Lavander Town Discuss

[Dannnno]

For

The

Love

Of

God

Stop

Quoting

It

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please

[iSmashbro]

Damn you, Xela

[Munya]

now its 2 small and I can't read it

[Chuckie]

sincerely the greatest image of all time

[Kelarr]

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"

 

In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."

 

For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)

 

"History of the Pathology [$HIP]

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…

 

…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 

千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]

桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]

吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]

"

Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 

 

The Ghost Animation

 

The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 

 

The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.

 

The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 

 

If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.

 

What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.

 

The Staff of Game Freak

 

Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.

 

Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.

 

In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.

 

Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:

 

"Dear Satou,

 

(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"

 

This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?

 

Unit 731

 

Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:

 

    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.

    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.

    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.

    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.

    * Division 5: Training of personnel.

    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.

 

Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 

 

If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 

 

Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 

 

Aftermath

 

The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.

 

Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.

 

Conclusion

 

I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.

 

Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.

 

It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.

 

“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”

 

“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.

 

“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”

 

Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.

 

I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.

 

“911 what is your emergency?”

 

“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.

 

“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.

 

“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”

 

“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”

 

I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”

 

“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.

 

They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!

 

When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“

 

“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”

 

An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”

 

We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

Edited February 9, 2014 by XelaKebert
Edited to comply with Rule 1b https://forums.pokemmo.eu/index.php?/forum-7/announcement-11-rules-for-ingame-forums-irc/

[Munya]

make it even longer so reducing the text size wont matter

[Kimikozen]

For

The

Love

Of

God

Stop

Quoting

It

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please

nah

[Chuckie]

 

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"

In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so-called "Lavender Town tone."

 

For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)

 

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgment of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…

 

…京极 勝女; April 12, 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 千葉 広幸: May 23, 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺] 桃井 久江: April 27, 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺] 吉長 為真: March 4, 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behavior, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20, 1996. [死出] " Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others.

 

The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731.

 

The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokémon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.

 

The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, a picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x.

 

If one attempts to catch the Pokémon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.

 

What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.

 

Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.

 

Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.

 

In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him. Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.

 

Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:

 

"Dear Satou,

 

(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"

 

This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?

 

 

Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:

 

Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.

Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.

Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.

Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.

Division 5: Training of personnel.

Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.

Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century."

 

If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies.

 

Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility.

 

The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically. The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.

 

Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.

 

I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.

 

Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

 

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.

 

It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.

 

“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”

 

“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.

 

“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”

 

Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.

 

I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.

 

“911 what is your emergency?”

 

“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.

 

“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.

 

“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”

 

“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”

 

I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”

 

“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.

 

They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!

 

When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“

 

“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”

 

An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”

 

We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

 

Of course, my school life went downhill. Kids ridiculed me for killing her and my grades went down because of the intense amount of stress I was under. The school gave me two weeks off after the incident, but they didn’t help. The day the trash went out I raced outside and dug the Gameboy out of the garbage. I wiped it off and sat on my bed with it. I began listening to the song. It still sounded the same, but a little… eerier. It had caused my best friend’s death. I threw the game down and went to the kitchen. I found the sharpest knife there and started cutting my wrist. Blood flowed down my hand and dripped off the ends of my fingers. It hurt, a lot. I knew I deserved it. I killed my best friend. I kept cutting deeper and deeper until I felt like I was about to pass out. Then I thought, "What am I doing?" I rinsed the cut out, washed the knife, cleaned the blood up off the floor, and wrapped the wound in gauze. I would explain to my mom what happened. I couldn’t go back in my room after thinking about Alicia having her seizure. I laid down on the bed in the guest room and cried. I was a mess. I slowly walked to the kitchen and grabbed the phone. I dialed the number of the counselor the school had given me.

 

“This is Kelly Christiansen, how can I help you?”

 

“Hi Kelly. This is Marissa.”

 

“Oh, Marissa! How are you doing? There are so many rumors floating around at school… That you tried to kill Alicia. It’s horrible.”

 

I burst into tears. “I’m not doing good at all! I was thinking about Alicia and then I listened to the song and then… I cut myself.”

 

“Oh my… Listen, Marissa. I’m coming over there. Stay put, tie yourself to a chair or something.”

 

When Kelly got to my house I was standing at the sink with a glass of water and a painkiller.

 

“Oh my God! You aren’t taking those to get high, are you?”

 

“Of course not. My wrist just hurts.”

 

“Let me see it.” I unwrapped the wound and she cringed. “Marissa! You could have killed yourself!”

 

“That’s what I was trying to do.”

 

“Oh, Marissa.” She sat me down on the couch, got me a Dr. Pepper, and said, “Killing yourself isn’t going to help, at all.” She turned on the TV to Pokémon, my favorite show. We watched it for hours. I watched Ash battle Brock and then I watched him run into Team Rocket. I watched Misty yell at Ash for ruining her bike. It was all so great, it made me feel insanely better. I smiled and looked at Kelly, “Thank you.” She smiled back, stood up, and walked out the door. I sat on the couch for a while longer and went to my room. I crawled under the covers and went to sleep. I woke up crying, as I’d had a nightmare about Alicia dying.

 

I can’t really say any more. My school life went downhill incredibly fast, I started drinking and smoking, but never did drugs because I knew how those could fuck you up. Once I got into high school I got a little better. Kelly helped me along and eventually I dug myself out of the pit, but I couldn’t get over Alicia. I didn’t make any new friends because they all thought I was a murderer. I am now 25 years old and this is the first time I’ve talked about this to anyone except my parents. I majored in sound science, as I wish to study the Lavender Town conspiracy, and hopefully find out what killed my dearest friend, Alicia McKnight.

 

 

 

is your last name really Christiansen

[iSmashbro]

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"
 
In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."
 
For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)
 
"History of the Pathology [$HIP]
It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…
 
…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 
千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]
桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]
吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]
"
Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 
 
The Ghost Animation
 
The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 
 
The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.
 
The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 
 
If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.
 
What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.
 
The Staff of Game Freak
 
Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.
 
Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.
 
In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.
 
Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:
 
"Dear Satou,
 
(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"
 
This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?
 
Unit 731
 
Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:
 
    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
    * Division 5: Training of personnel.
    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.
 
Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 
 
If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 
 
Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 
 
Aftermath
 
The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.
 
Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.
 
Conclusion
 
I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.
 
Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.
 
It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.
 
“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”
 
“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.
 
“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”
 
Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.
 
I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.
 
“911 what is your emergency?”
 
“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.
 
“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.
 
“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”
 
“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”
 
I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”
 
“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.
 
They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!
 
When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“
 
“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”
 
An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”
 
We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

You need to throw some bolds, italics, and underlines in there to make Xela's job harder

Edited February 9, 2014 by XelaKebert
Fixed Quote

[Kagerou]

Pokémon (ポケモン Pokemon^?, /ˈpoʊkeɪmɒn/ POH-kay-mon) is a media franchise published and owned by Japanese video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games developed by Game Freak, Pokémon has since become the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's own Mario franchise. Pokémon properties have since been merchandised into anime, manga, trading cards, toys, books, and other media. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006, and as of 28 May 2010, cumulative sales of the video games (including home console versions, such as the "Pikachu" Nintendo 64) have reached more than 200 million copies. In November 2005, 4Kids Entertainment, which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokémon, announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokémon representation agreement. Pokémon USA Inc. (now The Pokémon Company International), a subsidiary of Japan's Pokémon Co., now oversees all Pokémon licensing outside of Asia.

The name Pokémon is the romanized contraction of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters (ポケットモンスター Poketto Monsutā^?). The term Pokémon, in addition to referring to the Pokémon franchise itself, also collectively refers to the 718 known fictional species that have made appearances in Pokémon media as of the release of the sixth generation titles Pokémon X and Y. "Pokémon" is identical in both the singular and plural, as is each individual species name; it is grammatically correct to say "one Pokémon" and "many Pokémon", as well as "one Pikachu" and "many Pikachu".

[DopestDope]

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"
 
In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."
 
For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)
 
"History of the Pathology [$HIP]
It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…
 
…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 
千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]
桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]
吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]
"
Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 
 
The Ghost Animation
 
The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 
 
The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.
 
The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 
 
If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.
 
What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.
 
The Staff of Game Freak
 
Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.
 
Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.
 
In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.
 
Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:
 
"Dear Satou,
 
(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"
 
This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?
 
Unit 731
 
Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:
 
    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
    * Division 5: Training of personnel.
    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.
 
Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 
 
If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 
 
Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 
 
Aftermath
 
The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.
 
Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.
 
Conclusion
 
I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.
 
Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.
 
It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.
 
“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”
 
“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.
 
“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”
 
Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.
 
I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.
 
“911 what is your emergency?”
 
“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.
 
“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.
 
“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”
 
“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”
 
I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”
 
“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.
 
They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!
 
When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“
 
“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”
 
An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”
 
We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

That was an interesting read, thanks!

Edited February 9, 2014 by XelaKebert
Fixed Quote

[DieMirin69]

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"
 
In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."
 
For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)
 
"History of the Pathology [$HIP]
It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…
 
…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 
千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]
桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]
吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]
"
Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 
 
The Ghost Animation
 
The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 
 
The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.
 
The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 
 
If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.
 
What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.
 
The Staff of Game Freak
 
Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.
 
Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.
 
In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.
 
Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:
 
"Dear Satou,
 
(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"
 
This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?
 
Unit 731
 
Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:
 
    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
    * Division 5: Training of personnel.
    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.
 
Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 
 
If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 
 
Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 
 
Aftermath
 
The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.
 
Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.
 
Conclusion
 
I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.
 
Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.
 
It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.
 
“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”
 
“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.
 
“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”
 
Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.
 
I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.
 
“911 what is your emergency?”
 
“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.
 
“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.
 
“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”
 
“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”
 
I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”
 
“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.
 
They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!
 
When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“
 
“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”
 
An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”
 
We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

Edited February 9, 2014 by XelaKebert
Fixed Quote

[ArmisticeAcropolis]

Not opening this thread anymore

[iSmashbro]

mfw quote is too big and won't post

[Mariah]

Hello there fellow poke fans. In this topic we'll talk about Lavander Town myths, theories, facts, screenshots, photos and any other stuff about Lavander Town. There might apear everything creepy and scary so if you want to sleep tonight you should head back to other topics.

 

Rules:

-No swearing

-No screemers

-Creepy pasta myths allowed

-Everyone can make only one myth/theory/fact

-Video materials allowed

-Every single post about Lavander Town needs a huge Title.

 

 

Alright, let me start:

 

 

                                                                    The white hand myth

The white hand myth is about a little girl in Lavander Town asking us about beliving in ghosts. If we'll say "Yes" she will say about that there are belivers, but if we'll say "No" we'll hear about white hand on our shoulder. There are lots of theories and facts about it. For example there is a white hand sprite, but it's just a fan made. The fact about it is that in one of the films of pokemon there was a sightly seen a white hand on our hero's shoulder. White hand could be even a hunter's hand. Let's say that girl is colour blind, so hunter hand looks like it's white. The worse theory is a buried alive theory. I'm just going to say this hand it, might be actualy buried alive hand. It could be even cubone's dead mother. That girl might even be cursed by lavander town syndrome. She could be even one of the ghosts or one of the cursed people on the Pokemon Tower. In my own opinion she's just our imagination. Imagination that apeared for us, because of being insane of this place. White hand myth is like a mother of all other Creepy Pasta myths. There are a couple of other theories about white hand but most of them are just less interesting then these shown here. Thank you for your attention.

 

[TWDaryl]

The phenomenon of the Lavender Town Tone is a legend that involves a bizarre spate of medical cases and deaths from around the country that have been connected to the Pocket Monsters (Pokémon) game series, in particular the first two games of the series, Red and Green. Though the event is largely unheard of due to disclosure laws for companies based in the Kyoto Prefecture, there is a large amount of information that has been brought into the open by a number of dedicated individuals, including 関 内直 (Seki Uchitada) 伊勢 満朝 (Ise Mitsutomo) and 佐藤 治情 (Satou Harue), to whom this page is dedicated.
 
Thanks also go out to 安藤 景忠 (Andou Kagetada) for providing images and animated .gifs of the visual phenomena. This analysis will discuss the other phenomena that is often confused with the "Lavender Town Tone", known as "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "Buried Alive Model", as well as the semi-related developer-tag that was inserted into the game, and how to safely perform these "Easter eggs" in post-first wave cartridges.
 
Contents[show]
History of the Game
The first cases of the "Lavender Town Tone" and associated events were reported a few months after the release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green for the handheld Game Boy video game console. These video games were wildly popular with children between the ages of seven and twelve (their core demographic), which was no doubt one of the reasons why the "Lavender Town Tone" had the level of severity that it did.
 
In the game, the player takes on the role of a "Trainer", whose task is to capture, tame and train wild creatures called "Pocket Monsters" for battle. These games, and the two newest additions to the series—Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver, an anime, manga, figures, a collectible card-game and home console games—have resulted in Pocket Monsters becoming a multi-billion dollar franchise.
 
In one part of the game, the Trainer comes to a small, out-of-the-way place called "Lavender Town" (シオンタウン). This town is one of the smallest hamlets in the game (aside from the Trainer's own home town), and possesses very few of the services available to the Trainer in every other city in the game; indeed, the location would be unremarkable were it not for the "Pokémon Tower" (ポケモンタワー) located there—a colossal building that holds the graves of hundreds of deceased Pokémon.
 
It is theorized that, because of this location in the game, at least two hundred children lost their lives, and many more developed sudden illnesses and afflictions – and this does not consider the vast waves of unreported illnesses or deaths whose cause went unnoticed.
 
History of the Pathology
It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Tone that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms—records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions.
 
Some records are listed below, with the full listing in Appendix A [here]. (It should be noted that entries in the Appendix also include symptoms borne not from the "Lavender Town Tone" [an audio phenomenon] but from the so-called "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "buried alive model", all of which were visual phenomena that provoked similar but distinct symptoms.
 
京极 勝女: April 12, 1996 (11).
Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus.
千葉 広幸: May 23, 1996 (12).
General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]
桃井 久江: April 27, 1996 (11).
Cluster headaches, irritability. Eventually took mixed painkillers. [自殺]
吉長 為真: March 4, 1996 (7).
Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20, 1996. [死出]
The document that was circulated internally was the first time that these incidents had been connected with the Pocket Monsters video games - until then, the cause had not been discovered or diagnosed by medical professionals. Indeed, it is uncertain how the company themselves managed to find the cases related to the event without seeking advice from health services.
 
Pathology Detail — "Lavender Town Tone"
The predominant symptoms related to what would become known as the "Lavender Town Tone" included headaches and migraines, bleeding from eyes and ears, mood swings and irritability, addiction to the games, unprovoked violence, withdrawal and unresponsiveness, and in approximately 67% of cases, suicidal tendencies.
 
However, these symptoms only manifested in children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old who had reached the area in game known as "Lavender Town", most of whom were revealed to have been wearing headphones or earphones while playing the game.
 
 
Pokemon Green Beta Lavender Town Song (REAL VERSION)(05:34)
Real Beta song. WARNING MAY CAUSE TRAUMA.
VoltageWolfAdded by VoltageWolf
As it turns out, the developers of the Lavender Town area had sought to make an area that would "leave an impression on the player", according to Seki Uchitada, who was a member of the development team. Seki claimed that at the time of development, a number of the team were interested in making Lavender Town a little different to the rest of the game.
 
"The Pokémon Tower is a visible result of that," Seki told ゲームの次元　（"Game's Dimensions" Magazine) in an interview earlier this year. "That, and the fact that Lavender Town is so different from all the other cities in the game: it is smaller, it has fewer people occupying it, it didn't have a gym... and, of course, the music was very, very eerie. In fact, in the first version of the game, we were told to slightly change the song played in the background of Lavender Town ... because our manager told us it would make children upset. The music used in subsequent versions is different."
 
Either Seki was unaware of the full impact of the Lavender Town Tone, or was vastly understated how "upset" children would get—no more is said of the music in the article, but there are mentions of Lavender Town's other macabre features (see below).
 
What Seki failed to disclose to Game's Dimensions Magazine was that the music used in the first-wave release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green was formulated out of an experiment in "binaural beats": using slightly different frequencies of sound, each frequency played in one ear through earphones or headphones, various psychological effects can be induced upon the listener. In most versions of the first wave releases, this resulted in the player feeling uneasy, apprehensive, and mildly disturbed. However, for upwards of two-hundred children, it provoked a variety of disturbances in the brain that went undetected purely because it was undetectable by fully developed human ears; instead, only children fell victim to the tones, resulting in psychological and physiological problems that in some cases led to death—many of which were suicides.
 
