prominent theories we need to explore is that of the image being of a woman named Katie Robinson. This was one of the biggest and most widely believed theories surrounding the image for a while, up until like 2019, you said, right, Jorge? Yeah.

I believe so. I think I want to say this like satisfied people in regards to the mystery. But yeah, we'll get into this one because this is a big thing. Yeah. So the story extends back to 2008 when Katie Robinson posted an image of herself onto the 4chan board called B or slash B, which is basically for people to post random pictures onto. Have you heard of the B board?

Jordan? Who, me? Oh, Jordan. Nah, never heard of it. You've heard of 4chan, though. You know what 4chan is. Oh, yeah, I've heard of 4chan. Yeah, B is like the, what's usually described as like the worst part of 4chan. It's more like the trolling and the, you know, everything you've heard of 4chan, really, is relegated to. Okay, so why is it called B? It's just random. I don't know why they call it B, but it's just a board for random things.

Okay, and 4chan is a lot like that, isn't it? Things are just the way they are because they are. Yeah, it's like old internet kind of stuff in terms of how it was set up. It's like one of those old forums. Yeah.

Yes, yes. The unique thing with 4chan is that it's completely anonymous. Right now you can go on and post anything without having to sign up or make an account with your email or anything. You can just go in and say anything. So that's where a lot of the crazy stories comes from. And B is the random board. It's no holds barred. You can post whatever you want. So that is like, it's almost like the center of the...

Yeah, it's the, it's, it's a, it's a lawless frontier basically. It's pretty godless. Yeah. Generacy usually. Uh, yeah.

So she was immediately bullied and ridiculed, and the theory suggested that she was then seemingly edited into being the original Jeff the Killer image. Later, another post was posted to 4chan that read, quote,

She continued to say this website made fun of her and posted shops of her picture. I am appalled. Take a good look at this picture because a beautiful woman, my sister, committed suicide last night.

end quote from that post. People were immediately suspicious about these claims, ultimately unsure as there wasn't any actual evidence of Katie Robinson even being a real person and her death wasn't corroborated anywhere in the media. In the 2015 Scare Theater interview with the original story creator, Seswa, he was asked about the Katie Robinson rumor. He

He said, quote, I know all too well about this little inconvenience of Aruba and I can assure... Why does he talk like that? Bro, like, there's so many questions with him. He talks like a...

Like a Machiavellian mastermind or something. This little inconvenience. Yeah, these little inconveniences I didn't plan for. That's me when I'm trying to fill up the word count. Yeah, it's a weird way of writing or speaking. I know all too well about this little inconvenience of a rumor and I can assure everyone when I say that the rumor...

is completely bogus. I have no idea who came up with the rumor. It's most likely a troll, seeing as the person who got the information on the Katie Robinson rumor was a 4chan regular, and they're not exactly someone to talk serious at all."

Four years later, there was a sudden breakthrough in the theory when the true identity of Katie Robinson was identified as a woman named Heather White. Heather was interviewed about the entire situation by a YouTube channel named Gage where she explained that her image was stolen from her MySpace, then uploaded onto 4chan without her knowledge as a prank. Katie Robinson wasn't real and she didn't commit suicide. Heather

Heller's image was even uploaded onto a strange satirical religious website named True Christian in 2004. It might be 2014. I'm not sure if that's a typo or not. I'm pretty sure it's 2004. I think that's right. Okay, in 2004. So this has been happening to this woman for a long time. Damn. Or is it 24? Oh, now you have me questioning myself. Yeah. Weird, weird stuff right here. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The 4chan, being posted to 4chan was in 2008, which isn't that far off 2004. Yeah.

So maybe. Regardless, there's a history of her image being used is what I think this message is trying to convey.

So yeah, it was posted onto that website in 2004 where extremely nasty and horrible stuff was said about her. The story that the image was Katie Robinson born out of simply wanting to pull a prank and bully another person and their appearance has been debunked. There's nothing that suggests that 4chan was involved in the creation of the original Jeff the Killer image and the original image does not seem to be based off Heather White's picture. But yeah, this was the prevailing theory for a long time, right? For a while. When you looked up like

like threads and videos way back in the day about like the origins of the Jephthah Killer image yeah Katie quote unquote the person named Katie Robinson would come up quite a bit and if you compare if you look at the images like yeah the the angle of the head is kind of similar

uh maybe like where the hair is like where it kind of divides looks roughly right uh but again at this time we had nothing to go off of so i think people just settled with that you know you know what 4chan that's yeah that's blame them yeah i mean that's a lot of internet uh culture in of itself is a lot of things uh come from 4chan and they do there's a lot of situations where uh

I don't know. A lot of creepypastas are from 4chan. I think the STTs were. Ben Drown, that was all on 4chan. The Backrooms, I mean, the Grifter, there's a lot of them. Yeah, so it's not entirely unbelievable that 4chan had a hand in creating an image that would then go on to become viral. It's not outside the realm of possibility at all. I think people just saw that. They saw that, saw the angle of the face. Yeah.

And just went with it. And I mean, it is in line also with what 4chan... Their history with fat people and photoshopping fat people on 4chan. And yeah, I mean, if they were trying to like bully, in quotation marks, this woman, then yeah, this seems like a pretty...

4chan kind of thing to do is to Photoshop her into a Jeff the Killer kind of aesthetic. But regardless, there's nothing to suggest that actually happened and no proof that the Heather image is actually the original JTK files. And yeah, the angle is the same, sure, but very little else, in my opinion, leads itself into being the same. It's a stretch. Yeah, it's a stretch. Yeah, so...

But then something interesting happened. There was something called NNN and then a bunch of... I think those are Chinese characters, are they not? Oh, no, they're Japanese characters. Jeez, you can tell the difference? I think they're Japanese. I think they're Japanese because we'll get into it, but the NNN special broadcast is like an urban legend in Japan. This is like... So...

Before we get into it, like this, the NNN thing, that's like, that was a real, real big breakthrough because we're about to find out that this video and this appearance of the Jeff the Killer image predates the creepypasta. Exactly. Now we are heading, we are heading back in time, but, uh,

Yeah. Yeah. We'll get to do it. So NNN and a bunch of Japanese characters after that, also called the NNN Special Broadcast, was a video uploaded on the August of 2nd, 2007 that quickly gained traction on YouTube. So again, August 2nd, 2007. Remember that. When digging further, it was discovered that the video was also uploaded to another website even earlier on June 17th, 2007. NNN.

NNN special broadcast is a Japanese urban legend. The concept being about a broadcast that airs at 2.30 AM with a scrolling list of names, almost like a credit scene, but it ultimately finishes with these words, tomorrow's sacrifice or something similar of the sort with the insinuation being all those listed will die the following day.

Unless you forward it on to 10 friends, probably since that's always the theme. No, I don't know. But regardless, the video mimics this urban legend. And at 4.11 in the video, the image of the Jeff, sorry, the image of Jeff, the killer shows up specifically JTK2. So this is the one that Seswa was claiming was his own and that he made out of a mask, that specific one with the kind of like raccoon eyes. Yeah.

Yeah, so this was massive. The video is a fan-made project wanting to take the creepy Japanese urban legend and bring it to life, adding other scary imagery as well, which included the image we know now as Jeff the Killer. It is not believed that the creator of the video is the creator of the image. Rather, it is believed that the creator of the video sourced the image from elsewhere. Regardless, like I said, this was...

just absolutely enormous to the search efforts, as this was now seen at the time as the earliest use of the image predating Katie Robinson and the creepypasta by a year. And many knew that this couldn't be where it started and the image needed to have stemmed from elsewhere. But not only did the NNN special broadcast video prove that the image preceded the prevailing theory at the time, as well as the claim made by Sessoir, it also provided a vital clue to its possible origins. Could Jeff the Killer have emanated from

from Japan. I guess that's just... So, yeah, like...

Yeah, so like I said, up until this point, the Katie Robinson thing, even though it was debunked, I think a lot of people weren't really searching anymore because it was almost a dead end. And people, even if it was debunked, there are people that still believe that, right? They're just not going to be up to speed. So the discovery of the NNN special, it was a video from 2007. And towards the end of the video, you see the Jeff the Killer image. Whoever made the video edited in there.

and it predates Katie Robinson it predates the creepypasta it predates Sesswar even saying that like it was it was a mask like

It was so bizarre to find something that early use the image. It was just so weird. And I think it reinvigorated the search because now there was more to search for. Well, now all the theories were basically dead in the water. Like, it was open ground. And now people had impetus or the idea that the image could have existed even earlier, basically. Well, even earlier and also even from somewhere else. Like, no one...

considered Japan as a source of all things. So it was a super weird discovery. It really is such an interesting phenomenon where everything good comes out of Japan. Everything. We should have known. We should have known as soon as we saw Jeff the Killer that this is... You're talking about the image or the mystery? It's everything, yeah. Yeah.

It's just great. And it does make sense because obviously if the image were to be hidden in the internet without people seeing it, it would have to be on a foreign website, surely, where Western audiences just aren't used to going. That would explain how it was able to avoid being seen up until this point. We didn't get really into it, but there was other prevailing theories before Katie Robinson. Some people thought it was that... What's her name? That over...

That girlfriend that kind of like stares at you. Have you guys seen that meme? Oh, yeah. What was that? The over something girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Overly attached girlfriend or something? Overly attached girlfriend. People thought it was her. People thought it was like this poor woman on Facebook who like went through like a traumatic car crash and had her like face kind of disfigured. But it was all US based. So...

