What is Skull Trumpet?

Skull Trumpet, also known as Doot Doot or Jazz Skull, is a short animated GIF of a skeleton playing two notes on a trumpet, created by artist Cathy Jarboe in 1999.

Where did Skull Trumpet come from?

The original file, jazzskull.gif, was uploaded to Cathy Jarboe's personal site cjarboe.com in 1999 as part of her Eternal Nights Halloween graphics collection. YouTuber Jeffiot confirmed her authorship in a 2023 investigation video.

What does Skull Trumpet mean?

'Doot doot' is the onomatopoeia for the two trumpet notes at the end of the clip, and fans use it as a stand-in for the meme or as a general Halloween noise.

How do you use Skull Trumpet?

The GIF is typically posted around October as a Halloween reaction or overlaid on other footage for a punchline, and the text 'doot doot' works as a shorthand when the video isn't handy.

Is Skull Trumpet still popular?

Gawker documented its unusual longevity as early as 2014, and the meme still returns every Halloween season on Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube.

Skull Trumpet

1999animated GIF / viral videoclassic

Published September 27, 2026

Skull Trumpet, also known as Doot Doot or Jazz Skull, is a two-second animated GIF of a bony hand holding a horn to a grinning skull, created by artist Cathy Jarboe in 1999 for her personal Halloween graphics site. The clip sat quietly online for over a decade before YouTube uploads in 2011 turned it into a Tumblr and Reddit favorite, spawning years of low-effort covers, remixes, and the onomatopoeia 'doot doot' that became shorthand for internet Halloween itself.

skeleton memes halloween memes delayed virality memes gif memes earworm memes

Overview

The original file, called jazzskull.gif, is barely more than a loop: the skull turns toward the viewer, the horn's bell wobbles twice, and the animation resets3. Fans latched onto exactly that brevity, treating the clip as a punchline that lands before you can process it2. The two toots at the end became the sound 'doot doot,' which posters typed at each other on Tumblr and Reddit as a stand-in for the video3.

Remix culture grew fast around the sprite. YouTubers uploaded orchestral covers, heavy metal renditions, and live piano and clarinet performances of the two-note tune2. Image macros pasted the skeleton over unrelated scenes, and Photoshop edits gave the character new outfits, especially in October. The Reddit community that formed in 2014 spun 'doot' into a full aesthetic of goofy skeletons and lo-fi spookiness2.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

cjarboe.com (1999) / YouTube (viral spread 2011)

Creator

Cathy Jarboe

Date

1999

Cathy Jarboe made the GIF sometime in 1999 for Eternal Nights, her personal collection of animated Halloween graphics hosted at cjarboe.com4. The site offered free-to-download witch, ghost, and skeleton animations for other webmasters to embed on seasonal pages, with a request that visitors save the files locally rather than hotlink them4. For years the sprite floated around obscure Geocities-era Halloween sites, and many assumed it came from Microsoft's 1995 title 3D Movie Maker, since the low-poly look matched that program's asset library3.

That attribution held until December 22, 2023, when YouTuber Jeffiot posted 'no one knows who created skull trumpet (until now),' a long-form investigation that tracked the file back to Jarboe herself1. The video pulled in more than 500,000 views in its first week3.

How It Spread

The clip first went viral in early 2011 after user Piepuppy89 uploaded it to YouTube, where it was reposted across gaming forums including PlayStuff, the Something Awful spinoff BYOB XP, and the Call of Duty board on GameFAQs3. A Facebook fan page for Skull Trumpet went up on March 8, 2011, and the first single-topic Tumblr blog dedicated to the sprite launched that December3.

When Piepuppy89's YouTube account was deleted in the first week of August 2012, other users mirrored the clips, and the Skull-Trumpet Tumblr archived the lost videos3. The onomatopoeia 'doot doot' emerged on Tumblr in a May 11, 2014 fan art post by user Preo*Prix, and it quickly became the standard way to reference the meme across 4chan, YouTube, and Reddit5. That July, Redditor RobosapienLXIV created /r/ledootgeneration as a parody of /r/LeWrongGeneration, and the subreddit turned into the meme's central hub3.

By Halloween 2014, Gawker ran a piece titled 'In Praise of Skull Trumpet, the Internet's Spookiest Meme,' noting that Google Trends had recorded its second-highest search traffic ever that month2. Every October since, the doot doot skeleton returns to timelines as the unofficial mascot of internet Halloween.

Timeline

1999

Cathy Jarboe uploads jazzskull.gif to her personal Halloween graphics site cjarboe.com.

2012-08

Piepuppy89's YouTube account is deleted; fans mirror the videos elsewhere.

2023-12-22

YouTuber Jeffiot publishes an investigation identifying Cathy Jarboe as the GIF's original creator.

How to Use This Meme

The two-second GIF is typically posted on its own around Halloween, dropped into a Slack or Discord reply, or overlaid onto other footage so the two-note trumpet lands on a punchline. 'Doot doot' works as a text-only shorthand when the video isn't handy, and image macro versions often paste the skull into unrelated scenes or dress it in seasonal outfits3.