Ep243 - Video Game Urban Legends: Pokemon's Lavender Town Syndrome - Creep Street Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Foolish ash ketchum, welcome to my gym. You are no
match for my electric Pokemon.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We'll see about that.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Vaultasaur. I choose you.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Valters Squirdle.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I choose you, squider.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Squird foolish voltasaur use electric shock altas.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Squirtle.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
As I said, young ash ketchum, you're no match for me.
Do you yield?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Never? Glock at you? I choose you.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Glock of what?

Speaker 5 (01:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:10):
What do you want me to do? Boss?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Glockat you use nine milimeters burst fire?

Speaker 4 (01:15):
Oh? What the hell? Jesus Christ, what the hell is
that thing? Professor Oak is not even legal. That's no
regional for him. That's an American evolution. But what my
vultasaur is?

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Dad?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Glockatu use hand grenade.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
Whoa Jesus Christ, I'm getting out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Glock at you high speed chase attack.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
What the hell he's following me here? I got you
your basst.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Glockat you use spike strips.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
You got it? Boss? What the hell is that?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
God?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Damn?

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (02:08):
Block at you?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
What the hell are you?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Block at you? U? Street justice?

Speaker 1 (02:16):
My pleasure?

Speaker 6 (02:17):
Boss?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Wait, white, good work, block at you.

Speaker 7 (02:24):
I think we earned our gym Badge today.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Citizens of the Milky Way. My name is Dylan.

Speaker 8 (02:59):
Hack Worth and I'm Gauge Hurley, and you.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Have arrived in the pixelated nether realm known as the
Creep Street Podcast. That's right, folks, Oh yes, yes, yes,
I was thinking I actually had another episode ready to
go for this week and it was set during medieval England,
and I was thinking, you know, we've kind of been

(03:23):
in that area, whether it was Scotland or just the
kind of the isles there, whether it was Ireland or
Scotland or the UK or and I thought, you know what,
I'm gonna save that for the following week because I
wanted to kind of shake it up. This is gonna
be something unlike we usually do, and I'll explain why
at the end. In fact, I'm not even gonna list

(03:43):
my sources until the end, so nothing gets spoiled for you.

Speaker 8 (03:48):
Yeah, we've been doing a lot of period pieces. Let's
get back to something a little more modern today.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah. Absolutely, And this is something especially if you're gage
and eyes aged that you and if you are invested
in video games, this might be something you knew well of.
It's interesting. I was thinking about it the other day
video games. There's already so many games that are kind
of lost to time, either the original whatevers were lost,

(04:17):
or think about like live service games. Once the servers
go down, that game is essentially gone. I guess the
publisher whomever, the developer might still have access to it,
but these things are sort of lost to time. There's
a bunch of films, for example, especially from the Silent era,
that are lost to time, and because of that, scary

(04:39):
things kind of get built up legends. For me, Legends
can form around things, especially when you can't go back
to the source to find out for sure. But in
the case of today's episode, you can go back to
the source, but you might not want to after hearing
this tale. Now everyone around the world has heard of Pokemon,

(05:04):
whether you're a gamer or not. It is a global
sensation that has been going around since the nineties, whether
it's the games, the cards, the animes, everything. I mean,
there is so much and it's something that all ages
I'm amazed at. Like it's one of those things that kids,
whether they're our age when Pokemon first came out or

(05:25):
kids nowadays, like Pokemon just has a it's got legs.
It just doesn't go out of style.

Speaker 8 (05:31):
I agree, it's I like it. It's heartwarming for US
nineties kids to see Pokemon still going strong. I mean
I see even tiktoks nowadays where people they do tiktoks
of just opening cards and just seeing what they got.
I like to see that Pokemon is still going strong.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, very few things have those kinds of legs.

Speaker 6 (05:51):
You know.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
I was thinking the other day about characters like Batman.
How Batman is you know, literally, I think it was
what thirty eight, nineteen thirty eight or thirty nine when
the first Batman comic was published, and it's like, and
the characters arguably is as big now as he ever was.
Because certain things just capture the imagination of all ages
and they just they transcend a certain period. They aren't like,

(06:14):
oh that was so eighties or that was so you know,
they're very like they just are able to adapt with time,
and Pokemon has been one of those things now that
is going to bring us to the title of today's episode,
Video game Urban Legends. Lavendertown's syndrome now video game Urban Legends.

(06:55):
What's fun about this is, you know, in the future,
maybe in a few months, maybe in a year, or
so we'll be able to share with you a new legend,
because there's these wonderful, terrifying urban legends that have built
up around our digital media and video games being relatively
what like forty five years old. I mean, you could
always there's you can always find earlier examples, but I

(07:17):
think at most fifty years old whenever like Pong or
those early games first came out. Well, let's take it
back though to February twenty seventh of nineteen ninety six,
the day that Pokemon Red and Green first hit shelves
in Japan. Now, in case you're a bit confused, first,
I was a bit confused because in many international releases

(07:40):
of the game, like it was here in the States,
it was released as Pokemon Red and Blue, something I
didn't know, but apparently, yeah, in Japan it was actually
Red and Green. That was the designation of the first
generation of the Pokemon games. Now, what was supposed to
be a joyful launch of what would obviously become one
of the biggest media franchises on Earth, well it came

(08:03):
with a shadow that most fans never knew was there,
because in those first few weeks following the release, something
very unnatural and very grim started to happen. All of
a sudden, a horrifying spike occurred and the number of
child deaths reported across the country. The victims were all

(08:28):
within the same narrow age range between ten to fifteen
years old, and the cause self harm, suicide, call it
what you will, and just a heads up, we are
talking about something very grim today, and that is children
allegedly harming themselves. And so just wanted to give that

(08:49):
little breed. You know, that stuff kind of bugs me sometimes,
you know, And so I get that there's probably many
of us out there that that would bug I don't
know who, it wouldn't bother, But just so you know,
it's we're gonna be dealing with some of that today.
So batten down the hatches. It's a little grim at times. Now,
this was something and these deaths were not as what
you would unfortunately call common when it came to suicide.