To what Jackson was saying, the fact that people were like, hold on, this might be... Because this video originated, it was in Japanese, and the NNN special broadcast is a Japanese urban legend. So it was presumed

Whoever made this video got the image from a Japanese source. And again, this predates the Creepasta by a year. It blew open the dam, basically. Well, to put it simply, Jeff the Killer went international. He went global, in fact. Now all the websites were a hunting ground to find the origins of the Jeff the Killer mystery. I mean, obviously the focus was on Japan, though, because that is the lead at the moment.

which brings us to Futaba and now just 2chan is a Japanese image board website with the idea that the image now emanated from Japan the idea that Futaba could have been involved was natural and so that's where the investigation started to focus so it's basically like 4chan but Japan right Japanese I mean it's 2chan yeah same concept just different nationality and they have their whole list of problems too not problems but like they are very very infamous as well yeah yeah

There have been many investigations into Futaba and 2chan with images of JTK1 found from 2007. For a while, this 2chan posting was the earliest known upload of JTK1. It was a GIF or GIF, however you pronounce it. I say GIF. I don't know what... What do you guys say? GIF or GIF? I'm pretty sure it's GIF because it stands for Graphical...

Interface? Something like that? Yeah, something like that. But regardless. I'm almost certain it's GIF. I mean, yeah, but people still say GIF sometimes. I'm pretty sure. Unless I just made that up. Jordan, do you say GIF or GIF? Or do you just never say it because it's a computer term? I've never said GIF in my life. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's universally like GIF. What am I thinking of?

I don't know what the hell you're thinking of, Jackson. Honestly. Jif. I swear. Is he going to use Jif? No, I swear this was like a debate online for a while at some point. Am I? Is this like a bird? Oh, no, no. It was a debate. No, people talk about it, but like, I swear it was like 80, 90% of people said Jif. Okay.

Good. Okay. People might have been confused because of the Jeff peanut butter thing, the JIF. I thought you guys were saying that the debate never even existed. I was like, did I imagine this? Is this like a Berenstain band moment? We just gaffled you. We just Mandela affected you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, damn, this was instrumental in my upbringing.

Yeah, so it was a GIF first showing a group school photo, origins unknown, where the picture of JTK1 would then play as a jump scare 10 seconds into the GIF. The website had warnings for media in case people were too scared to click into it. This warning in particular said, quote, a jump scare GIF of some class group, of some class group,

Jesus of some class group photo changing into an over Q woman. I got scared because I thought it was a JPEG low harmless to computer jump scare warning and quote. So over Q also known as Q Chan or over over K no Q Taro is a mischievous character from a manga from 1964 and is not likely connected to the creation of JTK one. So just putting that put that out of your mind.

With results being discovered on 2chan, investigators started to dig deeper into the website archives to see if they could find additional usage of JTK1 or JTK2. So remember, they've only really found evidence of JTK2 at this point, right?

Yeah, I believe jtk1 comes a little later. I can't remember for sure when they found because jtk1 is like the earlier version It's like the pre obviously still Photoshop, but it's before like the mouth Distortion and all that but I want to say once they get the once they got the Japan lead and they start looking into 2chan and stuff I believe at this point they find jtk1. Yeah, so they finally get earlier edit which again was like a huge huge deal so jtk2

Yeah, so JTK2 was discovered on the earliest known recording or whatever. At the moment, it was NNN special broadcast in that picture. But then when they went on Futaba is when they kind of found the existence of JTK1. So up until that point, they had never seen JTK1 before.

Yeah. Yes. I believe so. Wow. So that's huge. Imagine like seeing a famous meme or different version of it predating the meme that you already know about. Isn't it incredible? That's basically what happened. That's wild. Yeah. They found like an earlier version. I can see why you're really into this. It's quite fascinating. The little discovery moment, isn't it? Yeah. It's so weird because like this whole like genre of like internet detectives, like it's

Like, we'll get into, like, the image data and stuff like that, but, like, it's such an odd... No, I don't want to even say odd. It's just, like, an impressive feat to discover an earlier version of the image. Like, it's really hard to unsmear something like that, you know? Like, it was, like, indisputably an earlier version of, like, this iconic image we've all seen at some point. Especially with how deep and vast the internet is, and now they're dealing with international...

communities and websites and yeah it's just it's wild it would be such a mind blowing moment to be the person who first discovered this be like holy shit is that Jeff the Killer but a different version and also years earlier that's mind blowing what a dopamine rush hey oh dude you'd feel so good have you ever discovered anything have you ever detected something as an OG are you kind of the curator and historian of these events

I'll be all right. I carry in and I document them. I'm in a few searches here and there. I was there for when I wasn't there there. But like when when the back rooms location was discovered because there was a huge search about a year ago about where the back rooms images located. That was huge. I was that was that was I was in the I was in the call like that was that was a crazy discovery. That's a that's a whole other rabbit hole. That would have been exciting. Yeah, man. Yeah.

Being there on the ground level when this happened. I wish I could have been involved... Not involved in the search necessarily, but like... I wish I'd have known about this while it was happening, but I never heard about it. I never heard that like... Well, to be fair, it's still happening. The search is ongoing. This is one of the longer ones. Yeah, true. But just that pivotal moment itself where they discovered that JTK1 existed. I wish I was there at that moment.

yeah yeah i was not there for it but like i remember seeing it thinking like oh my god like yeah because again like for me personally i i i the jeff the killer image like to me like i've just seen it everywhere yes so just to know that there's more to it um yeah yeah it's like a whole new universe has opened up to you it's like wait there's more there's more to jeff the killer

How far back can this go? Because right now we're in 2006. Yeah, we're going to start finding hieroglyphics from ancient Egypt of Jeff the Killer eventually.

This is like when Welcome to the Black Parade was released. The watershed moment for us. So it was discovered... It was then discovered that a photoshopped image of a character, Mai Tokiha from the anime Maihime, was posted on Futaba on April 3rd, 2006. So now we're in 2006, right? Yep, 2006. Yeah.

uh so yeah on april 3rd 2006 jtk won the year previous to the above gif so yeah so we got the picture here look at it um uh look at it jordan you can see two two pictures down from where the arrow is that's clearly jeff the killer one there photoshopped onto an image of a anime character and this image was from 2006 so these posts were from 2006.

That's crazy. And all of this is just to show that this image, I don't want to say frequently, but it was passed around pretty early on. In Japan in 2006. On 2chan. Yeah, on 2chan. It made a handful of appearances. I think they searched the file name or something. It was crazy how they found this because these forum threads are now obviously long gone. So we're digging through the archives. Archives, yeah. Whatever was archived, luckily enough, by web crawls and stuff like that.

Because obviously with lost media... They're searching file names. They're searching photo sizes and dimensions and stuff. This is some real technical work. Stuff can be deleted off the internet, obviously. There's the prevailing theory that once it's on the internet, it exists forever. And that's more of like a...

a warning that it could exist forever if people make enough copies of it but there is definitely plenty of examples where something is posted on the internet you see it and then it is deleted and no one saved an archived version of it or it's not archived otherwise and then it is just lost to time that is what lost media is essentially anyway so yeah i mean it's it would have been entirely possible for there to be hundreds of other of these posts um of jtk1 at the time

that have since been lost to time. But luckily enough, people were able to find this specific post proving that it came from 2006, April 3rd, at least then.

as we'll find that it goes even deeper. So this picture has JTK1 photoshopped over the top of the character. Many think it's from a Photoshop contest on Futaba that was happening around the time. Regardless, it showed that JTK1 existed in some form as early as April 2006, well before the creepypasta was ever posted. And these early postings seem to stem from Japan. It seemed logical to extend the search to other Japanese websites as it was becoming clear that the hypothesis that the image was created in Japan was looking ridiculous.

more and more likely. Which takes us to pya.cc. Is it pya.cc? I think it's pya. This is like a...

This is an odd site. I think it was like a photo sharing, like kind of like porn kind of site. I'm not sure. I don't want to put that out there, but like it's such a weird... I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it's long gone now, but I think it's Paya? Pia? I have no idea. I'll pronounce it Pia. Pia.cc. So in 2018, JTK2 was found to have once been posted on a Japanese website called Pia.cc. This post was made on the 16th of November...

2005 so we're now another year back in time by a user by the name of Mr. Omega Bolt extending the timeline even further into the past they titled it and the title is quote Koa Ahoyahia I don't know if that's right that was pretty good end quote and the subtitle under the image read quote what are you afraid of end quote

These images. That's kind of a trolly thing, right? Like in 2005, seeing that image and the text, what are you afraid of? Yeah. So that clearly means that the image was still being used as a shock image, even at that time. And even on like Japanese websites. So it wasn't just. Oh yeah. I'm pretty sure it was like their version of like the exorcist girl for us. The exorcist girl. I don't know if you guys remember, but that shit was everywhere. Yeah. Jump scares. Oh yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I think that was like their version of it, but I'm just speculating now. I think the first jump scare I ever saw was that classic viral video of the car driving forever around that winding road. I hate that one so much. I think that was my first too. Or the maze game. Yeah, the maze game was another one. Yeah. And then it just hard cuts to that jump scare. Do you remember that one, Jordan? I'm pretty sure. No. Oh. Good. I can get you later once you forget about this story. Continue. Ugh.

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure I saw the maze game in a public library as a middle schooler. That was awful. I hate screamers and stuff like that so much. Yeah, I'm not usually scared of horror movies too much, but jump scares, they're more like a physical impulse that just more or less annoys me. I can't do anything but flinch.

So you never screamed at him? Surely when you were in the library. No.