Pathology Detail — Visual Overview
These visual effects are known among programming circles as "The White Hand Sprite", the "Ghost Animation", and the "Buried Alive Model". Each has been found to cause headaches, nausea, and in severe cases, hemorrhaging of the brain and lungs. While around 70% of Lavender Town Syndrome (LTS) is due to the Lavender Tone, the remaining percentage is split among these visual phenomena. This is partly due to the visual stimuli occurring after the player is introduced to the Lavender Tone. It has been theorized that those unaffected by the aural stimulation, such as the deaf or the hard of hearing, make up the remaining 30%. While viewing these models can cause these effects, there are certain methods that allow a viewer to safely examine them in detail.
 
The White Hand Sprite
Main article: White Hand Sprite
WhitHand
An artist's rendition of the white hand sprite.
Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokémon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the "cry" a Pokémon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as "Fist" and "Brutal". While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects.
 
The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the "brutal" animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.
 
(NOTE) This Sprite is mentioned by the girl next to the Pokémon Tower when you hit "No" to her question if you think ghosts exist. She says, "Hahaha, I guess not. That white hand on your shoulder, it's not real." but is simply a hoax, it never actually exsited.
 
Ghost Animation
Main article: Ghost Animation
The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a "background feature".
 
The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a "fading" effect.
 
However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having "No knowledge as to where these images surfaced."
 
Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis "Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind" [viewable in appendix C], Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.
 
The Buried Alive Model
Main article: Buried Alive Model
The buried alive model by kami sama sensei-d2xy8rb
An artist's idea of the "Buried Alive" model.
Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokémon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the "boss" of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place.
 
Buried Alive: You're... Here.
 
BA: I'm trapped...
 
BA: And I'm lonely...
 
BA: So very lonely...
 
BA: Won't you join me?
 
After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in "battle view", the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk.
 
Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive's actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, "Finally, fresh meat!" followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical "Game Over" screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown.
 
Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Game Boy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Game Boy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown.

 
 

About
Lavender Town Syndrome, also known as The Lavender Town Conspiracy, The Lavender Town Tone, or The Lavender Town Suicides, is a series of creepypasta stories and videos that detail a conspiracy to cover up mass child suicides. These suicides were allegedly caused by listening to the first version of the Lavender Town Theme in the Japanese version of the Pokemon Red and Green games.
Origin
Introduced in Pokemon Red and Green[24], Lavender Town is the designated graveyard for deceased monsters and is known for its ghost sightings. The first edition of these games was released in Japan in February 1996. By the time the games were released in the United States two years later, the original music for Lavender Town, composed by Junichi Masuda[23] had been changed.[5] Since the ambience of the town was that of a graveyard, the music was relatively creepy, with players on gaming message boards Serebii[2] and NintendoWorlds.net[3] discussing this in 2008 and 2009. A remix[4] of the song appeared in early 2010, attempting to intensify its spookiness.
 
 
 
The first version of the creepypasta story was uploaded to Pastebin[1] on February 21st, 2010. It stated that after the first few days after the release of Pokemon Red and Green in Japan, there were over 100 suicides among children ages 10-15. During the investigation, the detective concluded that the music that played in Lavender Town, thanks to a secret code included in 104 of the original cartridges, was driving children to kill themselves.
 
 
Spread
This version was mentioned on 4chan’s /x/ (paranormal) board[6] as early as March 3rd, 2010, with a shorter, modified version posted to /x/[7] a week later. Several other versions of the original pasta were uploaded to ImageShack[8], personal blogs[9], pop culture blog Rickey[10], and Pastebin[11][21] between April and July 2010. The other versions range from scientific studies pulled from a textbook[8] to an interview with the art director of the games who claimed Satoshi Tajiri asked designers to only include the song in the Red version.[11]
Through 2010, the copypasta was discussed on Pokemopolis[22], multiple video game forums including the MarioKart Wii Forums[14], iOGaming Community[15] and Gamespot[12], music forum AbsolutePunk[13] and was defined on Urban Dictionary.[16] In 2011, a version of the story was added to the Creepypasta Index.[17] The story continues to be inquired about on Yahoo! Answers[18], with over 20 questions about it asked since April 2010, and on Tumblr.[19][20]
Notable Examples
 
 
Significant Elements in the Creepypasta
Three elements have been observed in this Creepypasta: the White Hand sprite, the Buried Alive sprite, and the Ghost Animation. The creepypasta goes into detail about these three supposed occurances:
The White Hand Sprite
“Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokemon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the “cry” a Pokemon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as “Fist” and “Brutal”. While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects. The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the “brutal” animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.”
This is an artist’s representation of the sprite: 
 
The Ghost Animation
“The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a “background feature”. The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a “fading” effect. However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having “No knowledge as to where these images surfaced.” Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis “Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind”, Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.”
Another artist’s representation of the ‘Ghost Animation’: 
 
The Buried Alive Model
“Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokemon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the “boss” of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place:
Buried Alive: You’re… Here. 
BA: I’m trapped… 
BA: And I’m lonely… 
BA: So very lonely… 
BA: Won’t you join me? 
After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in “battle view”, the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk. Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive’s actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, “Finally, fresh meat!” followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical “Game Over” screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown. Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Gameboy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Gameboy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown._”

Decoding

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"
 
In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."
 
For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)
 
"History of the Pathology [$HIP]
It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…
 
…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 
千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]
桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]
吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]
"
Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 
 
The Ghost Animation
 
The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 
 
The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.
 
The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 
 
If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.
 
What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.
 
The Staff of Game Freak
 
Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.
 
Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.
 
In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.
 
Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:
 
"Dear Satou,
 
(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"
 
This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?
 
Unit 731
 
Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:
 
    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
    * Division 5: Training of personnel.
    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.
 
Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 
 
If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 
 
Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 
 
Aftermath
 
The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.
 
Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.
 
Conclusion
 
I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.
 
Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.
 
It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.
 
“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”
 
“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.
 
“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”
 
Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.
 
I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.
 
“911 what is your emergency?”
 
“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.
 
“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.
 
“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”
 
“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”
 
I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”
 
“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.
 
They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!
 
When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“
 
“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”
 
An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”
 
We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

 

 
Jeez, Lavender Town is scawy.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Qv-AaueoE

Edited February 9, 2014 by XelaKebert
Fixed Quote

[Electruz]

 

The phenomenon of the Lavender Town Tone is a legend that involves a bizarre spate of medical cases and deaths from around the country that have been connected to the Pocket Monsters (Pokémon) game series, in particular the first two games of the series, Red and Green. Though the event is largely unheard of due to disclosure laws for companies based in the Kyoto Prefecture, there is a large amount of information that has been brought into the open by a number of dedicated individuals, including 関 内直 (Seki Uchitada) 伊勢 満朝 (Ise Mitsutomo) and 佐藤 治情 (Satou Harue), to whom this page is dedicated.

 

Thanks also go out to 安藤 景忠 (Andou Kagetada) for providing images and animated .gifs of the visual phenomena. This analysis will discuss the other phenomena that is often confused with the "Lavender Town Tone", known as "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "Buried Alive Model", as well as the semi-related developer-tag that was inserted into the game, and how to safely perform these "Easter eggs" in post-first wave cartridges.

 

Contents[show]

History of the Game

The first cases of the "Lavender Town Tone" and associated events were reported a few months after the release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green for the handheld Game Boy video game console. These video games were wildly popular with children between the ages of seven and twelve (their core demographic), which was no doubt one of the reasons why the "Lavender Town Tone" had the level of severity that it did.

 

In the game, the player takes on the role of a "Trainer", whose task is to capture, tame and train wild creatures called "Pocket Monsters" for battle. These games, and the two newest additions to the series—Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver, an anime, manga, figures, a collectible card-game and home console games—have resulted in Pocket Monsters becoming a multi-billion dollar franchise.

 

In one part of the game, the Trainer comes to a small, out-of-the-way place called "Lavender Town" (シオンタウン). This town is one of the smallest hamlets in the game (aside from the Trainer's own home town), and possesses very few of the services available to the Trainer in every other city in the game; indeed, the location would be unremarkable were it not for the "Pokémon Tower" (ポケモンタワー) located there—a colossal building that holds the graves of hundreds of deceased Pokémon.

 

It is theorized that, because of this location in the game, at least two hundred children lost their lives, and many more developed sudden illnesses and afflictions – and this does not consider the vast waves of unreported illnesses or deaths whose cause went unnoticed.

 

History of the Pathology

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Tone that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms—records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions.

 

Some records are listed below, with the full listing in Appendix A [here]. (It should be noted that entries in the Appendix also include symptoms borne not from the "Lavender Town Tone" [an audio phenomenon] but from the so-called "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "buried alive model", all of which were visual phenomena that provoked similar but distinct symptoms.