(09:13):
It even shook seasoned investigators with how deeply, deeply unnerving
these cases were. Yes, some were the expected horrors, of course,
hanging jumps from rooftops all terrible but tragically familiar when
it comes to farm But others they defied explanation. There

(09:37):
were reports of children who had sawed off their own limbs,
who had shoved their faces into lit ovens, and in
some of the most disturbing cases, kids who had allegedly
choked to death on their own fists, literally forcing their
arms down their throats with impossible strength and will. And

(10:01):
these were not isolated incidents. They came in clusters, and
they all had one thing in common. Each child had
recently been playing Pokemon, and not just any part of
the game, but Lavendertown. Now, if I remember correctly, gauge
Lavender Town is it is actually kind of the spooky

(10:23):
area of the game. That's where, like I think a
lot of the ghost Pokemon are in the ghost Gym
or like the cause there's like the tower there that
you go up. It's so it's already kind of a
spooky area of the game. Now. Not every child, however, died.
A small handful were fortunately saved in time, pulled back

(10:44):
from the edge before they could follow through with their
gruesome attempts to take their own lives. But what they
left behind was not relief. It was only more terror.
Because these children did not come back the same. Their
behavior afterwards was erratic, even wild, like something in their

(11:05):
minds had cracked down the center. They would scream without warning.
They clawed at their own eyes until they bled. They
wouldn't speak in full sentences, just fragments, guttural sounds, and
violent shrieks that made no sense to the people around them.
Doctors and family members obviously tried desperately to understand what

(11:28):
was wrong with the children. Was it some kind of
a trauma that was now surfacing, or some sort of
psychotic break that was being elicited by something in the environment,
something maybe chemically induced. And then someone made the connection.
When the children were shown a game boy, they didn't react,

(11:50):
They just stared blankly, no movement. But when the game
boy was switched on and loaded with a cartridge of
Pokemon Red or Green, that's when the screaming started, a
full bodied panic, hysterical wailing. Some children would try to

(12:11):
smash the device, while others would flee the room entirely,
as if the very presence of the game sent pain
rippling through their bodies. No one could figure it out,
no one had the answers, Just a handful of traumatized kids,
an eerie town in a digital world, and a growing

(12:31):
suspicion that something inside the game wasn't meant to be there.
This chilling pattern of strange and sudden waves of death
and madness, it was impossible to ignore, and by the
time enough victims had surfaced, the authorities could no longer
write it off as mere coincidence or some kind of

(12:53):
a moral or public panic. There was a common thread
woven through every tragedy. Poke him up on Red and Green.
And there is such a thing, obviously as moral panics.
Before gage Andized time, this would have been like our
parents' time, D and D. You know, the moral panic
that surrounds things like that, that oh it's a gateway

(13:13):
to satan or something like that. And I can remember,
you know, I was allowed to play Pokemon, but I
can remember there was root talk of that, like it's
I think it's natural when something is so big, kind
of say, like take for example, Harry Potter, that's another one,
or Pokemon. When something is so big, and especially when
the fan base is children, I think some parts of

(13:37):
the population they get afraid, right, they're they're very untrusting,
especially when it has to do with kids. And obviously
it's always good to know what your child is consuming
their media habits. That's always good, but sometimes, like in
the case of Harry Potter, like we said things like that,
it's a little a little extra, it's a little too much.

(13:57):
But this was not the case. This was not just
a mere moral panic. The suspicion had become unavoidable. The
game somehow was linked to what these children were experiencing.
But that only made it even stranger because the truth
was obviously, as any of us know who have played
the original game, not every child was affected. I wasn't affected.

(14:21):
Gauge wasn't affected.

Speaker 8 (14:22):
Must big head, must big head?

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Gotta catch them all more like gotta. I don't know.
I feel.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
It is.

Speaker 5 (14:33):
To yeah, especially when it's about kids, you know, I feel,
but yeah, like you know, it is like it's as
we know, these these games have sold countless millions around
the globe.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
And that's just the gin one. I mean that, you know,
There's been many, many other variations of Pokemon and not
even the main games. You know, there's also spin offs,
like there was Pokemon Stadium and what was the picture one?

Speaker 8 (14:57):
Oh yeah, Pokemon Snap, I think.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yes, Pokemon Snap, yes exactly, you know, or even most
recently like what a decade ago Pokemon go where people
would go out and you know, I remember being in
Chicago and it was a big thing, you know, and
it was a good way to kind of you know,
you'd go around town, catch a Pokemon, catch a rat
of tat or two, and then on home. But this
is a game, a property that has been able to

(15:23):
morphine and stay relevant throughout the generations. So why, though,
did some children when it came to Gen one Pokemon?
How come some most children really hear nothing but catchy
chip tunes while others were driven to literally gouge their
own eyes out or run from a screen like it
was on fire. What was going on? Was it a

(15:45):
specific frequency or a visual glitch? Was it something buried
in the code that was waiting for the quote right
kind of mind or brain for it to notice? Well,
the police had no answers, and with no other leads,
no suspects, no weapons, no motives, they had no choice

(16:06):
but to treat the games as a primary link. And
that's when the focus turned to one specific point in
the game, one town and one track in particular. Lavendertown
sounds nice enough. Lavender Town smells nice, like a nice
bubble Bath absolutely, you know, and you can find the

(16:27):
track and we'll learn as we go through the story.
Was it something in the music or was it even
Lavender Town but something earlier in the game. You know,
you can find the music the og music online and
stuff and listen to it, and you know it's out
there obviously, and you can obviously play the old games.
So with nothing else to go on, the authorities began
to dig and they gathered every game cartridge linked to