Yeah, did you? Well, I was just like, I was watching like, just like gameplay videos and just, I think I was watching like Criss Angel Mind Freak and shit like that. I was like, oh, the maze game. And then it was just, I might've screeched. It might've been, it was a little while ago. Worst place to let a screecher. For real. Yeah, totally. School library. So Jordan, you've never been jump scared before?

No, I think I've seen people maybe do it. I think I've seen... You chuck up a picture of the chick from the scary film and then you show it to a five-year-old. That's the main point, right? Yeah, I think I can get you there. I'll find something good and I'll wait until you least expect it.

Thanks, Jackson. You're welcome. Anytime, friend. Are you scared? Do you get scared in horror movies or anything like that? Yes. You're human. That's good.

Ah, totally. However, a lot of additional information was uncovered by this discovery by analyzing the file data in the upload. First of all, Photoshop 6.0 was used in the creation of the file, which had been around for five years at this point. This was relatively interesting as Photoshop 6.0 was released in September 2000 and between September 2000 and November 2005, which is when this file was uploaded, three more versions of Photoshop had been released, those being version 7, CS and CS2. So it's,

seems to suggest to me at least that potentially this put the time frame of the creation of the image much earlier than 2005 but ultimately after the year 2000 because an earlier version of Photoshop was used.

Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if whoever made the image did it in 2000 because they would have to be using the newest version of Photoshop at the time. And it was probably expensive. Yeah. It's likely he just had an older one lying around because this is before subscription services. Yeah, it doesn't determine anything conclusively. But I think three versions... Which is annoying. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Regardless, it does put the creation after the year 2000 at least. So we know that.

In addition to that information, the slice group name... So this is all like metadata stuff on the images. So people were analyzing the image and going through the metadata because each image is composed of data that you can analyze after the fact. So they were analyzing this data and one of the group names in the data was Pretty Face, which does describe the image and possibly was the original file name.

So a lot of people have thought that the name might be derived from another Japanese urban legend, Kuchisake Onna, or the Slipmouth Woman. The story of Kuchisake Onna goes that the woman will ask her victims if they think that she is pretty. If they reply with yes, she will take off a face mask, which she is wearing, which will reveal that she has cuts from the corners of her mouth to her ears. She then asks again.

At this point, there is no right answer because if they answer no, the woman will kill them. While if they answer yes, she will cut them similarly and permanently disfigure them just like she was. Could this be the reason behind Pretty Face File? Which is an interesting... Because if the image does emanate from Japan, they have a lot of cultural...

uh urban legends basically like like stuff like the kuchisaka owner so it could be the entire like jeff the killer image could have been born from that urban legend itself that cultural urban yeah and she also like so the pretty face thing like there there's a lot to break down here right um obviously uh japan does have a lot of like urban legend um beings and creatures so so does the us right so so do us but um

The Slipmouth Woman, that's such a... That's so similar in idea to Jeff the Killer because he also has the cut mouth and all that. And then with the name Pretty Face... So 2chan, from my understanding, 2chan had these photo...

shop contest thing called Make Me Pretty. They had threads called Make Me Pretty threads where they would take a person's face and take turns photoshopping it. So I would photoshop it and then another anon would photoshop it and then another anon. So on and so forth until it's completely disfigured and unrecognizable. So the fact that the file name said Pretty Face, some people thought it was also alluding to

those threads they would do back in the day the make me pretty challenges which which if it like the end result being jtk1 or jtk2 right okay so like that that name is super interesting uh like like like like it said in the script it also might be like the urban legend yeah there's a lot of speculations that can be made from it basically

Yeah, like it's such a weird thing to find within the files. I forgot the program they used to scrabble this data, but very, very interesting that the Pretty Face name was in one of the images. Yeah, as well as the information about Photoshop 6.0, because I do find that information interesting that it kind of

puts a time frame roughly at least on this particular file regardless after further investigations on the site the first discovery of JTK1 was made

And remember JTK1 is the one with the more... The one that we all agreed was scary. Yeah, I'm going to say that it was more... It uses like Mr. Potato Head eyes, basically. They look like Mr. Potato Head. There you go. I can't remember if it was in here, but they found the eyes to come from Mr. Potato Head. Yeah, so photoshopped on there from Mr. Potato Head. That was mind-blowing to Jordan. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm pretty impressed by that. I'm sorry. It's just the payout. Take the eyes. Focus on just the eyes. Those eyes are from a Mr. Potato Head toy thing. Just Photoshop them. Yeah, he's absolutely right. All right. Hang on. Sorry. I'm just going to have to look at that. He's going to have to analyze it.

I'm getting on to my own investigation. Uploaded by a username Mr. Mulholland on the 10th of September in 2005, two months before JTK2 was uploaded. This picture features an Asian woman, skin still almost white and grinning widely. Many features between the two images are the same.

The black hair, no eyebrows or nose, and the background is the same. The eyes, however, are different, still creepy or non-human-like, with the pupils being dilated heavily. Many started to believe, and still do, that the eyes are from Mr. Potato Head. And yeah, I mean, they are, like, 100% in my opinion. It's like, not even, not up for debate. What else would they be from?

It was just like we're getting like deeper and deeper and more questions and the Mr. Potato Head thing. That's such like a flashbang like fact. I can't believe that's a thing. I can't believe Mr. Potato Head is involved in the Jeff the Killer mystery to some degree. Which kind of makes sense because 2004 or 2005, sorry. It was right after Toy Story 2. Toy Story 2 was like 1999 or something. Yeah, at the height of its popularity really.

Yeah. Yeah, so 100% believable. The title of the post was White Powder. Due to the timeframe between JTK1 and JTK2, it is believed that JTK1

JTK2 was created by Mr. Omega Bolt by manipulating the already existing JTK1, which is why it's called JTK1, because it preceded JTK2. So the idea is that this image existed first to some capacity, to some degree, and then Mr. Omega Bolt was the original creator of JTK2 by taking JTK1 and manipulating it and replacing the eyes and photoshopping the corner of the mouth into...

What we now know is Jeff the Killer 1. But yeah, the Mr. Potato Head version of JTK, that's JTK 1, seems to be the canvas, let's say, the original kind of manipulation that would then go on to form JTK 2.

Impressively and importantly, people were able to track down this Mr. Mulholland user who also went by the name Miyama. They reached out to the user over Twitter, where Miyama then explained that sometime in the middle of 2005, an image began to pop up in Japan from a video of a middle-aged Asian woman who was extremely pale. It was used as a surprise image at the time and used as a meme in certain circles. It was this image that Miyama took and tweaked, adjusting small things like the brightness and such.

Unfortunately, Miyama does not have access to the original image that he tweaked to create JTK1 from, and he believes that it most likely doesn't exist on the internet anymore, unfortunately. Miyama believes the video came from a show named a bunch of Japanese characters, or also called Honto ni Ata Noroi no Video, which translates roughly to, quote, It Really Happened, Cursed Video, end quote. That's the English translation.

So what this series was, it was an anthology horror series which featured real cursed videos apparently. There's like 150 videos of them apparently. Something to that degree. A lot of videos to go through. This lead was investigated but no one could find a similar image in any of the episodes so it appears this was a dead end and a mis-memory of Miyama. The idea that the image originates from some sort of Japanese reality TV show is still widely believed however.

What do you think of that, Jorge? The fact that they tracked him down was pretty fascinating. I think he was still active on Twitter. It was the same username, so that was a stroke of luck.

Gosh, the idea that it's from... If it's from some TV show, that gives me a little bit of hope because hopefully it's for sale. Hopefully there's some home video release. That's kind of cool. The problem, though, is that Japan, from my understanding, is very A, strict with copyright, and B, not amazing with archival. The lost media scene over in Japan is like 10 times as big. Wow. Really? Yeah.

So, I mean, if it did come from a TV show or an anthology series or something, then that's great because that gives us something to find. Can you just walk us through the archive? Sorry, sorry, go on, go on, sorry. No, no, no, go ahead. Can you just walk us through this whole ordeal of archiving footage? Are you saying that TV just assumed that they'd put it out on air and no one would ever want to see it again and so that was that and they didn't really keep things? Is that usually what happens or...?

So, I mean, there is like a lost media scene over in Japan. And I've dabbled into it a little bit. But like my understanding is that they just like archival in terms of like really, really old movies or old TV shows that they think are like historically important. Stuff like that. They tend to like not, I don't want to say not care as much. But like we have like a, like we have a film institution and we like we archive that shit like pretty passionately. We can find it. Yeah.

But over there, and copyright is like a really, really, they take that very, very seriously for some reason. Yeah.

So if Jeff the Killer is from a show, that's going to be a little hard to find. Yeah, like those expendable shows that you endlessly see in Japan of, I don't know, some celebrities doing some game where they're trying to throw a ball in the cup and then it just cuts to someone cutting a steak and them all just looking very seriously at it. That's just lost to time. Lost to time, yeah. Unless a passionate fan or an archival, someone who cares about the archival of things

creates a hard copy of it basically on their own. Does it by themselves? Yeah. So it sounds like America and the Western world kind of has institutions set up to archive things more broadly. We're kind of like that too because we tend not to...

archive game shows, for example. Once it's up, they show it. There's not a whole lot of DVDs or VHSs of game shows. We tend to just show them and then swap them out for new episodes and newer contestants. That's an example of the US kind of not

Like who's going to buy like the first like a random couple seasons of like Family Feud or something. Yeah, but the difference is, I mean, there's many situations in America where you hear of one person who then takes on the task of archiving every single episode of that particular game show that they're really invested in. Yeah. No, that's true. Is it the same in Japan? Like there are those kinds of passionate people that will do that?

I'm pretty sure. I hope so. I've tried to look for dramas and stuff like that for videos that I'm working on. I can't find it online. I can't find it for sale using Japanese Yahoo and stuff like that. I think they're just more or less tighter with that kind of stuff. It's super odd.

