So, you may have heard of the Lavender Town Syndrome. I wanted to make it in my own words. Before you say it, yes, I made it with ChatGPT, I was just lazy as hell.
Lavender's Last Note[]
When I was a kid, Pokémon Red was everything. My cousin gave me his old Game Boy, and it came with a cartridge of the game. I spent hours catching Pokémon, exploring the map, and battling trainers. But when I got to Lavender Town, everything changed.
The music hit me first. That eerie, high-pitched melody felt out of place compared to the cheerful themes of the other towns. After a while, it made my head hurt, and sometimes I’d feel dizzy. At school, a few of my friends talked about similar feelings when they reached Lavender Town. One kid even said his younger brother stopped playing entirely because the music gave him nightmares. At the time, I brushed it off as exaggeration.
Then I heard the rumors.
Online forums were abuzz with whispers of something called Lavender Town Syndrome. Supposedly, the original version of the game, the one we all had, contained a strange frequency in the Lavender Town theme. This frequency was said to affect young players in particular, causing headaches, dizziness, and even hallucinations.
But the darkest part? There were stories of kids who didn’t just stop playing. Four children—two boys and two girls, all between the ages of seven and eleven—had reportedly taken their own lives after playing through Lavender Town. One boy left behind a note with just two words:
“Come play.”
I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. But curiosity gnawed at me. I decided to revisit Lavender Town one rainy night, headphones in, determined to prove it was all just an urban legend.
The Encounter[]
The town felt different this time. The music, even through my cheap earbuds, was sharper, almost unbearable. It wasn’t just sound—it felt like the tones were crawling into my brain. I pressed on, muting the volume when the pressure in my head became too much.
In the Pokémon Tower, things got worse. The usual wild Pokémon encounters stopped entirely, and static flickered across the screen. Then a new figure appeared: a small girl sprite, standing perfectly still in the middle of the screen. Her back was turned to me. She wasn’t a trainer, just standing there, facing away.
When I tried to interact with her, there was no response. I stepped closer, and just as I reached her, she vanished, replaced by a single line of distorted text:
“THEY COULDN’T HEAR ME.”
The music slowed, the high-pitched notes warping into something guttural, almost like a cry. I continued up the tower, but instead of finding the usual ghost Marowak at the top, the girl returned. This time, she faced me. Her sprite was flickering, and her eyes were replaced with empty voids.
When I pressed "A," text appeared on the screen:
“WHY DID YOU LISTEN?”
The screen flashed, and the Game Boy let out a piercing, static-like wail. I dropped it in shock, and when I picked it up again, the game had changed. My character stood back in Lavender Town, but the buildings were gone, replaced by gravestones stretching endlessly in every direction.
I checked my Pokémon party. Each slot contained a single fainted Pokémon named after one of the four children from the rumor. There was Kenji, Mina, Aiko, and Ren. The sixth slot was empty. Panicked, I shut the game off.
The Aftermath[]
That night, the nightmares began. I dreamed of the girl, standing at the foot of my bed, her face pixelated and broken. Her voice was warped, distorted, like the music:
“They’re waiting for you.”
The dreams came every night, and each time, I’d wake up with the Lavender Town theme echoing faintly in my ears. I stopped eating, sleeping, or playing video games. My parents thought I was sick, but I knew something was wrong.
Weeks later, the dreams stopped as suddenly as they began. I thought I was free—until I received a package in the mail with no return address. Inside was my old Game Boy and the Pokémon Red cartridge. There was a note inside, written in shaky handwriting:
“You heard her. Now they’re waiting for you.”
To this day, I refuse to touch it. But every so often, when I’m alone, I hear that haunting melody, faint but unmistakable. And sometimes, just on the edge of my vision, I see her—the girl, her broken sprite flickering like static, waiting for me to play again.
They say the suicides were just a hoax. But I know the truth. I heard them. And now, so will you.