(16:50):
the affected children. They sealed them away in evidence bags,
labeled logged, and store dozens of identical looking plastic shells that,
according to every record, should have held nothing more than
a harmless game. But the police knew something was off.
Something inside these carts wasn't right, So they went to

(17:12):
the source. And think about it like this. Obviously, when
you a game goes quote unquote gold, I think that's
what they mean. Why, like, when the actual development stage
ends and it's ready to go to publishing or distribution
or whatever I would imagine, I don't know. It's essentially
one thing that is then implemented onto several different little
hard drives or memory cards or whatever they are inside

(17:34):
of these games. But could it also be that a
select few of them were tampered with or had something
extra in them. I mean, as we know, the whole
business strategy behind releasing two games at once is there's
always a couple Pokemon that are exclusive to one cartridge
and a couple exclusive to the other. Well, if that's

(17:56):
the case, I mean, is it so hard to believe
that a rogue colder might put something wacky into a
few hundred cartridges that are then dispersed around the world
at a random pace.

Speaker 8 (18:07):
Imagine if they did that with movies like you can
watch Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But
you gotta go see either the schwartz or or the
Cruse version.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Right, And honestly, probably in a decade when Ai has
become really good, that might actually be a choice you
can make. But anyway, the first stop was a visit
to Satoshi Tajiri, the mastermind behind Pokemon, the visionary who
had turned his love for bug collecting into a global

(18:40):
empire nerd. And when they sat him down, just kidding,
and when they sat him down and told him what
had been happening, you know, the deaths and the madness,
his reaction was rather odd. He wasn't surprised or outraged.
He was just kind of uneasy, like he'd already been

(19:02):
hearing rumors of this, and he felt that something was coming,
that eventually authorities would come knocking. But Tajii, he didn't
confess to anything. However, he also didn't deny anything either.
He simply listened, and then he pointed them in a
new direction. If they wanted answers, he said, they needed

(19:23):
to speak to the main programmers, the ones actually responsible
for what went into the game, the code, the design,
the sound, the ones who built the Kanto region and
Lavendertown and then everything else that came with it. Next,
the detectives paid a visit to Taki Noori Uata, one

(19:44):
of the core programmers behind Red and Green, and if
anyone knew what was stitched into the game's code, it
was him. Unlike Tajii, Uata was calm, almost to a
point of being cold, as if the line of questioning
was just a tedious misunderstanding. He told them plainly, quote,

(20:04):
it's not possible. You can't kill someone with a video game,
not like this. Well, maybe it's some kind of mass
hysteria or cultural panic. Like we said, we've seen such
things many times in the past. But code, mere pixels
and some beeps and boops. Well, I mean, surely that's

(20:25):
not enough to make a child leap from a rooftop
or shove their own fists down their throat. And he
had a point. Not all kids were affected. Millions upon
millions of Cartridges, and only a handful. While still tragic,
of course, and you know, one enough is far too many,
but when you compare it to the number of Cartridges souls,

(20:48):
it's a small number. There was also no real pattern
or any kind of thread to trace, just that the
kids had been playing the game. There was nothing, from
what they could tell, unique about the children that were
the victims, so they really had nothing to go on.

Speaker 8 (21:04):
Still, right, it seems like this was the literally only
common thread.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yes, absolutely absolutely, And like we said, it's like, well
then what about the millions of other kids? You know,
it's it's weird. So the detectives, though, still knew something
was off. Awata seemed too dismissive, too smooth in the
way he spoke. It was it was almost like he
rehearsed it, like he was hiding something behind the simple

(21:30):
logic that, of course, a video game couldn't just drive
a person insane. But on Creep Street, we know that
when it comes to the kinds of mysteries we cover,
even the ones that we know for a fact are
very real, oftentimes logic takes a back seat. Well, Awata

(21:50):
didn't crack under questioning. He didn't confess either, but he
also didn't get that defensive. But he did let something slip,
something that made the temperature in the room drop a
little bit. After brushing off their questions for nearly an hour,
Awata leaned forward slightly and said, almost offhandedly, you should

(22:12):
be speaking to mister Fuji. The detectives pause and they
asked who that was. Awata just smiled and said he's
the one who made Lavendertown, and that was all he said.
Auata remained cool as a cucumber through the questioning, but
before the detectives left, he did offer them one last

(22:34):
bread crumb. He mentioned a rumor that he had heard
a wild thing that had been murmured and passed around
among the development team, and a story that no one
officially acknowledged, but one that of course would linger in
the break rooms and late night debug and QA sessions.
He said it was the music, specifically the theme from Lavendertown.

(22:58):
According to the rumors, the high, eerie tones in the
track had made some children feel ill, the headaches, nausea,
even insomnia, or in some cases even strange visions. But
of course it was all just rumor, as he insisted,
nothing concrete to stand on that could be made definitive.

(23:18):
And as a way to put it, quote, no real proof,
just something people like to say to scare each other.
But still the detectives had no better lead, and just
the heads up. I always say, you know, obviously, if
I mispronounce any names, it's not out of disrespect. I
just might not know how to pronounce it. So forgive
me if I mispronounce anyone's name. But continuing, they followed

(23:41):
the thread next to a Juniici Masuda, the composer behind
Pokemon's now iconic soundtrack. Masuda was courteous and polite, and yes,
he had heard the rumors too, he didn't put much
stock in them, of course, he was confident in his
work and even proud of it, but he understood the concern.
So to demonstrate that the claims were baseless, he brought

(24:05):
up the original Lavendertown track on a monitor, queued it
up and hit play so the detectives could hear the
tune firsthand. The theme drifted into the room, high pitched tones,
dissonant waves, that strange, melancholy chime that so many players remembered.
It filled the space as it gently reverberated in the corners.