Maybe it's just the scale of stuff because I feel like the Japanese output of reality shows and things like that are probably larger than America. That's the gut feeling. It feels like that. I don't have any data to back that up. Yeah, I don't know for sure, but it kind of feels like that. Yeah, it feels like there's a lot of shows, but maybe that's just

my like out of touch kind of you know i mean i just don't know that much about the scene in japan with with it but i always hear about just like so many anytime you ever watch japanese television it just seems to be endlessly game shows endlessly them doing some quest yeah or pranks poorly there's like a really not infamous but there's a really like funny like

dinosaur like prank you can find on YouTube thankfully where they dress people up as dinosaurs and they come out of a it's like a very jackass thing to do where they just come out of the door and scare like workers there yeah you never know what you're gonna get I love it

Yes, so this lead was investigated, but no one could find similar imagery in any of the episodes, so it appears that this was a dead end. We have a few comments here from Japanese users. I'm just going to read two of them. One says, quote, the background looks like a dressing room because it is based on the captures of a variety show at the time. I don't remember what kind of show it was either. And then another quote says,

I think the original was a screen capture from a variety show around the year 2000. I think it was a close-up of the end of a comedy act and then it was further processed. These are comments from Japanese users speculating on this original picture and where it potentially came from. Most seem to kind of agree that it came from a reality TV show. Would you say that's accurate? Who, me? Yeah. Ooh, I can't even.

I don't want to, I can't even begin. Reality, I believe Mr. Mulholland said it was a video of like a close-up like old lady or something. So, I mean, at this point, it's all just speculation now. But he also said that the photo came from that cursed video series, which was in of itself, I think, a reality show, kind of. Yeah. So, like, I mean, it gives me hope because like it must have been recorded, right? It's not,

completely 100% lost the time like a random video file on some guy's computer like the fact that a production studio was involved gives me hope that it's somewhere out there I mean just the person who created the original image like captured the image that would then be changed has to still exist surely it's not that long ago yeah but like finding him was like a needle in the haystack I mean yeah

you probably have an easier time just finding the image itself than finding the person. It's just kind of crazy to me that people, like the Japanese community didn't seem to even know about Jeff the Killer or anything, like how that image was then used in the 2010s in the Western world. And like when Miyama found out about it, he was shocked. He said like, I searched for the keyword Jeff the Killer. Wow, I didn't know it was so famous. I checked the following sites. And that's like 15 years later. That's crazy to me that like,

how insular the bubbles are kind of that way you don't see stuff like that like yeah it's crazy it kind of makes you wonder what's like super nonchalant here but like like really popular in Japan yeah there's a phrase there is a phrase called popular in Japan I know for some reason this is completely off topic but they really like Lotso the bear from Toy Story 3 who doesn't yeah yeah but like here it's like a character over there they love it everyone hates Lotso yeah they love him

You like them too, Jetson, eh? No, I don't. I'll put it in a way that you can understand, Jordan. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer is discovered to have been an anime character in Japan on a dishwashing soap. You remember that episode? Ah, yes, that's right. Who could forget that? Mr. Sparkle, I think. Yeah, Mr. Sparkle.

It's exactly like that. He's just been a famous character over there for like a decade without him knowing. Could happen. In November 2024, Reddit user PerditasRedux was looking for file names matching PrettyFace when he found a match using viper.org. I don't know if that's a... I don't know if it's Viper or Vipper. Might be a typo. Oh, that's odd. I think Vipper.

Okay, yeah, viper.org does exist. It does seem to be a Japanese website, so that makes sense. Oh, it's still up. Oh my God. All right, so viper.org. Yes, so he found a match using viper.org on the 3rd of November. No, yeah, November 2005. Unless that's the other way around. I don't know the date. It might be like March 11th. Yeah. I'm not sure. It would have to be March 11th, wouldn't it? Because this is earlier than the previous one, which was September. Yeah.

Yeah, September 2005. If this is now earlier, then it would have to be March 2005 because November is after September. Let me see. Because on the actual screenshot here, it says 05-11-03. Yeah. Okay. What does Japan use in terms of date and month? It might be March. Date format. The most commonly used date format in Japan is year, month, day. Year, month. Okay, so it's November. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, the Reddit post says November 2. Okay, okay. Okay, there we go. So on the 3rd of November 2005, Pretty Face was uploaded with the file name VIP136334.jpg with the comment, Ghost Photos. After searches were made on 2channel for this file name, a thread was found with comments suggesting the users were reacting to something visibly similar to JTK1. There was also a similar re-upload found from the 30th of...

August. August. Thank you. 30th of August, 2005. For audio listeners, I'm having trouble with the way dates are written in this document. 30th of August, 2005, which, yeah, does precede September, which was the earliest upload previously. So 30th of August is now the earliest upload that we found. Comments from the thread?

show that people are saying quotes like, I thought it was Casper or heart jumped out of my chest, which kind of indicates that they are reacting to Jeff the Killer 1. So this is now the earliest date that we found of the JTK 1.

But it's not the earliest. The image does go further back and our earliest at the moment of this video confirmed posting of the image was on July 24th of 2005 when an upload of JTK1 was found to have been posted on a website called Fileman. This is the earliest known upload of this image currently. You like the website name?

Yes, I do. Fileman. It's great. It's just very, it's very early 80s Japanese anime. Fileman. Fileman. Oh yeah, something like that. Yeah. The name, the name of the post was quote, fear of summer nights, end quote. And there's a description with something like quote, a celebrity before plastic surgery, end quote, or quote, a celebrity before the show, end quote.

Which could, could that last one speak to validity behind the reality show theory, perhaps? You know, I was about to say, it's very interesting that they keep referring to it, or at least twice refer to a celebrity. Like, it might be, like the screenshot might exist because it's a celebrity that the person was fascinated with and took that screenshot and edited and the rest is history, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

It does seem somewhat believable. And it would kind of make sense why there would be clothes in the background than if it's like a dressing room for a show or something like that. Perhaps. I would love if Jeff the Killer was originally like a Japanese celebrity. Not just like a random person. Yeah, not a random person. That would be really funny. Yeah. Oh man, that would be such a nice twist. So keep in mind...

Oh, no, no. I was going to say that the fear of the summer nights comment is also interesting, too, because, again, from my understanding, from my brief Googling and here and there, summer to them is like October to us. That is when the ghost stories comes out. That's their time to talk about spooky stuff. Summer is their October, basically. So...

Very, very interesting. That fear of summer nights. Like that's a unique quote. It doesn't it's kind of like nonchalant first, but that would line up with with how Japan is like right now. Summertime for them is spooky time. It's ghost time. Okay, interesting. I said, keep in mind that these are originally written in Japanese and have been translated. But regardless, it still seems clear that they're talking about some kind of celebrity that that much is consistent, I think.

Some of the interesting comments made on this image at the time were translated and said things like, quote, the source is the scariest that sources in like the source of information, not like a pasta source, for example. And quote, I saw this on Weibo BBS, end quote. I tried to look into what Weibo BBS was.

I think it's like kind of like a messaging app or something similar to that, like a message. Weird. So it was being spread around even more like beyond the internet, like people were texting it to each other.

What is BBS? I'm pretty sure BBSs are like file sharing apps. So yeah, I'm assuming that this was... Regardless, this comment means that it was clearly being posted before this. So there is even earlier postings that we don't know about yet. Because remember, this is absolutely the earliest posting that we have found evidence of in terms of actual file upload. But even the comments on that post itself are talking about earlier postings of this. So...

There is definitely earlier postings of it. We just don't know how far back they go. I might have misunderstood you. What did you say Weibo BBS was? Well, I thought it was like a file sharing app. Oh, okay. I thought it was like a messaging kind of app. Okay, I was way off there. I can't find it. I can't find it, so I don't know. This is the first time I've heard about that. I have no idea what Weibo BBS is. I'm going to look it up again real quick so we get accurate information.

Yeah, that's super odd. What is BBS on the internet? Yeah, okay, so it is a bulletin board system. That's what BBS stands for. So basically, it's just like another forum.

Okay, so it's kind of like 2chan again. Yeah, yeah. So it's another... Oh, okay, okay, okay. They're basically just saying a different website where they saw it. It's basically like if someone said, I saw this on 4chan earlier or something like that. Okay, okay. Weird name, but yeah. Yeah, Weibo BBS. So it's another bulletin board.

But yeah, this means that it was seen earlier. This lead was investigated, but nothing else has been found so far. There were many other forums and websites that JTK1 popped up on after this time period. So after the July 24th period of 2005, like gazo05.chbox.jp and gameushara.net.com.

two channel now five channel and pia.cc so there's a bunch it showed up people have found it on a bunch of other websites since then just it's always been beyond July 24th of 2005 nothing earlier yet mmm

Given the fact that some commenters on this post suggested that they had seen it before, it's unlikely that this is the original source of JTK1 and as such, the image itself is considered lost media. We currently don't know where it stemmed from or who originally created the image, but we do have some popular theories online. In particular, the

Mariko and Sousa theory is one that we wanted to particularly highlight right now. So on April 28th, 2023, another lead surface that seemed to create compelling evidence surrounding the origin of the image that JTK would eventually be created from. However, an image of a woman by the name of Mariko was discovered on the Japanese image board called Gazobox. Similarities between the image and the white powder image were noticed immediately by JTK investigators.

As people began to look into Mariko, they found that she had been a net idol, which is a sort of internet celebrity and a subcategory of the idol industry in Japan for some period of time in the early 2000s in Japan. In Mariko's case, I think I would say the most applicable Western terminology is probably low-cal. Really? In how people viewed her, it seems like there was a lot of like...