 

京极 勝女: April 12, 1996 (11).

Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus.

千葉 広幸: May 23, 1996 (12).

General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]

桃井 久江: April 27, 1996 (11).

Cluster headaches, irritability. Eventually took mixed painkillers. [自殺]

吉長 為真: March 4, 1996 (7).

Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20, 1996. [死出]

The document that was circulated internally was the first time that these incidents had been connected with the Pocket Monsters video games - until then, the cause had not been discovered or diagnosed by medical professionals. Indeed, it is uncertain how the company themselves managed to find the cases related to the event without seeking advice from health services.

 

Pathology Detail — "Lavender Town Tone"

The predominant symptoms related to what would become known as the "Lavender Town Tone" included headaches and migraines, bleeding from eyes and ears, mood swings and irritability, addiction to the games, unprovoked violence, withdrawal and unresponsiveness, and in approximately 67% of cases, suicidal tendencies.

 

However, these symptoms only manifested in children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old who had reached the area in game known as "Lavender Town", most of whom were revealed to have been wearing headphones or earphones while playing the game.

 

 

Pokemon Green Beta Lavender Town Song (REAL VERSION)(05:34)

Real Beta song. WARNING MAY CAUSE TRAUMA.

VoltageWolfAdded by VoltageWolf

As it turns out, the developers of the Lavender Town area had sought to make an area that would "leave an impression on the player", according to Seki Uchitada, who was a member of the development team. Seki claimed that at the time of development, a number of the team were interested in making Lavender Town a little different to the rest of the game.

 

"The Pokémon Tower is a visible result of that," Seki told ゲームの次元　（"Game's Dimensions" Magazine) in an interview earlier this year. "That, and the fact that Lavender Town is so different from all the other cities in the game: it is smaller, it has fewer people occupying it, it didn't have a gym... and, of course, the music was very, very eerie. In fact, in the first version of the game, we were told to slightly change the song played in the background of Lavender Town ... because our manager told us it would make children upset. The music used in subsequent versions is different."

 

Either Seki was unaware of the full impact of the Lavender Town Tone, or was vastly understated how "upset" children would get—no more is said of the music in the article, but there are mentions of Lavender Town's other macabre features (see below).

 

What Seki failed to disclose to Game's Dimensions Magazine was that the music used in the first-wave release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green was formulated out of an experiment in "binaural beats": using slightly different frequencies of sound, each frequency played in one ear through earphones or headphones, various psychological effects can be induced upon the listener. In most versions of the first wave releases, this resulted in the player feeling uneasy, apprehensive, and mildly disturbed. However, for upwards of two-hundred children, it provoked a variety of disturbances in the brain that went undetected purely because it was undetectable by fully developed human ears; instead, only children fell victim to the tones, resulting in psychological and physiological problems that in some cases led to death—many of which were suicides.

 

Pathology Detail — Visual Overview

These visual effects are known among programming circles as "The White Hand Sprite", the "Ghost Animation", and the "Buried Alive Model". Each has been found to cause headaches, nausea, and in severe cases, hemorrhaging of the brain and lungs. While around 70% of Lavender Town Syndrome (LTS) is due to the Lavender Tone, the remaining percentage is split among these visual phenomena. This is partly due to the visual stimuli occurring after the player is introduced to the Lavender Tone. It has been theorized that those unaffected by the aural stimulation, such as the deaf or the hard of hearing, make up the remaining 30%. While viewing these models can cause these effects, there are certain methods that allow a viewer to safely examine them in detail.

 

The White Hand Sprite

Main article: White Hand Sprite

WhitHand

An artist's rendition of the white hand sprite.

Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokémon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the "cry" a Pokémon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as "Fist" and "Brutal". While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects.

 

The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the "brutal" animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.

 

(NOTE) This Sprite is mentioned by the girl next to the Pokémon Tower when you hit "No" to her question if you think ghosts exist. She says, "Hahaha, I guess not. That white hand on your shoulder, it's not real." but is simply a hoax, it never actually exsited.

 

Ghost Animation

Main article: Ghost Animation

The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a "background feature".

 

The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a "fading" effect.

 

However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having "No knowledge as to where these images surfaced."

 

Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis "Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind" [viewable in appendix C], Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.

 

The Buried Alive Model

Main article: Buried Alive Model

The buried alive model by kami sama sensei-d2xy8rb

An artist's idea of the "Buried Alive" model.

Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokémon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the "boss" of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place.

 

Buried Alive: You're... Here.

 

BA: I'm trapped...

 

BA: And I'm lonely...

 

BA: So very lonely...

 

BA: Won't you join me?

 

After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in "battle view", the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk.

 

Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive's actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, "Finally, fresh meat!" followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical "Game Over" screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown.

 

Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Game Boy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Game Boy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown.

 

tl;dr

[XelaKebert]

Several posts in this thread have been edited to be in compliance with Rule 1b found here. Further violations may result in warning points. If you see any posts that violate the rules, do not quote them. Instead use the report feature on the bottom right-hand side of the post.

[DopestDope]

44 sheets, let's keep going.

[spoiler]It was 76 last night before the edits[/spoiler]

 

[Munya]

Why are you trying so hard to not delete the thread

[TheGloriousWalrus]

Poor xela, he tries to shorten the long posts, yet the shortened versions are still longer than a normal page

[Mariah]

Several posts in this thread have been edited to be in compliance with Rule 1b found here. Further violations may result in warning points. If you see any posts that violate the rules, do not quote them. Instead use the report feature on the bottom right-hand side of the post.

 

Do you honestly think anyone is actually going to report it? 

 

[Kelarr]

I'm not sure how they run things over at Pokemmo, I didn't think any of these were breaking any sort of rules.

 

 

 

The phenomenon of the Lavender Town Tone is a legend that involves a bizarre spate of medical cases and deaths from around the country that have been connected to the Pocket Monsters (Pokémon) game series, in particular the first two games of the series, Red and Green. Though the event is largely unheard of due to disclosure laws for companies based in the Kyoto Prefecture, there is a large amount of information that has been brought into the open by a number of dedicated individuals, including 関 内直 (Seki Uchitada) 伊勢 満朝 (Ise Mitsutomo) and 佐藤 治情 (Satou Harue), to whom this page is dedicated.

 

Thanks also go out to 安藤 景忠 (Andou Kagetada) for providing images and animated .gifs of the visual phenomena. This analysis will discuss the other phenomena that is often confused with the "Lavender Town Tone", known as "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "Buried Alive Model", as well as the semi-related developer-tag that was inserted into the game, and how to safely perform these "Easter eggs" in post-first wave cartridges.

 

Contents[show]

History of the Game

The first cases of the "Lavender Town Tone" and associated events were reported a few months after the release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green for the handheld Game Boy video game console. These video games were wildly popular with children between the ages of seven and twelve (their core demographic), which was no doubt one of the reasons why the "Lavender Town Tone" had the level of severity that it did.

 

In the game, the player takes on the role of a "Trainer", whose task is to capture, tame and train wild creatures called "Pocket Monsters" for battle. These games, and the two newest additions to the series—Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver, an anime, manga, figures, a collectible card-game and home console games—have resulted in Pocket Monsters becoming a multi-billion dollar franchise.

 

In one part of the game, the Trainer comes to a small, out-of-the-way place called "Lavender Town" (シオンタウン). This town is one of the smallest hamlets in the game (aside from the Trainer's own home town), and possesses very few of the services available to the Trainer in every other city in the game; indeed, the location would be unremarkable were it not for the "Pokémon Tower" (ポケモンタワー) located there—a colossal building that holds the graves of hundreds of deceased Pokémon.

 

It is theorized that, because of this location in the game, at least two hundred children lost their lives, and many more developed sudden illnesses and afflictions – and this does not consider the vast waves of unreported illnesses or deaths whose cause went unnoticed.

 

History of the Pathology

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Tone that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms—records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions.

 

Some records are listed below, with the full listing in Appendix A [here]. (It should be noted that entries in the Appendix also include symptoms borne not from the "Lavender Town Tone" [an audio phenomenon] but from the so-called "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "buried alive model", all of which were visual phenomena that provoked similar but distinct symptoms.

 

京极 勝女: April 12, 1996 (11).

Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus.

千葉 広幸: May 23, 1996 (12).

General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]

桃井 久江: April 27, 1996 (11).