(24:29):
But alas nothing happened. No one got nauseous, no one screamed,
no one even felt that uneasy. The detectives just sat there, still,
monitoring themselves for any sign of bodily or mental distress.
So did Musada. They heard the song from beginning to end,
and when it was over, nothing had happened, just silence

(24:52):
and a catchy little ditty. Masada shrugged and said, see,
it's just music. The detectives nodded, but they weren't ready
to believe him, not yet, not entirely. Granted, the victims
were all children, but surely there had to be many
adults playing the game as well. Was this something that

(25:14):
only affected the adolescent? There was something about that track, though,
even when played raw, stripped of effects that almost seemed
to cling in the air, like static before a storm,
but with no evidence and no verifiable effects and no confession.
Of course, they'd hit another wall. Mesuda seemed very polite

(25:36):
and open about his music. If there was something about
one of his tunes that was causing distress to players,
he would sure want to know. The detectives had reached
another dead end, or so it seemed. Once again, with
no leads, no names to go on, the detectives seemingly
had nowhere to go. However, the unanswered questions still nagged

(25:59):
at their thoughts, so they returned to the evidence locker
where the sealed cartridges were being held, the very ones
collected from the homes of the afflicted children. They hadn't
been tampered with, of course, no one had touched them
since their seizures and the investigations. They sat there like
cursed artifacts, ordinary in appearance, of course, but heavy with dread.

(26:23):
If they were going to find anything, they would have
to go straight to the source and play the dang
games get good. As some may say.

Speaker 8 (26:34):
They couldn't even access most of the games because they
sucked so bad.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
I know, I mean, I'd like to imagine this is
room full of detectives like I better put on a
pot of coffee.

Speaker 6 (26:43):
Chief, it's gonna be a long night, just chained smoking
and Johnson, you got anything, nothing yet, Chief, still trying
to catch this ball basar you know.

Speaker 8 (26:54):
Yeah, God damn venosaur.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Oh God, that would be so funny.

Speaker 8 (27:02):
This needs to be made into a movie, just so
we can have that scene, just that scene.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
The hard boiled detectives all all with game boys playing Pokemon.

Speaker 8 (27:11):
He's like, detective, if you gotten past that charmander yet
not yet, Sarge, well good good, get.

Speaker 6 (27:19):
Will get good or get out of the force.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
So, with some extreme caution, one of the detectives inserted
cartridge into an old and worn game boy, the same
model found in most of the children's bedrooms. Taking a breath,
turned down the device. As always, the familiar Nintendo logo
flickered into view, The classic game freak logo flashed for

(27:45):
a split second, and then the title screen Pokemon red version.
In this case, there was the music happy and a
scent and familiar, and then two options appeared, just like always,
new game or continue. As they breathed a sigh of relief,
they weren't sure what they had expected, a corrupted screen

(28:09):
or distorted sprites. Staring back at them from the small
square screen. Who's to say, though, that these detectives were
even gamers at all, or even had a lot of
knowledge about video games. It's not like today where even
though most ardent non gamer knows very well what Pokemon
is or Mario, most people know how to play Mario

(28:32):
Kart or can learn it pretty quickly even if you're
not a gamer. But this was thirty years ago in
handheld gaming in particular was fairly new, so it's reasonable
to believe that some of these detectives it was like
picking up a piece of alien technology in a way.

Speaker 8 (28:48):
Let's just put it plain. They were news.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
They were news, and they were about to get poned
poned by an unseen force. But alas there it was
seemingly normal, and yet the air in the room felt tight.
Like the second hand on the wall clock, it slowed down.
The detective hovered his thumb over the continue option, the

(29:12):
save file that had belonged to the child who once
owned the very cartridge. What secrets that they may be
left behind, or what memories were still buried in those
bites and sprites? He clicked continue, just like Ash himself,
heading off to explore the conto region and collect Pokemon.

(29:32):
When the detectives selected continue, the game loaded into the
last save, right where the child had left off, and baby,
that's when things got strange. One after another, they opened
the save files on the seized cartridges, they checked the data.
The trainer names were typical read or other short nicknames

(29:55):
that kids might put in without thinking. But the real
shock came from the end game stats. Time played was
less than an hour, sometimes just minutes, and the number
of Pokemon that had been collected was one and it
was always only one. To get to Lavender Town, you

(30:17):
got to put some time in and you're surely going
to collect Pokemon along the way. These kids, these victims,
did not have the typical full party of Pokemon that
you would probably have by the time you got there,
not even a starter with some caught companions, just one
loan Pokemon, usually the very first one that you receive,
which I believe in the first gin, you had the

(30:39):
choice between Charmanders, Squirtle, and Bulbassar. I remember I had
Pokemon Blue. I went with Squirtle. I went water. No
badges were acquired, no real progress in the game was made,
no indication that they had ever even left Palette Town
where the game begins, let alone reached Lavender Town, where
the eerie track question would play.

Speaker 8 (31:01):
That's so strange. So even if they only played a
few minutes or you know, less than an hour, like
it says, what piece of media could possibly in such
a short period of time leave such an impact?

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Right? And why does this phantom piece of media embedded
in the game not affecting the masses in comparison, like
we said to as many cartridges that were sold, it
was a small fraction. Or is it something kind of
hidden that people had to find that these poor kids
just happened to stumble into. Maybe, And then came a

(31:39):
shilling realization there was no possible way these kids had
reached Lavender Town in the short amount of time they
had played the game, which means they had not heard
that music. They couldn't have. This seemed to imply to
the detectives that the theme in question, that eerie tones
of Lavendertown's background track, wasn't the source of the horror.

(32:00):
How could it be if the kids never even got
that far, not even close, which meant the trigger had
to come earlier, much earlier, something at the very very
beginning of the game buried in the first few minutes,
even of play, had to lie a catalyst for what
had been going on. Was it even the audio at all?