We'll get into it, but I think lolcow is probably a more applicable term. Mariko also had a boyfriend named Sousa Kamaru, more commonly known as Sousa. Mariko had an Infoseek page with videos and images of her uploaded there created around April 2004. It is believed that Sousa created and operated this, possibly without Mariko's consent, as the relationship seemed to be rocky.

The website was like a diet diary to help, in quotation marks, Mariko lose weight. Sousa would promote this website around, but ultimately a lot of the comments left were really nasty and many crossed into harassment, which is why I say it's more like a low-cow kind of situation where people kind of follow the person to harass them almost. Kind of like a boogie situation here where

A lot of the conversation around Boogie was just like hyper fixated on his weight and trying to help him lose weight while he didn't follow the advice or things like that. And people became very attached to following this person in that kind of pursuit. So I think, yeah, I think Lolka was probably, no fault to Mariko or anything. It doesn't seem like she even really sought this out.

necessarily. Okay, so net idol in Japan is a negative connotation. No, I just think net idol is more of a broad term. In this specific... Okay, yeah. Net idol just kind of like means celebrity, like online celebrity, someone who's being talked... Yeah, e-celeb. But in this particular case, I think it's more like she probably got that reputation by more of like a low-cow status, not someone that people actually like looked up to or like enjoyed necessarily. Yes. What were you going to say, Jorge? Yeah.

I was going to add quickly that it'd be very odd for someone to like have a diet diary, like a, like a, like it seemed like a weight loss kind of blog. Like, like it's, it'd be, it's very odd for someone to do that. So that's what led people to believe that, um, Sousa was the one operating this, uh, for, you know, for, for God knows what. Yeah. Uh, but she was an idol in the sense that people, um, knew about her and were like interested in her and like following along on her, um, quote unquote journey. Uh,

Very, very weird. But we'll see some of the images of her compared to JTK1 and how similar some of them are. Yeah. Also, I know there's a theory going around that Sousa was not actually her boyfriend. Can you speak on that briefly? Do you know about that? Ooh. I don't know a whole lot about...

That particular arrangement. Yeah, I mean, it did seem like he was running the website from what I understand and running the diary. And people speculated that he could have just been like an obsessive kind of stalker maybe. I'm not sure. The website was taken down. So it's impossible for us to really know for sure. Most likely from the negative tension.

I mean posting like your supposed girlfriends like weight loss photos online and like the alert 2000s is kind of a dick move. Yeah, it's a weird thing regardless. Yeah, I can buy that for like a stalker more than like a loving boyfriend, right? Yeah, exactly.

Super odd. Though the website was previously being spread around, the current prevailing theory is that someone saved a photo or video from the website during its short popularity where they then turned it into the Jeff the Killer photo when it was then spread. This seems believable as there was just over a year's difference between the website going down and the first found photo.

currently first found JTK white powder image seen. Sousa also knew how to use Photoshop, at least version 5.1, as he would edit photos of himself, which we found. In addition to that, the background of photos featuring Sousa seemed to show a similar background to the photo of JTK1 with the clothes rack.

So yeah, we have a couple pictures here comparing Mariko to JTK1, this first picture here. Same guns and moles, same mouth spots, same shoulder placement, same hair parting, and the same general face shape. What do you think, Jordan? Do you think that that looks kind of similar? Yeah, I reckon that's it. What do you think? I think that's exactly what's happened. What do you think, Jorge? Okay.

So, like, the way she smiles with her gums, kind of, her top guns kind of clearly showing, like, that kind of strikes out to me. And even, like, where, like, her hair divides. Like, if you guys look at, like, her hairline, where, like, that kind of, like, line is, like, that is almost exactly where... Yeah, you're right, actually. I didn't notice that the little split in her hair, where the hairline does part, it's, like, exactly the same face dimension-wise. It's, like, in line with her left eyebrow, which is where that...

Where the left eyebrow would be if Jeff Tequila had any eyebrows. The interesting thing, though, is that she's not a celebrity. This is, from my understanding, not a reality TV show unless...

Japanese citizens viewed her like weight loss progression as reality TV? Yeah, actually no, I think that would be in line with the idea that she would be a reality TV show celebrity or a reality celebrity if her rise to e-celeb fame in Japan was based around her weight loss journey. That's kind of in line with a reality TV show almost. So I could see how the Japanese could potentially view her that way.

I suppose. So it might have also been like a mistranslation or like a misinterpretation because reality, real, like she was obviously a real person and a show as in like a viewing kind of experience. So, I mean, perhaps when I think of reality TV, though, like I think of like the prank shows. Yeah, like TV, like television. But also it could explain how more broadly the Japanese...

currently don't seem to like talk about it if it was some kind of niche at the time e-celeb as opposed to you know a proper large Japanese celebrity on a popular or maybe not completely popular reality TV show itself though like it enjoyed its moment of brilliance

brief popularity in like 2004 and then just faded into obscurity once the website was taken down. That could explain why more people don't know of its origins, in my opinion. And why people don't even talk about it anymore. I mean, they might. I'm not on the Japanese internet, but you're right that it had its peak and then it fell off and then kind of we took it and made a big mystery out of it. Yeah. I'm going to say I buy this one

Pretty concretely, I think. I think I'm like 90% on the Mariko train. Because the clothes in the back match with the room that Suza was in, if you scroll down. It's the same kind of room. It looks similar. I'm personally not like 100% like, oh, that's the exact same closet. It's also kind of weird to Photoshop the closet behind her like that, right? Wouldn't that be kind of odd to do?

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. That would be weird. It's the same kind of... I don't know. Same kind of visuals. Yeah, I don't know. I think, and this is just a harebrained theory, but I think someone used...

uh one of her photos and the uh make me pretty threads that i mentioned earlier and over time it like devolved and devolved and devolved and people kept editing over it and then you got uh jtk1 yeah i mean the image the image of her kind of like flashing the peace sign and like tilting your head a bit like that like strike out that's very very similar yeah yeah i mean i again i think

I'm 90% on the side of that the image is based off an image of Mariko to some degree due to the facial similarities, as well as it kind of makes sense with how it would have started around that time period if she was some kind of e-celeb. But to play devil's advocate, they would have to remove the peace sign. I think her right shoulder is kind of different than JTK1. The ear...

Her left ear is present, but in JZK1 they might have scribbled over it or just removed it. It's just to play devil's advocate here. There's a lot of things that stick out to me that this might not be the original image. And obviously there's still

It might just be like a Katie Robinson thing where, you know, now we're saying, oh, yeah, clearly this is it. But then 10 years down the line, we're not going to be thinking that. That's why I'm saying 90%. I mean, I can't be 100%. Okay, sure. Just want that little out. Yeah, the little out. But also it could come on. Just 100% all in. Oh, there we go. I'm doing it. I like that. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. What percent are you in?

Yeah, what percentage are you, Jorge? Jorge, what are you on? Oof. I don't know, man. I mean, yeah, like I said, like the face shape, the way she like

It could be a different picture of Mariko as well, though. It could be a different picture, yeah. I don't know about that exact picture, even though the head shape and the tilt is very similar. But in terms of if it's her, I think they're still investigating her. I think they're still trying to find as much as they can. So I'm 70%, 80%. Okay, yeah. Has she ever been contacted about this and prodded? Not as far as we could find. I think she's long gone, yeah.

I don't even know if he found her as a person, like, any way to contact her. But if... I don't think so. I might be wrong on that because, like, we're... This is, like, recent, recent development, so I'm not... I have no idea for sure. But I know they're trying to find, like, images of her in, like, other blogs. Yeah. So, again, this was only two years ago. God, isn't it strange in this day and age, even with a bunch of photos, even with a bunch of...

historical background information, even if you are to some degree a celebrity, you can still just disappear off the grid because of how large society is. I don't think you could in this day and age. She got very lucky that this happened to her in 2004 probably. I think nowadays though. Right, yeah, sorry, I'm thinking 2012.

It's been 20 years. Yeah. What's more strange to me is like, imagine being a person in 2004 and like, oh, I'll check out this new social media website and post a few pictures. Why not? That sounds fun. And then people are still talking about it 20 years later and investigating your entire life and trying to pin you to like Jeff the Killer Mystery. I'm not even aware. What'd you say? Sorry, Jorge?

Sorry, I was about to say, she might not even have been the one to post them. She might not have any idea about any of this. If Sousa is a stalker, then yeah, she could be completely unaware. She could just be an innocent woman. And she is the sole obsession of a huge amount of collective human effort. Yeah. And she's just living her life. Yeah, that could be happening. That's crazy. Isn't it?

So there was also some recent information about Mariko and Sousa posted on Reddit around three months ago at the start of 2025 by user DarkAngelRa. Another user named Zaytek had discovered chat pages and such on Sousa's sites and found regular posts, posters who most likely had contact with Sousa. They found personal details of some of these posters and reached out with one user replying. The person who responded, which is named X for privacy,

gave some interesting details. X had communicated with Souza on Yahoo Messenger, which was now an inaccessible platform that he couldn't access. But he said that there was a hidden section named Mariko's room that may have included a picture of Mariko in a swimsuit.

Apparently, Sousa's content and images that he created in Photoshop blended occult and UFO elements with eerie images. Many of these images were behind password-protected hidden rooms like Mariko's room. X said that Sousa was not Mariko's boyfriend, and he didn't know if Mariko had created Jeff the Killer or not.

