An Experience with the Lavender Town Syndrome

Date: March 20, 2013

I, like so many others out there, enjoyed the Pokémon games and anime when I was younger. But unlike a lot of people I knew, I continue to enjoy it to this very day. Around one month ago, I discovered creepypastas and immediately became a fan of the site. A few days later I found creepypasta videos on YouTube and was instantly hooked.



While searching for creepypastas one night on the infamous video site, I came across SomeOrdinaryGamer’s Haunted Gaming series and decided to watch some of the videos. After watching a few, I noticed that there were Pokemon pastas as well. Being that Pokéfan I am, I switched from the current video to the first pokemon related video I could find.



The first one I watched was about the pokemon red hack that gave you the ghost as your starter pokemon. From there I watched “Strangled Red”, “Nurse Joy”, and “Snow on Mount Silver.”  It was about Three in the morning and was about to turn off my laptop when I saw one pasta video that I had not yet seen. It was called Pokemon Creepypasta: Lavender Town Syndrome.



Just reading the words “Lavender Town” was enough to give me goose bumps. As a child, the Lavender Town theme was in no way my favorite song in the game. To be honest, it used to frighten the hell out of me. Before my Pidgeotto knew how to fly, I used jump on my bike just before I walked into town and went as fast as the game would let me so I could escape that terrifying music. Naturally being curious, I decided to open the video about the bane of my childhood.



The video started out fine, with the host introducing himself and some game footage of pokemon played on the screen. I learned about the odd symptoms and suicides that were caused by the town theme but didn’t really think anything of it at first. After the video ended, I decided to find an mp3 of the famous Lavender Town tone online and download it just for fun.



It wasn’t that hard to find, but that maybe because I might have downloaded the wrong file. After listening to it once, I knew I was right. I deleted the file and immediately began my search again.



After about an hour of looking through Google results and asking about it on forums, I got message from someone claiming to have an mp3 of the famous music discussed in the creepypasta. When I asked if I could get a copy, he said he would give it to me but warned me that everything I heard about the theme was true. I just scoffed at him and clicked the download button.



After ten minutes of waiting, the file was finally downloaded; I eagerly put in my headphones to listen. Just before I hit play I hesitated, remembering about all of the awful side-effects that people claimed to have experienced after they listened to it. I hit play anyway, rationalizing that it was just a story on the internet.



<p class="MsoNormal">The mp3 started out like the normal Lavender Town music and was pretty much normal all the through. I was about to turn it off thinking I had been trolled when at around 8 minutes and 52 seconds, the music suddenly changed. There was strange sound that I can only describe as the sound a UFO would make in an old science fiction movie. After the weird alien sound ended, the music started to slow down and white noise started to interfere with the audio. The already creepy music became even more so, making me cringe. Just as I was about to truly turn off the music; a low tone began to play over the now hellish music. It was at this point when my entire body froze on the spot. For those of you who have ever had to where a cast over a broken limb will know how I felt. I could not move a single muscle; even wiggling my toes was out of the question. My breathing became shallow due to the paralysis as well. For some reason, the only parts of me that still had full range of motion were my eyes.

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<p class="MsoNormal">As time went on, the tone climbed in pitch but was never loud enough to drown out the demonic theme. As I listened, the tone became an ear splitting screech which was so intolerable that I immediately understood why people would kill themselves because of this noise. If I were not frozen on the spot, I might have even considered it.

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<p class="MsoNormal">The 11 minute 37 second finally ended and thankfully so did the paralysis. I closed my media player and promised myself that I would never listen to that mp3 again. I turned off my computer and attempted to get some greatly needed sleep after hearing that absolutely terrifying song.

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<p class="MsoNormal">In the end, I never got any sleep that night and for the next two and a half weeks I had nothing but nightmares each and every night. Should any of you reading this wish to listen to the song I have one thing to say:  Lavender Town Syndrome is very real and all of the stories are true, after all, you’re reading one right now. Listen at your own risk.

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