(32:23):
Was it something visual or was it something deeper and intuitive,
something designed to affect only a certain number of players
who might be in a certain state of mind. The
theory made the possibilities even more terrifying. The horror was
not in Lavender Town. It was before then. It was

(32:44):
inside the code from the moment the game began, and
who knows when and whom it might affect.

Speaker 8 (32:51):
Sounds like Kuwata threw them a bit of a red herring.
Possibly he was trying to lead them a water of
the trail.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, you're right, you're right, absolutely well. And it makes
you wonder, like, why would a rumor go around that
it was specifically that doing it, because that was actually
until I started doing the research for this episode, I
always thought it had to do with the music.

Speaker 8 (33:15):
What it makes sense why that would be people's first
inclination since it is the scarier part of the game. True,
it makes sense why it would be I guess their
initial you know.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Theory, absolutely so, if it wasn't the Lavendertown music, and
it wasn't some subliminal flicker of the light and the
title screen. Then the only place left to look was
in the most mundane, the opening minutes of the game,
the part players barely even think about when playing Pokemon,
you know, naming your character, visiting your mama, and then

(33:47):
stepping out of Pellette Town. Whatever the culprit was, it
had to be lurking in those opening minutes. The detectives
went back to Auata, cornering him again, and this time
with a little more urgency. They demanded a full list
of every programmer who had touched the game. No admissions,
not even a random temp could be left off this list.

(34:10):
That's when a new name surfaced, and one that had
not appeared in any official documentation, not in the credits
of the game or the pre release press for the game.
His name was Shiro Mira, a name the public had
never seen because, interestingly, Chiro had specifically asked to not

(34:32):
be credited. According to take Noori, Shiro had only worked
on a small part of the game, something early and minor.
He didn't elaborate, he just called it quote startup scripting.
But there was something else, something a tad more disturbing.

(34:52):
Chiro was dead shortly after Pokemon Red and Green was released.
The man had in his own life quietly and with
no public memorial, no industry obituary or acknowledgment. He was
just gone, as if swept under a rug. A young,
obscure programmer whose life was cut short tragically and who

(35:16):
worked on a very short contract with the developer, and
of course his strange request to be erased from the
game's legacy. Now question was no longer what was affecting
the children, but it had become what had Shiro Mura
put into the game before he disappeared?

Speaker 8 (35:36):
Right, I mean, immediately he has to become a big
suspect because not only has this guy taken his own life,
he didn't want credit yet, almost as though he left
behind some terrible legacy that he didn't want to be known.

(35:57):
In theory, it sounds like he want wanted to cause
something terrible, right.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Or at the very least inadvertently did something and then
realized what had happened, and obviously, maybe out of guilt,
took his own life. But like, yeah, I mean, just
the point alone, like what artists wasn't want their cred?
Very rarely like I can think of like maybe filmmakers. Famously,
David Lynch was so unhappy with Dune and all the

(36:26):
studio meddling that had taken place that he had never
even wanted his name on the on the movie. So like,
there's rare cases like that.

Speaker 8 (36:34):
And that seems more like a case of an artist
dissatisfied with the final work rather than you know, something
like this where it sounds like, I mean, he was
part of the initial code, what could have been so dissatisfactory?
You know that he wouldn't want.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
The credit, absolutely right. The investigation now turned to hunting
down any code or assets that Chiro had implemented. In
many ways, they were hunting for a ghost in the
game's machine. When detectives entered his former apartment, what they
found didn't just confirm their suspicions, that deepened the mystery.

(37:13):
The space was chaotic, with papers littering the floor, most
of them torn, burned, or scribbled out in thick black marker.
It looked less like someone had been writing and more
like someone had been trying to erase their own thoughts,
desperate to undo something that had already been done. But

(37:37):
among the chaos, a few phrases still clung to the margin,
written hastily, erratically and almost childlike, phrases like do not enter,
watch out, and most chillingly of all, come follow me,

(37:57):
all of them written in bold caps, like warnings or
instructions or maybe even invitations. The detectives couldn't make sense
of it yet, but they knew this wasn't random. These words,
these three eerie words come follow me. They sounded like

(38:19):
something you'd hear in a game, a prompt, maybe from
an NPC on a side quest or allure command buried
within the code, meant only for the right kind of
player to hear.

Speaker 6 (38:33):
Well.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Digging deeper into Chiro's history, they uncovered something else that
added one more piece to the puzzle. He had not
been a major figure at game Freak. In fact, he
wasn't even hired initially. He had no major credits, no
legacy of game design or engineering. The only reason he'd

(38:53):
been brought in at all was because of a personal
friendship with one of the map designers. It was Kogi
who had pushed to get him in, just like a
small minor job. But somewhere along the line, Chiro has
given access to the early game script and for the detectives,

(39:14):
that might be the ticket, that's where something may have
gotten in. By this point, the detectives now had a
new target, Cogi Noicino. He wasn't hard to locate, and
he hadn't gone far. In fact, he hadn't really gone anywhere,
because since the launch of Pokemon Red and Green, Kogi

(39:35):
had become a bit of a recluse. Not in the
gradual grief stricken way that you know people retreat from
the world, but immediately and without warning, the very day
the game hit store shelves, Cogi Nosino had locked himself
inside his apartment, pulled the blinds, and didn't come out again.

(39:58):
He only emerged occasionally, and only in the middle of
the night, usually wearing a hoodie, not speaking to others,
only going out to get essentials from the convenience store,
like a man who's like looking over his shoulder, like
he doesn't want to get caught. His family said that
he claimed to be mourning Shiro Mira, his quote dear friend,

(40:25):
but no one believed it because Chiro didn't die until
days after the game's release, and Koji had locked himself
away before Hiro's side, before the rumors and before anyone
knew that there was something fishy with the game, which
left one disturbing possibility. Perhaps Cogi Nessino hadn't locked himself

(40:48):
away because of Shiro's death, but because of what he
knew was coming. And when the authorities finally got Kogi
to agree to an interview, it wasn't in a police
station or an office. It was in his own crumbling apartment.
The smell hit them first when they entered, unwashed air, mold,

(41:09):
and even something metallic. Kogi looked like he'd been dragged
out from another world. His eyes were sunken and ringed
with dark circles, His nails were long to the point
of curling and discoloration. His hair clung to his forehead
in greasy strands, and his breath stank of sleeplessness and fear.