Sousa would send psychological barucuras, that's a quote, one ex remembered was, quote, as a sequence of changing images that culminated in a scream with Mariko appearing as a still image at the beginning or end, which does sound like a jump scare, right?

That's very, very interesting. That's a series of changing images, kind of like the Make Me Pretty thread. So very, very odd. These are completely new developments. Yeah, this is this year. Really, really. This Sousa guy is kind of an oddball. Yeah. Very new developments. I don't think that there's concrete

like we can't test the veracity of X's claims, obviously. Yeah. X found a hard drive that showed he visited Sousa's site, which was Sousa.hp.infoseek.co.jp on February 1st and May 9th, 2004. X also remembers that Sousa sent him the GIF of the school students that jump-scaled people with the JTK image in 2004. So he's saying, X is saying that he had seen the image

the gif of the school students in 2004, which was a full two years earlier than the original, which was found upload uploaded on 2006 on that. What was it? 2chan, I think.

Yeah, I believe so. So that's incredibly interesting, if true. That means... Yeah, I was about to say, I was about to clarify if true. Exish is claiming all of this. I mean, I kind of have no reason to doubt him, but I also have no reason to fully believe him. That's very, very interesting. A very interesting development. That means that Suzer is definitely tied to the creation or the proliferation of the original images to some degree.

if true X also suggested that Mariko was an edited version of Sousa but many don't believe this particular claim that's a weird that's a weird one so X also suggested that Mariko was an edited version of Sousa so he like gender bent himself into Mariko but no there's far too many pictures of Mariko in different poses for that to be true surely that Mariko was an edited version of Sousa that's the claim yeah

Okay, that's odd. That's weird. I'm not sure what to make of that. Wait a second. Again, facial blindness. Looking at Mariko and Susan, do they have the same nose, kind of? I think Mariko's kind of flares out a bit more. Okay. Or actually, no, I'm looking at the main photo, the photo of her smiling. It's kind of similar. I've got such facial blindness. I don't know. What do you think, Jordan? Yeah.

Like if he wore a wig and like photoshopped his eyebrows and stuff, could they look similar? No. Okay.

Don't you reckon? I don't know. I have facial blindness. You do have that. Sorry, I forgot about your problem in life. It's strange, isn't it? My serious issues. Just can't distinguish between anyway. It's basically just like you should have listened to the Avril Lavigne podcast that we did before. That was so difficult for Jackson. Yeah, it was really bad. It's like he's dyslexic but for human faces.

Wait, was Avril Lavigne? Isn't that like the clone conspiracy or something? Yeah. I heard vague mentions of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, I could not distinguish which one was the clone and which one wasn't. I couldn't do it. I couldn't see any differences. It's really bad. Oh, man. I don't know how it starts. I just cannot determine. Like, am I just broken as a human being?

I think so. No. Oh, God. Two different opinions. We're debating on this now. If you can't tell the difference between OJ Simpson and your mum, you're broken. I can tell the difference now, obviously. But if you put OJ Simpson and OJ Simpson with a slightly different nose next to himself, then I wouldn't be able to tell which one. I wouldn't be able to see the difference, I don't think.

Okay, you're slightly colourblind then. Like, just a little bit, but just for faces. Yes. Look, that's a little bit different. Face blind. It's just like... I really, like... Okay, again...

I don't see how you could see this as this. It's no. Yeah, you don't see. You see two very distinct people here between Sousa and Mariko. Yeah, I'm wondering. I had to decipher that sentence in my head. Mariko was an edited version of Sousa, so Mariko doesn't exist. Yeah, that's the claim. That's the claim, that Mariko doesn't exist and that Sousa, the boyfriend, would just Photoshop himself to look like Mariko. That is an insane amount of...

for no reason. Yes, with a very prototype Photoshop as well. I could see it being done. Someone wanting to, you know, show themselves as a woman, perhaps. I mean... It's really strange going back and watching films from even the early 2000s and it's the greatest graphics you've ever seen. And you start looking at it now and you think this is...

This is about PlayStation 1 level. Yeah. Yeah, the early 2000s are rough. Aren't they? Yeah, I can't pass... And this is like Hollywood. I can't pass the difference in talent between... On one hand, he's able to Photoshop himself into looking like a completely different woman.

to also then photoshopping Mr. Potato Head eyes onto a picture of Jeff the Killer oh yeah that's actually a really good point like he's really good at transforming himself into a woman but then he has to take Mr. Potato Head eyes and just copy and paste them yeah there's like a big difference in talent photoshop talent there so I don't know highly artistic man that's

he deserves to be in a gallery for that that's quite a comment on modern society isn't it i mean maybe he didn't maybe he didn't use photoshop to dress up as a woman maybe he was just a cross dresser who was able to pass rather convincingly yes you would say that as someone with no facial recognition yeah yes yes i don't know how much can makeup do can it change bone structure

I don't know. All right. That's such an odd claim to make, though. I'm still kind of on it that this X individual would say that, oh, Mariko was an edited version of Sousa. It does kind of throw into question the credibility of X, in my opinion, to make that kind of claim. I almost didn't want to say it out loud, but I'm like, oh, that's odd. That's a weird thing to say. Yeah.

Well, he did just suggest it. Maybe it was just a running theory in their group at the time, like a running joke. Like because maybe he was pretending. Like it's a claim a lot of the times in friend circles that you just made that girlfriend up or whatever. You know, like my girlfriend goes to a different school. She goes to a different school. Yeah. So maybe they're like ribbing him about that kind of like, yeah, you probably dressed up as her and it kind of just passed off like that. Maybe. I don't know.

Regardless. And I don't like that he hasn't responded yet. Like, he kind of like vanished. I mean, I hope he maybe died. We don't know if these people are still alive. I mean, we don't. Yeah, that's a mystery on top of a mystery. It could be a possible explanation for why we haven't heard from these kinds of people since. Attempts have been made to contact X again, but the user has since stopped responding. Dude, it would be such a fucking enormous plot twist if it turned out that X was Sousa all along and he was playing games.

The mind games would be ridiculous. That's like a Netflix level documentary kind of thing. This would be such an enormous twist. And you thought that he was a bad plot writer. What a twist. Sousa was also a sasso or whatever. It was everyone. He's been orchestrating this from the very beginning. Oh my God. Oh man. That would be such an anime twist. It would be perfect.

The Jackson just off the top of his head came up with a better storyline than everyone in competition for decades. I mean, the story's right there. It's right in front of me. She wrote the actual Creep Hossa too. Yeah, everything. Oh man. Even this episode of Red Thread. Oh dear. I am not real.

Ultimately, there are no satisfying answers here, only questions. We can only speculate on the origins of JTK1 image and where it stemmed from. What we do know, or at least what we think we know, is the following. JTK1 was first posted on 24th of the 7th, 05 in Japan. That's the earliest date we have. We don't know the creator of JTK1 or where the image preceding JTK1 came from, but we do know that it was first posted on 24th of the 7th, 05 in Japan.

but it potentially stemmed from Sousa and Mariko, two individuals in Japan. JTK2, the edit that would be spread across Western sites in the 2010s, was likely created by Mr. OmegaVault at some point around November in 2005 by himself editing JTK1, because that's the earliest evidence we have of JTK2.

In 2008, Sassier utilized JTK2 in his original video while adding a story about Jeff the Killer. In 2011, a user by the name of GameFuelTV would then rewrite the story and post it onto Creepypasta Wikia, where it would then quickly find popularity in the exploding Creepypasta fandom. And that's the one that we all know about. That's where it all began from that particular, that's what propelled it into, you know, the awareness or the popularity that we now have of it.

The story and picture were then rewritten once more in 2015. That is finally all that we currently know. Many who have dedicated so much time to the investigation of the JTK images believe that the original Jeff the Killer image came from a website board thread similar to 4chan, and unless someone out there has the original picture saved, it likely won't be found. The search is confusing, messy, and updates are still being found recently, like little internet breadcrumb trails. Until

Until the day comes when we hopefully discover the origin of the image, JTK1, and the true origins of the infamous Jeff the Killer, he will remain lost media. Do you kind of agree with that? Is that a good way of summing it all up? Yeah, basically. I mean, I think at the end of the day, we're looking for, or they're looking for, like, the original image. I think finding whoever...

made it like whoever photoshopped it is is truly like that is truly lost the time it might have just been some anons on 2chan uh but as for like the original like the the base image that that morphed into jeff the killer like that's like what they're kind of focusing on right now and it might be mariko who knows yeah we could i mean it could be that image uh that image of mariko that was photoshopped so we might have the source file already we just don't have

proof available to us to confirm that yet, really. And to do that, we... And again, just like...

I was going to say to do that, to prove that is that picture, we would need to, again, we would need to find the Photoshopper, the person who made the edit, who would then be able to claim responsibility for doing it and show some level of proof. And we would also probably need to find the first time he posted it or how. Yeah, which would be cool. Is this stupid? Is this possible to do? You know how they kind of can reconstruct what they think Toot and Carmen looked like?

do you think that it's possible that one day technology will get to the point where you can just reverse engineer a Photoshop? I mean, we already can to some degree. Like, have you heard of that? The, uh, the famous, uh, pedophile who, who he's calling card. he left his, he left his picture at most of the crimes. Like there were photos of him with the, uh, Photoshop swirled face, basically, you know, when you like blend a photo into like circles, like,

Like his face was just a giant swirl. Oh, so he did have one of these calling cards that we were talking about last time. Yeah, he did kind of have, he like left that. I'm pretty sure that's how police found the photo. But yeah, they had the photo of the criminal. His face was just photoshopped into a giant swirl. And then forensic analysts were able to basically use algorithms to unswirl the face. Deswirl it. Deswirl it.

