Pokémon Creepypasta A to Z

Lavender Town and Pokémon 731

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 (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 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 seven and twelve 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 video games, 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.