(41:33):
But he talked not easily or even that clear. He
stammered and muttered, and often paused mid sentence just to
stare at something invisible in the corner of the room,
like he was listening to someone talk to him that
the detectives couldn't see. He kept scratching the side of

(41:55):
his neck, as though something were under his skin, but
still he talked, and what he said sent chills down
the spines of the detectives because he told them that
Chiro hadn't just added a few lines of code. He
had been obsessed with the idea of quote touching the player,

(42:16):
of creating something that reached through the screen, something personal
that could only be understood by a child. As Chio
called it, quote the ghost script, and Kogikogi had helped
him hide it. When the detectives finally broached the million

(42:37):
dollar question, the one that had been hanging in the
air since the very beginning, Cogi went quiet. They asked
if he knew anything about the children who had died,
if there was any connection between their deaths to the game,
and for the first time in the entire interview, Cogi
Nessino looked them in the eye. He didn't answer right away. Instead,

(43:03):
he sat there in silence, trembling, slightly, picking at his sleeves,
and when he finally spoke, his voice was low, careful,
like he was trying not to say too much, or
maybe trying not to remember. He said, Chiro, he he

(43:27):
had an idea, something he wanted to try. The moment
he heard poke him on was going into development, something
something different. He didn't say it with pride. He said
it as if it was a confession. Cogi explained that
Hiro had been fascinated, obsessed, even with the idea of

(43:51):
interaction that went beyond the screen, something that reached out,
not so much in a physical way, of course, but
in a psychic one, an algorithm or something close to it,
that would respond not just to gameplay, but to sensitivity
and even emotion, something buried deep in the code and
hidden away, he said. Shiro called it a personal ghost,

(44:16):
a quote script that watched you back. Coogi at first
had thought it was harmless, you know, the ramblings of
a guy who'd read too many old net forums. But
when Shiro begged him for access to the project, he
didn't hesitate. He said, quote, I knew Takanori, We'd worked

(44:38):
together for years. I told him, Shiro is just helping
with debug, and that's all. It took, Just like that,
Shiro Mira was in Well. The tension in the room,
of course, took a big shift, tightened like a noose
around the necks of everyone in the room leaned in,

(45:01):
now fully aware that whatever this was, Shira was at
the center of it, This ghost in the machine, this
missing name, this man who asked not to be remembered.
So they asked Coggi outright, what was Shiro's idea? Why
did he want to work on a children's game so badly?

(45:23):
Cogi Nesino blinked slowly, then nodded like he'd been waiting
for that question the whole time, and he said, quote,
he wanted to add something special, a Pokemon, one that
didn't belong. This was not a glitch or a bug.

(45:43):
It was different, And Coogi continued. He said it would
be an extra, something that would feel out of place,
just enough to make the player feel like they saw
something they shouldn't have, a thrill, a scare, a secret
just for them. But here's the thing. The recorded time

(46:07):
played on the deceased children's cartridges barely reached an hour,
as we know. Therefore, it should be impossible for them
to have even encountered the glitch that existed deep in
the game's code, reachable only through specific steps far later
in the adventure. And yet these kids were affected within
minutes of starting the game, which meant whatever Chiro inserted

(46:30):
it came much earlier. Cogi continued, saying, he told me
once that it would be the first thing the right
kind of player would notice, but only if they were
sensitive enough. The detectives asked for a name, a number,
a line of code, anything, but Kogi just whispered. He

(46:52):
called it white hand. The interview had begun with tension
in the air, but by now it had turned into
something far darker. The detectives were about to witness a
psychological collapse in real time. Every question seemed to peel
back a layer of Coggi's sanity. His hands trembled and

(47:14):
his pupils dilated. He mumbled things that the detectives couldn't
even understand, like half words, sometimes things that sounded like apologies,
and even what sounded like nursery rhymes. And then they
brought up the notes, the one found in Shiro's apartment,
do not enter, watch out come, follow me, And that

(47:42):
is when she got cray. Kogi FROs At the mention
of those notes. His eyes widened, the color drained from
his face, leaving him in a ghostly pale. He began
whispering something under his breath, and then loud and louder sang.

(48:03):
He said not to read them, He said not to
read them. He said not to read them. Then, in
a single frantic move, he lunged beneath the couch. The
detectives shouted, reaching for their weapons, but it was too fast.
Kogi came up with a pistol, his body shaking, eyes wild,
He pointed it straight at the officers, backing into the

(48:24):
corner of the room, sweat now pouring down his face
and neck, and he whispered again, He's still in there, Chero.
He never left the game. You don't understand. He didn't die.
He moved. The detectives tried to calm him down, hands
raised their voices low and as calm as they could muster.