Cluster headaches, irritability. Eventually took mixed painkillers. [自殺]

吉長 為真: March 4, 1996 (7).

Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20, 1996. [死出]

The document that was circulated internally was the first time that these incidents had been connected with the Pocket Monsters video games - until then, the cause had not been discovered or diagnosed by medical professionals. Indeed, it is uncertain how the company themselves managed to find the cases related to the event without seeking advice from health services.

 

Pathology Detail — "Lavender Town Tone"

The predominant symptoms related to what would become known as the "Lavender Town Tone" included headaches and migraines, bleeding from eyes and ears, mood swings and irritability, addiction to the games, unprovoked violence, withdrawal and unresponsiveness, and in approximately 67% of cases, suicidal tendencies.

 

However, these symptoms only manifested in children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old who had reached the area in game known as "Lavender Town", most of whom were revealed to have been wearing headphones or earphones while playing the game.

 

 

Pokemon Green Beta Lavender Town Song (REAL VERSION)(05:34)

Real Beta song. WARNING MAY CAUSE TRAUMA.

VoltageWolfAdded by VoltageWolf

As it turns out, the developers of the Lavender Town area had sought to make an area that would "leave an impression on the player", according to Seki Uchitada, who was a member of the development team. Seki claimed that at the time of development, a number of the team were interested in making Lavender Town a little different to the rest of the game.

 

"The Pokémon Tower is a visible result of that," Seki told ゲームの次元　（"Game's Dimensions" Magazine) in an interview earlier this year. "That, and the fact that Lavender Town is so different from all the other cities in the game: it is smaller, it has fewer people occupying it, it didn't have a gym... and, of course, the music was very, very eerie. In fact, in the first version of the game, we were told to slightly change the song played in the background of Lavender Town ... because our manager told us it would make children upset. The music used in subsequent versions is different."

 

Either Seki was unaware of the full impact of the Lavender Town Tone, or was vastly understated how "upset" children would get—no more is said of the music in the article, but there are mentions of Lavender Town's other macabre features (see below).

 

What Seki failed to disclose to Game's Dimensions Magazine was that the music used in the first-wave release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green was formulated out of an experiment in "binaural beats": using slightly different frequencies of sound, each frequency played in one ear through earphones or headphones, various psychological effects can be induced upon the listener. In most versions of the first wave releases, this resulted in the player feeling uneasy, apprehensive, and mildly disturbed. However, for upwards of two-hundred children, it provoked a variety of disturbances in the brain that went undetected purely because it was undetectable by fully developed human ears; instead, only children fell victim to the tones, resulting in psychological and physiological problems that in some cases led to death—many of which were suicides.

 

Pathology Detail — Visual Overview

These visual effects are known among programming circles as "The White Hand Sprite", the "Ghost Animation", and the "Buried Alive Model". Each has been found to cause headaches, nausea, and in severe cases, hemorrhaging of the brain and lungs. While around 70% of Lavender Town Syndrome (LTS) is due to the Lavender Tone, the remaining percentage is split among these visual phenomena. This is partly due to the visual stimuli occurring after the player is introduced to the Lavender Tone. It has been theorized that those unaffected by the aural stimulation, such as the deaf or the hard of hearing, make up the remaining 30%. While viewing these models can cause these effects, there are certain methods that allow a viewer to safely examine them in detail.

 

The White Hand Sprite

Main article: White Hand Sprite

WhitHand

An artist's rendition of the white hand sprite.

Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokémon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the "cry" a Pokémon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as "Fist" and "Brutal". While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects.

 

The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the "brutal" animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.

 

(NOTE) This Sprite is mentioned by the girl next to the Pokémon Tower when you hit "No" to her question if you think ghosts exist. She says, "Hahaha, I guess not. That white hand on your shoulder, it's not real." but is simply a hoax, it never actually exsited.

 

Ghost Animation

Main article: Ghost Animation

The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a "background feature".

 

The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a "fading" effect.

 

However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having "No knowledge as to where these images surfaced."

 

Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis "Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind" [viewable in appendix C], Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.

 

The Buried Alive Model

Main article: Buried Alive Model

The buried alive model by kami sama sensei-d2xy8rb

An artist's idea of the "Buried Alive" model.

Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokémon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the "boss" of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place.

 

Buried Alive: You're... Here.

 

BA: I'm trapped...

 

BA: And I'm lonely...

 

BA: So very lonely...

 

BA: Won't you join me?

 

After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in "battle view", the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk.

 

Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive's actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, "Finally, fresh meat!" followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical "Game Over" screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown.

 

Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Game Boy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Game Boy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown.

 

 

 

 

About

Lavender Town Syndrome, also known as The Lavender Town Conspiracy, The Lavender Town Tone, or The Lavender Town Suicides, is a series of creepypasta stories and videos that detail a conspiracy to cover up mass child suicides. These suicides were allegedly caused by listening to the first version of the Lavender Town Theme in the Japanese version of the Pokemon Red and Green games.

Origin

Introduced in Pokemon Red and Green[24], Lavender Town is the designated graveyard for deceased monsters and is known for its ghost sightings. The first edition of these games was released in Japan in February 1996. By the time the games were released in the United States two years later, the original music for Lavender Town, composed by Junichi Masuda[23] had been changed.[5] Since the ambience of the town was that of a graveyard, the music was relatively creepy, with players on gaming message boards Serebii[2] and NintendoWorlds.net[3] discussing this in 2008 and 2009. A remix[4] of the song appeared in early 2010, attempting to intensify its spookiness.

 

 

 

The first version of the creepypasta story was uploaded to Pastebin[1] on February 21st, 2010. It stated that after the first few days after the release of Pokemon Red and Green in Japan, there were over 100 suicides among children ages 10-15. During the investigation, the detective concluded that the music that played in Lavender Town, thanks to a secret code included in 104 of the original cartridges, was driving children to kill themselves.

 

 

Spread

This version was mentioned on 4chan’s /x/ (paranormal) board[6] as early as March 3rd, 2010, with a shorter, modified version posted to /x/[7] a week later. Several other versions of the original pasta were uploaded to ImageShack[8], personal blogs[9], pop culture blog Rickey[10], and Pastebin[11][21] between April and July 2010. The other versions range from scientific studies pulled from a textbook[8] to an interview with the art director of the games who claimed Satoshi Tajiri asked designers to only include the song in the Red version.[11]

Through 2010, the copypasta was discussed on Pokemopolis[22], multiple video game forums including the MarioKart Wii Forums[14], iOGaming Community[15] and Gamespot[12], music forum AbsolutePunk[13] and was defined on Urban Dictionary.[16] In 2011, a version of the story was added to the Creepypasta Index.[17] The story continues to be inquired about on Yahoo! Answers[18], with over 20 questions about it asked since April 2010, and on Tumblr.[19][20]

Notable Examples

 

 

Significant Elements in the Creepypasta

Three elements have been observed in this Creepypasta: the White Hand sprite, the Buried Alive sprite, and the Ghost Animation. The creepypasta goes into detail about these three supposed occurances:

The White Hand Sprite

“Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokemon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the “cry” a Pokemon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as “Fist” and “Brutal”. While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects. The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the “brutal” animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.”

This is an artist’s representation of the sprite: 

 

The Ghost Animation

“The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a “background feature”. The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a “fading” effect. However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having “No knowledge as to where these images surfaced.” Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis “Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind”, Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.”

Another artist’s representation of the ‘Ghost Animation’: 

 

The Buried Alive Model

“Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokemon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the “boss” of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place:

Buried Alive: You’re… Here. 

BA: I’m trapped… 

BA: And I’m lonely… 

BA: So very lonely… 

BA: Won’t you join me? 

After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in “battle view”, the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk. Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive’s actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, “Finally, fresh meat!” followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical “Game Over” screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown. Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Gameboy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Gameboy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown._”

 

 

 

 

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"

 

In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."

 

For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)

 

"History of the Pathology [$HIP]

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…

 

…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 

千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]

桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]

吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]

"

Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 

 

The Ghost Animation

 

The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 

 

The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.

 

The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 

 

If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.

 

What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.

 

The Staff of Game Freak

 

Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.

 

Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.

 

In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.

 

Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:

 

"Dear Satou,

 

(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"

 

This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?

 

Unit 731

 

Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:

 

    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.

    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.

    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.

    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.

    * Division 5: Training of personnel.

    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.

 

Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 

 

If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 

 

Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 

 

Aftermath

 

The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.

 

Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.

 

Conclusion

 

I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.

 

Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.

 

It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.

 

“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”

 

“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.

