Most Pokémon fans know about Lavender Town, AKA the town that birthed some of the most disturbing lore tied to the franchise. Nestled within the Kanto region, Lavender Town is home to the Pokémon Tower. That hallowed ground serves as the final resting place for many Pokémon, as well as ghost sightings that give the town its reputation.

Lavender Town first appeared in Pokémon Red & Green as a small town renowned for its unique purple aesthetic. It was a jarring glance into just how dark Pokémon could be, back when Gamefreak was still trying to mold the franchise. It's here that players are treated to the heartbreaking story of how a Marowak was killed trying to save her baby Cubone from Team Rocket and the insinuation that the player might've killed Blue's Raticate. While these ideas are undoubtedly dark for a children's game, they don't even compare to the hair-raising conspiracies fans have come up with.

Related: Everything You Need To Know Before Playing Luigi's Mansion 3

Lavender Town Syndrome

A creepypasta named "Lavender Town Syndrome" first spawned in the early 2010s as another work of internet horror fiction. According to the narrative, more than 200 Japanese children between the ages of 7 and 12, were driven to suicide by an eerie, high-pitched frequency encoded in the town's theme music in the spring of 1996. The more fortunate children suffered from headaches, nosebleeds, and irrationally violent behavior.

The frequency of the tone, which was undetectable to adult ears, was an experiment in binaural beats, a phenomenon that affects the listener's behavior by playing a distinct tone from two audio channels, supposedly linking the tones to the listener's brainwaves. Pokémon developer Game Freak was able to walk away from the incident guilt-free thanks to Kyoto Prefecture disclosure laws and, according to some iterations of the story, assistance from the Japanese government itself. The initial copies of Red & Green were silently recalled and the Lavender Town theme was adjusted to be more gentle on the brain.

The creepypasta became more sophisticated as time went on. Supposedly, if someone were to run the original Lavender Town theme through a spectrograph app, the different sound frequencies would generate an image that resembles the in-game sprite for Lavender Town's ghosts. Some versions of the generated image include the Pokémon Unown (which wasn't introduced until Generation II) spelling out the message "leave now."

The Impact Of Lavender Town

While the "Lavender Town Syndrome" legend is (thankfully) fabricated, it still holds as one of the creepiest and most infamous creepypastas in online fiction. One of the most telling indicators that the story is false is the obvious similarities the story has with the "Electric Soldier Porygon incident" that caused more than 500 people to have epileptic seizures and suffer other ill-effects after watching Episode 38 from the original Pokémon anime. Unlike "Lavender Town Syndrome" the "Electric Soldier" incident had real-life ramifications for the Pokémon name, which placed the anime on hiatus and prevented the Porygon line from making further appearances on the show.

Regardless if people find "Lavender Town Syndrome" creepy or not, the entirety of Lavender Town has an unsettling reputation thanks to its already morbid atmosphere and the creepypasta based on it. Many people even agree that there's just something unnerving about the music that plays when they're exploring the town – as if something foreboding and dreadful were lurking around the corner.

The tangible impact of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and Lavender Town itself are cemented in the town's status as a cursed location. One search on Youtube will show a collection of haunting remixes of the town's theme. Even Niantic joined in with a remix of the theme called "Lavender Night" during the 2017 and 2019 Pokémon Go Halloween events.

Here's hoping that Lavender Town will remain creepy for years to come.

Next: Pokémon: Sword & Shield’s Gigantamax Charizard Is On Fire, But What About Venusaur & Blastoise?