(48:46):
Kogi wasn't listening now. His hand trembled, and then he
whispered his last words, don't follow me. And then with that,
the barrel of the gun shifted in one final motion,
quick and mechanical. He put the pistol in his mouth

(49:07):
and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out, and when
he fell, he didn't say a word. He was gone,
but clutched in his other hand, clenched so tightly that
the bone beneath the skin had gone white. Was a
folded piece of paper, and on it scribbled and the

(49:28):
same childlike scrawl, as Chiro's notes were just three words,
white hand lives. Well, it seemed that all leads had
literally now gone cold. The original development team behind Red
and Green was fracturing, splitting apart into various projects, going

(49:50):
to other studios, going silent, and it was becoming harder
and harder to locate them. It almost seemed like some
unspoken pact had taken hold, to the point that it
seemed they might have been hiding something. Well. The police
managed to reach a few more names, obscure character designers,

(50:10):
creature illustrators, background artists, but every conversation was the same Cheero.
I don't remember him, or at the very best, I
think I saw him once, maybe twice, hunched over a
desk near the back. But nothing useful, nothing that they

(50:32):
could use to move the investigation forward. The only thing
they could confirm through all of it was this Chiro
had worked on the game, and he had worked on
it early. Not much for them to go on. Well,
time passed by now it had been a couple of
months since the first wave of deaths, and during that time,

(50:56):
fortunately the death Right had dropped dramatic. Whatever had been
happening seemed hopefully to have stopped. There were no new reports,
no new incidents, no streaming fits or unexplained behavior. It
was as if the game had lost whatever diabolic mojo
it once had. And that's even stranger because it's like, well,

(51:21):
if it was code related, what kind of code goes away?
That also is quite weird.

Speaker 8 (51:27):
Unless he had somehow coded it to be temporary, right,
or had coded it in a way that part of
the code was to be deleted after a certain duration.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Right, maybe after it was experienced it erased itself, or
or like I said earlier, maybe somehow he was able
to get it implemented on a select like say, however
many it was like one hundred cartridges out of the
millions that were made. Somehow, I don't know how Chiro
would do that, but yeah, it seemed to you would

(52:00):
think it would have kept going, but fortunately it seemed
to have stopped.

Speaker 8 (52:05):
I can imagine he could have written some sort of
code where whatever he put into the game would only
be coded in at random or a certain probability.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Perhaps. Oh, and that's what I was thinking. It's like,
of all the millions of play, maybe it was just
some random combo, a specific combo of buttons and whatevers
that even the kid wouldn't have even known. They just
were unfortunate to happen to type in that code or
just punch those buttons in a certain order at a

(52:38):
certain time, that out of millions, only a small fraction
happened to accidentally do it, And thus what happened happened well.
As it seemed like the strange deaths were done, the
planned recall of the games was quietly canceled. There seemed
to be no need anymore, as it seemed to the

(53:00):
cartridges weren't causing any one harm. Some of the authorities
even started to believe what Takin Norijuaa had said from
the beginning, that it had all just been a strange
and tragic coincidence, perhaps a kind of mass hysteria sparked
by a moral panic and fueled by fear, and maybe
they were able to now leave it be, maybe the

(53:23):
whole case would be shelved forever. That was until they
received a letter suckus. It was a letter written by
Hiro himself, but it wasn't one founded his apartment, as
the police had obviously already thoroughly searched that place and
cleared it. Likewise, this letter had not been among the

(53:43):
scribbled notes or black markereed madness that they had found
wherever it had come from. It had been stored in
Shiro's home, and the envelope was addressed to Co. G. Nosino,
and the letter inside started off normal, normally written, polite,
the kind of letter you'd expect between two pals, a

(54:04):
casual hello, how you're doing, how's the fam? Routine small talk.
But after a paragraph or two things got down to business.
Shiro got to the points and he asked Nessino directly
to help him get onto the Pokemon development team, to
pull some strings, and to get him in as a

(54:26):
programmer on Red and Green. As the letter continued, the
handwriting too, changed, growing more uneven, more jittery, like the
hand holding the pen had started to shake. Shiro began
rambling about a glorious idea, something revolutionary. He called it

(54:47):
a way to program something into the game that had
never been seen before, not just in Pokemon, but in
any game. He claimed it would change everything, not just
for the industry, but for everyone. He wrote that it
would be simple and elegant, and that he didn't even

(55:08):
need to insert any foreign code. He could use what
was already in the game's architecture, just rearranged, reframed, redirected.
Simple enough. Well, the detectives reading the letter agreed. If
this was true, it would be the perfect way to
hide something in the game. There'd be no traces or

(55:28):
red flags in the data, no signature lines to detect.
It would look like nothing had changed at all. And
then suddenly the letter just stopped. No goodbye, no see
you later, no say hello to your mama for me,
Just a name pressed hard into the paper, like the

(55:51):
pen had nearly torn it through shiro mirror. And that
was it for the detectives. This was the name in
the coffin. Whatever doubts they had, whatever threads of coincidence
they were still clinging to, they were now gone. Shiro
had put something into the early part of the game
that wasn't supposed to be there, and now they believed

(56:15):
they were close to cracking this bizarre and tragic case.
Their final breakthrough came with a simple discovery. The programming
team had not worked alone. Each developer had been paired
with another, even Shiro Mira. Shiro's partner, a man named
Susuki Tamata, and if anyone knew what Shira had buried

(56:39):
in those opening lines of code, Tamata was their last
and best hope of unraveling this mystery once and for all.
Well they learned that Susuke Tamata had provided a significant
amount of programming to Pokemon Red and Green. By all accounts,
he was an average guy, good worker, respectful, dependable, no

(57:00):
red flags, of course, no odd behavior, just another name
in the credits. When the detectives knocked on his door,
Timata let them in without hesitation. His home was modest, clean, comfortable.
They were invited into the living room and took their
seats on the couch. Tamata stood near the second story window,

(57:23):
gazing out over the busy street below. The afternoon light
poured in, the sounds of traffic drifted like background ambience
to the scene. He stood there, still, smiling softly. The
only thing playing was a voice recorder. And the following

(57:45):
is a recreation of the conversation that the detectives had
with Tamata. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 8 (57:56):
So, Suke Tamata, what part did you have in the
games Pokemon Red and Green?

Speaker 3 (58:03):
I was a programmer, that's all am I right.

Speaker 8 (58:06):
In knowing that the programmers working on the game worked
in teams, he'd be right. And your partner, his name.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Was Shiro Mira.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
That was his name, Shiro Mira.