 

“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”

 

Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.

 

I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.

 

“911 what is your emergency?”

 

“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.

 

“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.

 

“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”

 

“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”

 

I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”

 

“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.

 

They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!

 

When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“

 

“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”

 

An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”

 

We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

 

[Misfire33]

Do you honestly think anyone is actually going to report it? 

 

 

You have so many gifs of black men looking angry or disappointed I don't even know.

[Skeletor]

 

The phenomenon of the Lavender Town Tone is a legend that involves a bizarre spate of medical cases and deaths from around the country that have been connected to the Pocket Monsters (Pokémon) game series, in particular the first two games of the series, Red and Green. Though the event is largely unheard of due to disclosure laws for companies based in the Kyoto Prefecture, there is a large amount of information that has been brought into the open by a number of dedicated individuals, including 関 内直 (Seki Uchitada) 伊勢 満朝 (Ise Mitsutomo) and 佐藤 治情 (Satou Harue), to whom this page is dedicated.

 

Thanks also go out to 安藤 景忠 (Andou Kagetada) for providing images and animated .gifs of the visual phenomena. This analysis will discuss the other phenomena that is often confused with the "Lavender Town Tone", known as "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "Buried Alive Model", as well as the semi-related developer-tag that was inserted into the game, and how to safely perform these "Easter eggs" in post-first wave cartridges.

 

Contents[show]

History of the Game

The first cases of the "Lavender Town Tone" and associated events were reported a few months after the release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green for the handheld Game Boy video game console. These video games were wildly popular with children between the ages of seven and twelve (their core demographic), which was no doubt one of the reasons why the "Lavender Town Tone" had the level of severity that it did.

 

In the game, the player takes on the role of a "Trainer", whose task is to capture, tame and train wild creatures called "Pocket Monsters" for battle. These games, and the two newest additions to the series—Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver, an anime, manga, figures, a collectible card-game and home console games—have resulted in Pocket Monsters becoming a multi-billion dollar franchise.

 

In one part of the game, the Trainer comes to a small, out-of-the-way place called "Lavender Town" (シオンタウン). This town is one of the smallest hamlets in the game (aside from the Trainer's own home town), and possesses very few of the services available to the Trainer in every other city in the game; indeed, the location would be unremarkable were it not for the "Pokémon Tower" (ポケモンタワー) located there—a colossal building that holds the graves of hundreds of deceased Pokémon.

 

It is theorized that, because of this location in the game, at least two hundred children lost their lives, and many more developed sudden illnesses and afflictions – and this does not consider the vast waves of unreported illnesses or deaths whose cause went unnoticed.

 

History of the Pathology

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Tone that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms—records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions.

 

Some records are listed below, with the full listing in Appendix A [here]. (It should be noted that entries in the Appendix also include symptoms borne not from the "Lavender Town Tone" [an audio phenomenon] but from the so-called "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "buried alive model", all of which were visual phenomena that provoked similar but distinct symptoms.

 

京极 勝女: April 12, 1996 (11).

Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus.

千葉 広幸: May 23, 1996 (12).

General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]

桃井 久江: April 27, 1996 (11).

Cluster headaches, irritability. Eventually took mixed painkillers. [自殺]

吉長 為真: March 4, 1996 (7).

Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20, 1996. [死出]

The document that was circulated internally was the first time that these incidents had been connected with the Pocket Monsters video games - until then, the cause had not been discovered or diagnosed by medical professionals. Indeed, it is uncertain how the company themselves managed to find the cases related to the event without seeking advice from health services.

 

Pathology Detail — "Lavender Town Tone"

The predominant symptoms related to what would become known as the "Lavender Town Tone" included headaches and migraines, bleeding from eyes and ears, mood swings and irritability, addiction to the games, unprovoked violence, withdrawal and unresponsiveness, and in approximately 67% of cases, suicidal tendencies.

 

However, these symptoms only manifested in children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old who had reached the area in game known as "Lavender Town", most of whom were revealed to have been wearing headphones or earphones while playing the game.

 

 

Pokemon Green Beta Lavender Town Song (REAL VERSION)(05:34)

Real Beta song. WARNING MAY CAUSE TRAUMA.

VoltageWolfAdded by VoltageWolf

As it turns out, the developers of the Lavender Town area had sought to make an area that would "leave an impression on the player", according to Seki Uchitada, who was a member of the development team. Seki claimed that at the time of development, a number of the team were interested in making Lavender Town a little different to the rest of the game.

 

"The Pokémon Tower is a visible result of that," Seki told ゲームの次元　（"Game's Dimensions" Magazine) in an interview earlier this year. "That, and the fact that Lavender Town is so different from all the other cities in the game: it is smaller, it has fewer people occupying it, it didn't have a gym... and, of course, the music was very, very eerie. In fact, in the first version of the game, we were told to slightly change the song played in the background of Lavender Town ... because our manager told us it would make children upset. The music used in subsequent versions is different."

 

Either Seki was unaware of the full impact of the Lavender Town Tone, or was vastly understated how "upset" children would get—no more is said of the music in the article, but there are mentions of Lavender Town's other macabre features (see below).

 

What Seki failed to disclose to Game's Dimensions Magazine was that the music used in the first-wave release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green was formulated out of an experiment in "binaural beats": using slightly different frequencies of sound, each frequency played in one ear through earphones or headphones, various psychological effects can be induced upon the listener. In most versions of the first wave releases, this resulted in the player feeling uneasy, apprehensive, and mildly disturbed. However, for upwards of two-hundred children, it provoked a variety of disturbances in the brain that went undetected purely because it was undetectable by fully developed human ears; instead, only children fell victim to the tones, resulting in psychological and physiological problems that in some cases led to death—many of which were suicides.

 

Pathology Detail — Visual Overview

These visual effects are known among programming circles as "The White Hand Sprite", the "Ghost Animation", and the "Buried Alive Model". Each has been found to cause headaches, nausea, and in severe cases, hemorrhaging of the brain and lungs. While around 70% of Lavender Town Syndrome (LTS) is due to the Lavender Tone, the remaining percentage is split among these visual phenomena. This is partly due to the visual stimuli occurring after the player is introduced to the Lavender Tone. It has been theorized that those unaffected by the aural stimulation, such as the deaf or the hard of hearing, make up the remaining 30%. While viewing these models can cause these effects, there are certain methods that allow a viewer to safely examine them in detail.

 

The White Hand Sprite

Main article: White Hand Sprite

WhitHand

An artist's rendition of the white hand sprite.

Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokémon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the "cry" a Pokémon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as "Fist" and "Brutal". While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects.

 

The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the "brutal" animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.

 

(NOTE) This Sprite is mentioned by the girl next to the Pokémon Tower when you hit "No" to her question if you think ghosts exist. She says, "Hahaha, I guess not. That white hand on your shoulder, it's not real." but is simply a hoax, it never actually exsited.

 

Ghost Animation

Main article: Ghost Animation

The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a "background feature".

 

The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a "fading" effect.

 

However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having "No knowledge as to where these images surfaced."

 

Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis "Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind" [viewable in appendix C], Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.

 

The Buried Alive Model

Main article: Buried Alive Model

The buried alive model by kami sama sensei-d2xy8rb

An artist's idea of the "Buried Alive" model.

Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokémon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the "boss" of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place.

 

Buried Alive: You're... Here.

 

BA: I'm trapped...

 

BA: And I'm lonely...

 

BA: So very lonely...

 

BA: Won't you join me?

 

After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in "battle view", the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk.

 

Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive's actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, "Finally, fresh meat!" followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical "Game Over" screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown.

 

Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Game Boy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Game Boy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown.

 

 

 

Decoding the mystery of "Lavender Town Syndrome" and the "Lavender Tone"

 

In the "Red" and "Green" versions of the Pokémon (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsuta) video game for the Nintendo Gameboy system there have been reported rumors circulating the internet of "Lavender Town Syndrome." The phenomena is described as occurring when the player is within Lavender Town, a small area with a paranormal theme including ghosts, ghost themed Pokémon and a tower constructed for the purpose of housing deceased Pokémon. The music in the area, which was later quickly changed for a second release, contains binaural beats which can induce psychological effects on the listener. These subtle beats comprise the so called "Lavender Town tone."

 

For a description of the effects on Japanese children which played this first edition, I shall quote from the page with information on the subject- http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html (Readers should note that most but not all of the information on the page is factually sound.)

 

"History of the Pathology [$HIP]

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions…

 

…京极 勝女; April 12 1996 (11). Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia, tinnitus. Attacked a police officer near a government building and was killed. 