And then there was a clear picture of his face, basically, which is how they caught him. And he left that with full confidence, thinking that no one would be able to unswirl the Photoshop. Unswirl, swirl. And then they did. So yeah, I mean, Photoshop basically just uses a bunch of algorithms already. So in order to unedit it, you would just need to basically deconstruct the algorithms that made the edit in the first place. But on top of that...

I see a lot of that with people who want to hide information online. They put a Gaussian blur over the top or they smudge it or something like that. They just kind of blur it. That doesn't do anything. You have to destroy the information underneath in order for people to never find it, which is why you need to draw a giant black box over the information you want to completely hide, basically. If you blur it or if you just like...

you know smudge it or anything like that the information can be recovered so be very careful with that it's kind of a ballsy thing to do to like only swirl yeah to like leave like leave damning evidence of who it was it just swirled the image like well you see that in a lot of videos you see that in a lot of videos like people will post videos of people in in you know unflattering situations and then they'll just put a blur over the face

That won't do anything. You can easily deconstruct that. Black boxes and things like that are the best way of hiding information. Just saying. Yeah, because the pixels and the colors are completely just wiped at that point. Yeah, the data underneath is gone.

Yeah. So that's Jeff the Killer 2. We've got some members questions. So you can sign up at official.men for a free seven-day trial to add free early access to Red Thread episodes. Your support obviously means the world to us here at Red Thread. It really does make the show possible. Our members are the best. We've also post questions, Red, so you can post questions that we'll then read on the show in upcoming episodes. We've got some questions here that we'll quickly go over, guys.

First question from Asus HP. Simple question, smash or pass? I'm assuming talking about Jeff the Killer. I'm going to pass on that one, believe it or not. You're going to pass, are you? Yeah, I'm not that desperate. Smash. Nice. Smash. I felt that coming. I was like, there's no way. There's no way he doesn't smash. You've got to smash it. But this is my whole understanding of life. 13-year-old boy. I'm a 13-year-old boy.

I'm a meme. Oh, yeah, it's a 13-year-old boy. Ooh. You're going to jail, my friend. You know, you can't unsay things. That's just caught out now. We're going to have to put a black box over whatever he just said to remove all the data underneath. Oh, well, I've just been outed. Holy shit. That's your internet career gone.

Yeah. I'll pass for legal reasons and not because it's a disgusting picture. Passing for legal reasons. Not out of disgust. What a weird distinction to make. Sidekick Armadillo. Do you think this image or an image like this could spread around the internet these days? I feel like most people are too smart for creepypastas now because the market was oversaturated. So even if a story like this ended up being true, most people wouldn't bat an eye now. Yeah, I kind of agree with that. It's kind of like hit its...

hit its peak in my opinion like the back grooves yeah I mean we were just like young and naive yeah yeah like we were just naive back then like it freaked the hell out of me as a 14 15 year old I don't know about kids I don't know I don't think so no I think there's too much exposure to things like this now where it's obviously like fake even to kids

The back rooms and things like that work because it's like surreal horror. I don't think people actually believe that the back rooms are a real thing. Maybe I'm completely off base, but I think it's just more like... No, I don't think so either. I think they just enjoy the surreal horror aspect of it. Well, I know people now who are still freaked out about it. Like when I was working on my video, like the Jeff the Killer image was right there on like the first page of the document. So I would like...

I would share it with friends like here's what I'm working on and they would be freaked out because you would see it in like the thumbnail and like the preview image so I know people who are still kind of scared of the image but I don't know if it like pass around like it did back in the day yeah

We can bring it back though. We can keep sending it to people. I mean, yeah, it was the same. We can make a 2025 version. We can keep improving on it. It was the same with us. Like when we posted the questions right on official.men, we'd had the picture at the very top because I put it there so people could know what we're talking about and also scare them. And just all the top comments were like, I'm unsubscribing because I don't want to see this in my feed, you dick. Like all of that stuff. Okay, so yeah, I'm way off then. I guess the image still kind of hits. I don't know about the story, but...

But the image would, would, I just don't see how it could, it might still be passed around. I just don't see how it still hits. It just does not have the same impact to me now. Yeah. Brio, uh, Brio legend asks if you had to give Jeff a new origin story, what's your storyline that would lead to him being Jeff, the killer Jordan. I feel like you'd have a good one for this.

Alright, so he's a 13-year-old boy. You have to keep that in. Why are we keeping that? Just got to. I think we all know why. And then...

Wait, hang on. We have to keep that in, don't we? Or you can just make Jeff anything. You can make Jeff anything. It's your story. You're giving him a new origin story. Yeah, I was about to ask, why do we have to keep him? Yeah, all right, all right. Screw him. He's 16 now. Oh, you're making him even younger. Okay. 67. Yeah, this is my story. He's 67. He's lived a fruitful life full of memories and stuff, and then he's in his retirement home.

And he just decides to start killing. Just fuck it. Yeah, he snaps. Yeah, just fuck it. Just start killing people. Why not? And it's, oh, it's because he had originally read a creepypasta online and in his senile mind, he couldn't separate reality from reality. Yeah. And he's like, damn, that sounds cool. I'm going to start doing that.

Uh, jealous of 13 year old, uh, boyish looks. He does just figure himself through his surgery. He tries to get himself back to looking like a 13 year old. He tries. Yeah. And so he kills kids and puts this baby skin over his face. Oh, gross. That's so much worse. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Great story. It's very tropey stuff though, isn't it? It's all, I think this is the whole problem with horror. It's been done and yet I'll keep watching. I'll keep watching. But,

I don't think Jeff the senile baby killer has been done. So that is an original story. Yeah, true. Sweet. We're good. Yeah, he targets 13-year-olds specifically, and that's why he cuts himself. Yeah.

Yeah. So dumb. Really stretches it over and that's why his face just looks uncharacteristically no character on it. See, this is why it's so easy to make creepypastas. Took us two minutes. And there's no bleach or what was it, like a fire gun? Because who would survive that? Oh.

Yeah, the fart. I forgot. All right. Nico Pero asks, what name would you have given the guy in the image if the creator of the creepypasta didn't name him Jeff? That name always felt silly to me. It does feel silly. And I think it's exclusively because his own name was Jeff. There's like a level of ego there. He's like, he wanted to be involved. I think about it is kind of a silly name because Jeff is such a, it's like Bob. It's like, it's like such a like...

normal name. I don't know. But again, to go back to the start, I think the name Jeff has changed post Jeffrey Epstein. I don't think it's got the same swing as it used to. Oh yeah, that's true. So yeah, a lot of disrespect has been done to Jeff's name over the last decade. Well, I'm calling him Good Charlotte.

Every time I ever look at it, I'm just reminded of that era. I don't know. Maybe you guys just said 2010 at the beginning of it. But to me, it just really looks like that period of music where they always dressed up as like, oh, we're in a creepy circus. It's the all white face and the long black hair. Yeah, isn't it?

What are you guys calling it? Mr. Potato Head Eyes. Nice. Yeah, good. Gotta get the brand name in there. That's the oddest part of this whole thing. Mr. Potato Head Eyes. I'm going even friendlier. I want to rebuild his image as a friendly guy instead of Jeff the Killer. I'm going to go Maurice. I feel like Maurice is a very friendly name.

Do you? I thought you were going to say something like Jeff the Friendly Killer or something. Jeff the Friendly Killer. Wannabe Joker. Yeah. No, Maurice. I feel like Maurice suits it. I'm going with Maurice.

Clip man asks Jackson. Do you have any favorite creepy passes guys? I'll take this one. This one's specifically for me. Maybe it wasn't you read in your youth. Also. I'm curious to what SIGs friendly Geordie smokes. Okay. So there's your part of the question. What's the gross you smoke? You go first. I don't know.

Dude, this has been my policy ever since I got addicted to them in Korea. Yo, man, have you got a spare? I don't know what they are. I'm a bum. Oh.

Oh, you just take whatever. I'll take whatever you got and I'll put it in my lungs straight away. No questions asked. Back in the day, you know what was, you know, it was incredible. I'm sure they still have them in Korea because they don't seem to yet understand that they're bad for you judging from their packaging. Um,

There was ones called like Mejito Flavor de Cigarette. That was incredible. Oh, that sounds yum. It was better than Vapes because it still has the... Vapes just doesn't give you that I'm killing myself satisfaction with cigarettes. Yeah, the edge to it. The edge. Yeah. Speaking of edge, my favorite creepypasta is... Is it Ted the Caver? What's the cave one?

Ooh, Ted the Caver. Wasn't that like the first one? Wasn't that like what really made Creep Hustlers? Yeah. It was some dude like documenting his journey like through a cave. Yeah, I think it is Ted the Caver, right? That's the name of it though.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's my favorite. That was from like 2001. So the very first one. Alright, come on. Give me the summary. Come on. I mean, it's just a bunch of short stories basically about his adventure caving. Like exploring caves basically. And it just gets more sinister and more sinister over time and he becomes very obsessed with trying to get as deep into this cave as possible. And the cave is like very claustrophobic and he's like crawling through it. And...

