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Lavender Town
With BEN locked in files on the internet for the rest of eternity and Herobrine only a myth we need something to fear whilst playing these games. The story of Lavender Town is, in a way, similar to Polybius (getting in all the creepy references we've talked about today) with gamers committing suicide! Alex Hall might not have been driven that far but sadly some children in Japan were...
In Pokémon Red and Green released in 1996 had an innocent seeming town known as Lavender Town. Children, mainly aged between 7 and 12, who reached Lavender Town experienced illnesses and some even committed suicide due to the music of the town, the theme of the town was largely composed of extremely high pitch sounds which only children and young teens can hear due to their more sensitive hearing. According to research at least 200 hundred children committed suicide after hearing this theme! Many did so by hangings or jumping off of high places such as cliffs.Those who did not commit suicide complained of headaches and acted irrationally after hearing the theme.
After hearing this shocking news the developers Game Freak then went back to change the audio and now the music of Lavender Town sounds very different and now children who play the game until this point are unaffected by the theme. But this is not where the story ends as research years later uncovers a new layer of terror to this tale: the Unown leave researchers an eerie message...
For those of you who don't know the Unown is a type of Pokémon that assumes the form of different letters of the alphabet and later includes the shape of the "?" and the"!". Researchers were using special software to to analyse the original theme of Lavender Town with with a form of motion video being played from audio alone (similar to the colours moving and changing shapes when music is played through a music player to a computer screens). Near the end of the audio a group of Unowns appeared in the video feed and spelt the words "LEAVE NOW" in their alphabet. The most worrying part for researchers, and fans of the series, was that Pokémon Red and Green were 1st generation games and the Unown first appeared in the 2nd generation titles. I suppose this will be just another unresolved case that we've discussed here along with Polybius but one that has actually and sadly been linked to over 200 deaths. Maybe we should look at something happier next time and keep the deaths in the realm of video games