千葉 広幸: May 23 1996 (12). General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself. [自殺]

桃井 久江: April 27 1996 (11). Cluster headaches, irritability. Self harmed and carved the kanji symbols for "Empire" into his wrists, then died. [自殺]

吉長 為真: March 4 1996 (7). Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996. [死出]

"

Hundreds of Japanese children fell victim to these effects, many of them committing suicide eventually. As you can see these binaural beats lead to many problems, including symptoms of brain hemorrhaging and violent actions against others. 

 

The Ghost Animation

 

The article also mentions a "Ghost Animation" which appears throughout the tower. It supposedly displays static, pictures of screaming faces, the "Grim Reaper" and photographs of corpses along with the standard ghost model itself. While the rest of the paragraph itself is fiction (No such "Games Commission Board" ever held the programmers on trial) there is some truth behind this "Ghost Animation." In the recalled first edition of the games in which the Lavender Town tone was present, hidden in the game's code is an unnamed Pokémon only identified by its assigned number - 731. 

 

The Pokémon can only be found in two places. One is depicted in Figure 1, Route 7. The thirty first tile of grass, which is boxed with red in the picture, has a 100% chance of entering a battle with Pokémon 731. It is unknown whether this is due to the game's code itself or it was purposely put there by programmers. Another way to find it is to use the "Missingno" Glitch. The Missingno glitch involves having an Old Man show you how to catch a Pokémon. Due to "Old Man" taking the place of your characters name in the games memory, your characters name is moved to the memory which determines what wild Pokémon are shown. On Cinnabar island there is a narrow strip of land in which wild Pokémon can be caught, but it has no specific Pokemon assigned to it. Therefore, a Pokémon which corresponds to the hex value of your name will appear. If your character is named "gca" (in lower case letters) you will encounter Pokémon 731.

 

The Pokémon itself is strange in nature. It does indeed use the ghost sprite, along with some flashing static. However, about twenty frames in it becomes a flashing series of low quality pictures. Two of the clearest ones have been included, figures 2, 3, and 4. Figure 2 appears to be a man standing over a table upon which something hard to identify - a corpse perhaps - rests. He has his hands on this unknown object and also has what may be a surgical mask over his mouth. This strengthens the theory that it is a body in the frame. Figure 3 appears to be a low resolution image of a building, the significance of which will be explained later. Figure 4 is possibly one of the strangest images, an picture of the Imperial Japanese flag with the two kanji symbols that mean "Emperor" in the bottom right corner. Other frames of the animation that can be made out include more images of doctors, corpses, and buildings. The theme from Lavender Town plays the whole time during the battle, although accelerated 3x. 

 

If one attempts to catch the Pokemon, the game will freeze. After restarting, the title screen of the game will have been modified, displaying only static and the tone accelerated to the blistering pace of 10x.

 

What is the purpose of this Pokémon? What is the significance of the number 731? Were the binaural beats comprising the "Lavender Town Tone" inserted into the music on purpose? The answers require a look at some of the staff of Game Freak, the company which developed the game for Nintendo.

 

The Staff of Game Freak

 

Game Freak, a Japanese video game developer founded in 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokémon series. Shin Nakamura, who was married Satou Harue with a six year old child, Ken Nakamura, worked there as a programmer. Ms. Harue, who leaked the list of children affected by the Lavender Tone, was trained in musical skills, and in charge of sound design. In order to gather more information on this subject, I traveled to Japan to interview Ms. Harue, who now lives in the small town of Toma, in the Kamikawa District of the Hokkaido Prefecture.

 

Initially unwilling to answer my questions, she finally relented and gave me the information I desired. The reason she had leaked the list of children was partially due to personal guilt. Mr. Nakamura had asked to tweak the Lavender town theme, Ms. Harue accepted and Mr. Nakamura added the tone, telling Ms. Harue that he decided that it was fine as it was and did not add anything. Because the tone is not audible for those over the age of twelve, Ms. Harue believed Mr. Nakamura.

 

In the middle of the night after the game was released, Mr. Nakamura committed suicide in Aokigahara Forest by hanging himself on a tree, leaving a letter addressed to Ms. Harue below him.  Their son Ken was killed in an automobile accident down the road from their house, naked, with several cracked ribs, frothing at the mouth and heavily bleeding from his nose due to a brain hemorrhage. The two Kanji symbols for "Emperor" were also carved into his chest. The story that Ms. Harue told me was that while Ken was sleeping Mr. Nakamura put headphones on his son and played the Lavender tone, then left, eventually their son woke up and, due to the effects of the tone cut the symbols into himself with a kitchen knife then attempted to attack the passengers of a nearby car. Frightened, they ran over him then drove off. Unfortunately her story was not accepted by police, although the bloody kitchen knife was present in his bedroom.

 

Ms. Harue has agreed to allow me to release a revealing passage from Mr. Nakamura's letter with the rest omitted due to personal reasons. It is as follows:

 

"Dear Satou,

 

(section omitted)… tonight is the eve of a new era for Japan, a new empire of which I am responsible. I cannot, however, linger to see my creation unfold within the coming months, visions of my father's work haunt me…(brief section omitted)…Our dear Ken will be the first martyr for the empire, followed by many other children as our disgraceful society collapses, uprooted by its own young. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, the second Great Imperial Japanese Nation…(rest of letter omitted)"

 

This passage makes it obvious that Mr. Nakamura's goal was to create a second "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" by using the newly released Pokémon games. He hoped that the Lavender Tone, which causes violence against the victims themselves and others, would turn all of the children who purchased the game into warriors for the Empire. But what explains the pictures on the Ghost Animation, and what was his father's work?

 

Unit 731

 

Unit 731 was a secretive unit of the Japanese army under the Empire of Japan during World War two. It was dedicated to biological and chemical research, also delving into human experimentation. It is infamous for its many war crimes. It consisted of several divisions:

 

    * Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis  using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.

    * Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.

    * Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.

    * Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.

    * Division 5: Training of personnel.

    * Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.

 

Under division 4 worked Hoshu Nakamura, the father of Shin Nakamura. According to Ms. Harue "he was a very conservative man, had an Imperial Flag on his wall and followed all traditions. He was stuck in the former half of the century." 

 

If we delve further into records we find that Hoshu Nakamura worked in Division 4. He held the title of "Director of Experimentation Relating to Audial Engineering." From here we can only speculate what responsibilities that title held, but one can guess that the Lavender Tone was engineered there between the screams of vivisected patients and the smoke of burning bodies. 

 

Now recall figures two and three. As figure two pictures a man in a surgical mask holding a body, it was likely taken by Mr. Nakamura himself at the faculty. Figure three looks similar to the main entrance to the facility. We can gather that the rest of the photos are  "patients" of Unit 731 and buildings of the facility. 

 

Aftermath

 

The effects themselves were certainly not as great as Mr. Nakamura hoped. There is no second Japanese Empire, but only a few hundred Japanese children, who died in fits of insane rage against government officials and themselves, he is responsible for. This is mainly thanks to the quick actions of Ms. Harue and Game Freak at removing the tone and the secret code and images which Mr. Nakamura implemented into the game. Mr. Nakamura also neglected to foresee that the effects were hardly present at all without the use of headphones during the Lavender Town segment specifically.  The quiet and fast recall by Nintendo is also a contributing factor.

 

Pokémon continues to be a popular worldwide series of video games. Sadly the government, possibly by the request of Nintendo, has neglected to acknowledge the connection between the lost children and the Pokémon games. The information Ms. Harue leaked has been all but erased from any records, only one copy of the list remains at her home.

 

Conclusion

 

I'd like to thank Ms. Harue greatly for complying with my requests, supplying nearly all the information in this article, and providing a rare copy (possibly the only one left) of first edition Pokémon for investigation purposes.

 

Ms. Harue continues to live alone with her two cats in Toma, Hokkaido, working as a store clerk. She left Gamefreak shortly after her husband's suicide and her child's death. Sadly she has all but given up trying to spread awareness of the events which led to the loss of her child.

It’s been while since I’ve seen a Lavender Town Creepypasta. All of them now involve N talking about their past Pokemon or Cheren becoming a murderer. If you ask me, the best creepypastas are the ones involving the classics, Red and Blue versions.