There's like another side on the other side of the very tight space, the tight elements of the cave, where there's like a demon or some kind of sinister creature. But it's written in a pretty compelling and not shit way. So it's a good creepypasta. But again, I last read it when I was like 14, so I don't know how much it...

how much it stands up. What do you think? Yeah. And can you imagine reading that like in the early 2000s? Like I would believe it probably firsthand. Oh yeah. Back in 2001 when it was first published. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like the, what's that movie? The Blair Witch Project. Like they also use the early internet for marketing. Yes. Yeah. And like, I'm almost certain like everyone believed it was like a real, real thing. Like,

that was a real camera with footage of real people that they salvaged and turned into a movie. Again, like we were just naive back then. What I think made Ted the Caver really compelling was it was almost like a live update thing. Like it wasn't just all posted at the same time. I don't think it was like posted over time and added to. And there were like pictures to go along with it. So there was like a sense of

reality to it. Like you could see pictures of what he was talking about and like they weren't over the top. It wasn't like some, you know, photoshopped Jeff the Killer guy. It was just like dark spaces and like the caves that he was exploring. And if you look close enough, you could see like details of perhaps something under the surface happening there. And yeah, and it was just like really compelling to me and really interesting. It's something that I could absolutely see

adapted into an actual movie like a horror movie pretty successfully whereas everything else that's come out of Creepypasta I just don't really think would be you don't think the Slenderman movie would work? No I don't surprisingly yeah what about you what's your favorite? to coincide with what you were saying like seeing live updates I have to go with Ben Drown that was one of the earliest ones that I got into and I adore The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

So like I was, I was really into that kind of a thing when I first came across that story. I'm going to assume Jordan doesn't know what you're talking about. So could you give like a brief description? Oh yeah. So Ben drowned basically on 4chan where a lot of pasta started. A person went on 4chan to tell people that he found a haunted Majora's mask cartridge. He was at like a garage sale. Found a Majora's mask cartridge for super cheap. Turn it on.

And weird, weird things started happening. I could go into it, but there's five quote-unquote chapters. The person who got the cartridge came back and posted multiple threads, multiple updates, several videos showing his gameplay, and apparently he was haunted and stuff like that. So it's a huge saga, all revolving around Majora's Mask. And to me, that was one of my favorite games growing up. So I just have a lot of fond memories. Yeah, it is a really good story. And then, once the pasta ended...

It became like an ARG and a cult kind of thing. It kind of spiraled way, way out of control. So there's a lot to it. But it was basically a guy going on 4chan just updating his experiences with this haunted cartridge. And to what Jackson was saying earlier, he was posting gameplay footage as well. So that, again, in the 2000s, I think it was like 2009, 2010 or something, it was super, super cool seeing that. It's always the best when it's updated like that, where it feels like

Kind of like a progressing story happening in real time as opposed to just... Yeah. Like, the Jephthah killer is just a story. Like, you read it and it's just... Yeah, it's just a wall of text. But, like, seeing the updates was awesome. Yeah. It feels cool. It feels like an evolving thing. Following that timeline, yeah. I always laugh, though, when people are... People are... Like, they've tried to replicate that kind of thing constantly in, like, creepypasta subreddits. I forgot what the main creepypasta subreddit's called. Like...

Scary stories or something. I don't know what the Reddit is. Is it not just r slash creepypasta? It might be. I might be thinking of something different where people post stories that they try to pass off as being true or real.

Let's Not Meet? Yeah, it might be Let's Not Meet, something like that. Regardless, there's a subreddit where people try to post their own versions of creepypastas to get people involved in a live story. And it's like, update 13. And then in the context of the story, it's like, so I was at home in the dark room and the ghost showed up again. I don't know what to do. I think I'm going to go stay at my brother's house.

And then all the comments below is what makes me laugh. The comments are like, dude, make sure that you take a photo next time with the ghost for us. We need to see it. Like people are actually believing it, like buying into the story and like adding to it in their own ways in the comments. Be like, no, you should salt your door so that the ghost can't pass through and things like that. Wait, what? How's that going to help? You're screwed, buddy. It's so funny though. Just do it. And it's funny in the context that they're on update 13. Yeah.

Yeah, no, you can't go that long without any, like, not even a photo. Like, oh my God. Just buying into it to that degree where you're like actually posting, trying to like save this person's life from a demonic ghost in update 13 of what is clearly a creepy bastard. It's very funny. What if it's like a galaxy brain, like a thousand IQ move where they're just like, they're just going for it just to fuck with them. Yeah. It's so good.

It's some of my favorite internet communities, honestly, because it's so weirdly wholesome and fun. Isn't it? Yeah. All right. Speaking of wholesome, this one comes from Clipman. Jackson. Oh, I won't know that.

That was the one I already just did. Isn't it? Yes. Yeah, but whatever. Okay. Speaking of actually wholesome. Such a good name. Well done, Clemere. This one comes from Miss Mosh. I have a theory that the editor of this photo isn't with us anymore because the image could be such a cash cow. After researching the image, how did the host view this idea? Every possible origin photo doesn't really work in my opinion. Well, I disagree personally. Well, I think that the creator could potentially not be with us anymore, but I still am 90% on board with the

with the Mariko hypothesis. How could it be a cash cow? What does that mean? Yeah, I don't really know what a cash cow is. You could merchandise it. That's what they're saying. It'd be very difficult to prove that you were the one who... Or... Hmm. That's odd. Um...

Yeah, that's super... I think they're claiming that the incentive... The person who is Jeff the Killer, their base photo, they would profit off of it. Like, hey guys, this is me. The incentive would be there to come out and be public about it because you could then capitalize to some degree on it. Yeah, I guess you could start a YouTube channel and you could go on a bunch of different podcasts and talk about your experience with that photo. Yeah, you could come on our podcast. You'd do the rounds. Oh yeah, we'd love to have you.

They might not even completely know that it's being sought after. There was another search a while back for a song called Everyone Knows That. A super popular song. A lot of YouTubers covered it. And when they found the person who made the song, I believe... Oh, God. It was some, like...

I can't remember the band's name, but they had no idea. They recorded this song years ago and just forgot about it. They had no idea there was a long, enduring search for it. So whoever Jeff the Killer ultimately is might not have any idea that they're being searched for. It's such a weird concept, again, to think that the person out there

who created this entire thing might not even know of its existence whether that be because they're dead or just because they're not in the same internet circles anymore and they're not they might not even be on the internet they might have moved on you know they have a family life they don't there's plenty of boomers that don't use the internet at all it could be one of them who knows yeah both of you i think i think that it is mariko and mariko's dead that's what i think i mean it's possible it's not impossible it's really not it's

Oh no, I'm not laughing at the idea. I just like, just how like definitive he said that. Yeah, it's her and she's dead. I didn't know it. That's honestly what I believe. You want to know something clearly. Yeah, I think he knows more than we're, than we're allowed to believe. Yeah.

That's going to do it for this episode of red thread. Thank you very much for joining us, both you at home, as well as, uh, you Jorge, I really appreciated having you on for your expertise. Thanks so much. Yeah. It's been, no, thanks for having me. Like I can go on forever about this. There's like, it's such a, like, again, like it's like, it's these like nonchalant good for nothing mysteries that helped me get up in the morning. I really like these like little internet searches. It's so entertaining, man. Uh,

Super fun to have you on. Super fun time chatting with you. Really appreciate you coming on. So thank you very much for coming on.

And again, thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you to everyone at home for joining us for another episode of Red Thread. We're really enjoying the show lately. We hope you guys are too. Feel free to share it around with friends. That's the best way to help us out. And if you have a bit of spare change, official.men, you can sign up over there or patreon.com slash the official podcast. We're currently running a seven day free trial. So you can sign up free right now at official.men. You can get access early ad free access to all of our episodes and

delivered straight to you. And also, like I said, audience interaction. You can leave questions that we'll answer on the show as well as get up-to-date updates on what is coming next. So that's official.men. Seven-day free membership available now. Go check that out. Really would mean the world to have you over there supporting us that way. Other than that, the best way is to just share the show around. It really does help out. So thank you very much for joining us and listening. Jordan,

Any last words from you?

Yeah, it's the Mariko chick for a fact. And she's dead. And she's dead. I need to reiterate that. She's been dead for 30 years. Yeah, and that's the official conclusion of this. I'm glad that we finally got to the bottom of this. Mystery has been solved after 20 years of searching. We'll take that $20,000. This is so good. Just synthetically imposing the dopamine hit that these people put a lot of effort into. You know what? You don't even have to. You can just say that you think that that's reality and that's it.

Yeah, like five or so years in the course of like a few hours. Oh, actually, before we do leave, Jorge, please shout out your stuff where people can find you. Yeah.

Oh, my channel is BlameItOnGeorge. You can find me on YouTube. I cover all sorts of things, but a lot of people like the lost media stuff. So there's all sorts of investigations going on right now. And I make videos on those documenting their searches. Awesome. And it'll be linked in the description below. So you can go click on that and easily be taken to his channel. Jordan, you also have a live show anywhere this week? Yep.

No, I'm not wearing these. Where am I going next? Just sheet Kika Tans, Lees Moore and all that kind of stuff. Okay, so if you're in Australia and you live anywhere potentially near... Yeah, look it up. Yeah, look it up. There'll be a link below to his live show. You can buy tickets now. That's everything. Also, it's...

You go by Jorge as well, right? I haven't just fucked up your pronunciation the entire video. No, no. So like, okay, like legally, I have to explain this every time. Legally, it's Jorge, but like people call me George all the time. So it's all good, dude. You're good. I've heard it, Jorge. That's why I looked it up beforehand as well, just to confirm. And I was like,

Okay, Google say... No, no, even I say Blame It On George. I just think that rolls off the tongue better than Blame It On Jorge. So, so... Okay. Technically say the wrong way to say it, but like substitute teachers, people I just met, they all call me George. It's all good, dude. Okay, well...

You can make up your mind. We'll do a whole red thread episode on which way to say George's name or Jorge's name. Yeah. Thank you. Georgie, Jorge, whatever, man. I've heard them all. All right. Thank you very much for joining us. We'll see you next time. All right. Bye, guys.