 

It was September 28th, 1998. The day Pokemon Red was released in North America. After receiving my advertisement tape, I had been going crazy wanting this game. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mom handed me a little box with a picture of Charizard on it. Pokemon Red! I finally had it! I played through the whole game in week. I begged my mom to buy me Blue, and she eventually did. Once I’d beaten both I ignored Pokemon for a while, still watching the show of course. On October 31st, Halloween, a friend of mine, Alicia, stayed the night after trick or treating. My parents had gone to a Halloween party and trusted us to be good while they were gone. I had no siblings. Of course we did stuff wrong! We used the computer, watched TV for two hours (I was only supposed to be watching for half an hour), called boys we liked, and ate all of our Halloween candy. Around 1 am I pulled out my Gameboy, remembering something.

 

“Hey Alicia, wanna hear a creepy song?”

 

“Uh, sure! It’s Halloween, why don’t we get in the mood!” She laughed a little and took the headphones I handed her.

 

“One sec…” I said as I selected Fly from my Charizard’s moveset. Of course I was heading to Lavender town. I had gotten one of the original cartridges with the first Lavender Town music. I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought the music was cool and creepy. “Okay,” I said, “Plug them in.”

 

Alicia plugged the headphones and sat incredibly still for a second. Her pupils dilated so they were black marbles outlined with a tiny bit of blue. Her hands tightened. She dropped the Gameboy, collapsed, and began foaming at the mouth. My best friend was going to die! All because of me! She shook violently as foam trickled down her face, then she went still, her eyes wide open. I screamed for help before I realized my parents weren’t home. Tears flooded down my face. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up Alicia! Wake up!” What had that music done to her? I stared at the Gameboy on the floor. I put the headphones on and it sounded the same as always. I threw the game down again and sprinted to the kitchen. I got a huge glass of water and dumped it all over Alicia. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t mean it!” I attempted CPR from what our school nurse had told us, but nothing worked. I put her on the bed and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry Alicia! I didn’t mean to kill you! I don’t know what happened!” I was sobbing more loudly than I ever had.

 

I grabbed the phone off my desk and dialed 9-1-1.

 

“911 what is your emergency?”

 

“My friend just had a seizure! She was listening to a creepy song and all the sudden she collapsed! It was my fault, I made her listen to it! My parents aren’t home and I don’t know what to do! I think she’s dead!” I was sobbing loudly into the phone.

 

“All right, sweetie, calm down. Can you tell me if she has a pulse?” I put the phone down and checked.

 

“Yeah, kinda! But it’s really faint! My name is Marissa Shepperd and my friend is Alicia McKnight!”

 

“Can you tell me your address? We need to send an ambulance.”

 

I told her my address and the ambulance arrived minutes later. They put Alicia on a cot and loaded her in. “Can I get in the back with her?”

 

“Yes, get in, we need to go. And get that game she was listening to, I want to take a look at it.” I grabbed my Gameboy and got in the ambulance.

 

They used a defibrillator on Alicia to try to wake her up. “I think she’s in a coma,” the EMT said. I wanted to kill myself, this was all my fault!

 

When we got to the hospital they raced Alicia in and we called my parents. They arrived a few minutes later. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I would never-“

 

“It’s okay, Marissa. We believe you.”

 

An hour later a doctor came into the waiting room holding my Gameboy. “Your friend isn’t doing well, I’m afraid. I had a sound specialist listen to this and he said it was unlike anything he’s ever heard. He said there’s a possibility there are frequencies in here that she heard that caused her to seize.”

 

We went home and the first thing I did was throw my Gameboy in the trash. I never wanted to see it again. We received a call the next morning that Alicia had died. We visited her parents and they told me they would never blame me for what happened. Alicia’s services were held in November at the spot where her parents got married.

 

 

 

About

Lavender Town Syndrome, also known as The Lavender Town Conspiracy, The Lavender Town Tone, or The Lavender Town Suicides, is a series of creepypasta stories and videos that detail a conspiracy to cover up mass child suicides. These suicides were allegedly caused by listening to the first version of the Lavender Town Theme in the Japanese version of the Pokemon Red and Green games.

Origin

Introduced in Pokemon Red and Green[24], Lavender Town is the designated graveyard for deceased monsters and is known for its ghost sightings. The first edition of these games was released in Japan in February 1996. By the time the games were released in the United States two years later, the original music for Lavender Town, composed by Junichi Masuda[23] had been changed.[5] Since the ambience of the town was that of a graveyard, the music was relatively creepy, with players on gaming message boards Serebii[2] and NintendoWorlds.net[3] discussing this in 2008 and 2009. A remix[4] of the song appeared in early 2010, attempting to intensify its spookiness.

 

 

 

The first version of the creepypasta story was uploaded to Pastebin[1] on February 21st, 2010. It stated that after the first few days after the release of Pokemon Red and Green in Japan, there were over 100 suicides among children ages 10-15. During the investigation, the detective concluded that the music that played in Lavender Town, thanks to a secret code included in 104 of the original cartridges, was driving children to kill themselves.

 

 

Spread

This version was mentioned on 4chan’s /x/ (paranormal) board[6] as early as March 3rd, 2010, with a shorter, modified version posted to /x/[7] a week later. Several other versions of the original pasta were uploaded to ImageShack[8], personal blogs[9], pop culture blog Rickey[10], and Pastebin[11][21] between April and July 2010. The other versions range from scientific studies pulled from a textbook[8] to an interview with the art director of the games who claimed Satoshi Tajiri asked designers to only include the song in the Red version.[11]

Through 2010, the copypasta was discussed on Pokemopolis[22], multiple video game forums including the MarioKart Wii Forums[14], iOGaming Community[15] and Gamespot[12], music forum AbsolutePunk[13] and was defined on Urban Dictionary.[16] In 2011, a version of the story was added to the Creepypasta Index.[17] The story continues to be inquired about on Yahoo! Answers[18], with over 20 questions about it asked since April 2010, and on Tumblr.[19][20]

Notable Examples

 

 

Significant Elements in the Creepypasta

Three elements have been observed in this Creepypasta: the White Hand sprite, the Buried Alive sprite, and the Ghost Animation. The creepypasta goes into detail about these three supposed occurances:

The White Hand Sprite

“Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokemon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the “cry” a Pokemon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as “Fist” and “Brutal”. While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects. The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand, with surprising attention to detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone, and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist. The first attack is the hand balling into a fist, then swinging forward. However, the “brutal” animation is missing several frames: The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.”

This is an artist’s representation of the sprite: 

 

The Ghost Animation

“The Ghost Animation, coded as Haunting.swf, was intended to be placed in several areas throughout the tower, including in the center of a path on the second floor. However, players cannot interact with it, leaving many to believe that it was intended as a “background feature”. The ghost animation as well must be viewed in individual frames. It is comprised of 59 frames total. However, after extraction, around half of these frames have been revealed to be the standard ghost model used in Pocket Monsters. Around a quarter of the remaining frames are comprised of static, to produce a “fading” effect. However, interspersed with these bursts of static are several frames of screaming faces, along with images of a skeletal man in a cloak (hypothesized to be the Grim Reaper) and of several killed corpses. The meaning behind these are unknown- While under oath before the Video Games Commission Board, Lead Programmer Hisashi Sogabe testified as to having “No knowledge as to where these images surfaced.” Out of all the phenomena associated with LTS, this animation is the most speculated on: In his thesis “Video Games and The Manipulation of the Human Mind”, Dr. Jackson Turner argued that the images were intentionally placed in. Due to their brief time appearing on the screen, and the graphic nature of the frames, Turner theorizes that these were meant to subliminally influence players into becoming more frightened by the disturbing surroundings.”

Another artist’s representation of the ‘Ghost Animation’: 

 

The Buried Alive Model

“Often referred to as its code, the Buryman script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokemon Tower, in what has now been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive model was intended to be the “boss” of the tower. Once reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place:

Buried Alive: You’re… Here. 

BA: I’m trapped… 

BA: And I’m lonely… 

BA: So very lonely… 

BA: Won’t you join me? 

After this, the battle would have been initiated. Once in “battle view”, the Buried Alive model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk. Strangely enough, a protocol for the Buried Alive’s actions after it was defeated were not written. In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, a specific ending was written by an unknown programmer upon losing the battle. In this ending, the Buried Alive was to have stated, “Finally, fresh meat!” followed by several lines of gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player character into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical “Game Over” screen; however, in the background, an image of the Buried Alive character devouring the player was to have been shown. Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Gameboy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Gameboy turning on. Instead, whenever it was started, the player would view this image as the sound file staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading towards LTS, is unknown._”

 

Woah!

Thanks for the spooky stories!