Speaker 8 (58:19):
Could you tell us if Mira ever acted strange at all,
any particular behaviors you observed while working with him.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
I didn't know him that well.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Really. We didn't meet up frequently, only every once in
a while to trade data or when the entire group
was called up for a meeting. That's the only times
I ever really saw it. He acted normal as far as.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
I could tell. He he was a short man, and
I think this affected his consciousness. He acted weaker.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Than any other man I met. He was willing to
do a lot of work to gain recognition. This I
do know.

Speaker 8 (58:59):
I think, yes, you think what.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
I think. He was a very weak man.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
I think he wanted to prove himself. Regardless of this point,
I think he wanted to make himself known for something special,
something that would make people forget about the way he
looked and pay attention to the powerful mind that lay
in his skull. Unfortunately for him, however, he didn't have
much of a mind to back up that reasoning.

Speaker 8 (59:31):
Why do you say that.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Well, it's the simple truth. He was nothing special, even
if he wanted to believe so. He can't become greatness,
even if you believe in it.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
It's impossible. Somehow, I think Shiro knew this about himself.
Somewhere deep in there, he knew it.

Speaker 8 (59:53):
Can you tell us what Hiro's part of the game was.
What did he work on? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Nothing? I mean nothing important.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
He worked on some obscure parts of the beginning of
the game.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
It was Oakes part. To be exact, he worked on
some of Oakes parts when he's seen first.

Speaker 8 (01:00:12):
You see what else we know? You know about the
children and the deaths. We know it was Cheero who
did it. He programmed something in the game.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
What are you implying.

Speaker 8 (01:00:27):
We're implying that since you were his partner, if you're
hiding something from us, then you could be just as
much responsible for those children's deaths as Chiero himself.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
You can't prove anything.

Speaker 8 (01:00:40):
Tell us what Chiero did to the game.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
What I told him to.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
You want to know? Huh, you want to know what
this is all about.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Chiro was an idiot.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
He'd do anything for a bit of attention, anything at all.
He couldn't program wor the shit either. The one thing
he could do, however, was be manipulated. He could tell
him what to do and he'd do it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
You wouldn't even question it. Just to hear that thank
you when you receive the finished product. That was his reason.
That's all he wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
I could control him flawlessly. He's a lot like Takanori.
Of course, none of you knew this, but I was
the one who brought up the idea of the game,
the idea of the entire operation. I just told the
fellow what to do, and he followed me without doubt.

(01:01:41):
He knows nothing, just like Shiro.

Speaker 8 (01:01:45):
Don't move or we'll shoot.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Let me tell you about a mechanic in the game.
Consider it a hint, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
If you walk around in the grassy areas enough, a
Pokemon will appear and you'll have the chance to go
into batle with it. It's a necessary part of the
game overall.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
You see, step away from the window.

Speaker 8 (01:02:05):
We won't warn you again.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
At the start of the game, you have to walk
into the grassy area before Oak appears and you receive
your first Pokemon. You understand me. Under normal circumstances. It
was programmed that even though you were in the grassy area,
no Pokemon would spawn. I made it different. I manipulated
that Shiro told him what to put in the game.

(01:02:29):
I gave him all the instructions on how to do it,
and he, oh, he did it flawlessly. It's rare, but
it can happen. Stepping into that grass one can spawn Sosuke.

Speaker 8 (01:02:44):
We don't want to shoot.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Shoot me, shoot me. You're as dumb as Shiro was.
Once he found out the truth, he had to end it.
It was his fault, after all. He shot himself. Because
if you're so damn determined to finish that case of yours,
if you want to know, play the damn game yourself,

(01:03:09):
roll the wheel, and who knows, maybe you'll learn the
secret for yourself. The recorder ran until the tape ran out.
There was nothing else on it, just silence. When police
arrived at the scene, what they found was a massacre.

(01:03:33):
All three men, Susuke Tamata and the two detectives.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
All three were dead. Each of the detectives had been
shot multiple times, at least ten rounds each. Their bodies
showed clear signs of struggle before both were killed by
a final shot placed between the eyes. Susuke was found

(01:03:58):
nearby from two clean shots to the chest, straight through
the heart. Now I want to pause there because think
about just the logistics of that. A firefight ensues. Timata,
the villain in this case, takes two bullets, and the

(01:04:18):
story describes the gun that Tamata had is a pistol.
Yet somehow he was able to put ten slugs into
each cop and then put a fatal extra shot between
the eyes of both. I mean that would imply I mean,
I don't know much about guns, but I mean I
would think that most pistols don't carry twenty two rounds

(01:04:41):
unless you have some sort of extended mag or something,
or maybe in the translation of the story it was
a different kind of gun. But think about the logistics
of that. He got two shots and yet was able
to riddle these detectives with a pistol. The logistics of
that alone is so bizarre.

Speaker 8 (01:05:02):
It's mind boggling. I mean, first of all, like you said,
how does he even have that many shots? I mean,
I guess there's a way, but this is a firefight here,
You're thinking he gets shot as well. How is he
able to get off that many shots.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Right, exactly like that would be And you would think
that even if he shot first, the detectives already had
their hands on their weapons. You would think, even if
they were killed in the process, they would get their
shots off. Like how does he shoot them ten times
and then again once in the forehead? Like, and this

(01:05:39):
is on each person, So that implies twenty two bullets
that Tamada shot, like.

Speaker 8 (01:05:45):
And it's surprising that they only shot him twice too.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Right, right, Like it's just so bizarre to even think about. Well,
this wasn't an isolated incident anymore. This game was now
killing people once again, maybe not in the way it
had the first time, but more deaths this time. Adults
over one hundred children were gone. Kogi Nessino, the quiet Friend,

(01:06:13):
he was dead. Shiro Mira, the manipulated pond was dead.
Two detectives investigating the case both dead, and now even
Susuke Tamara, the man who started it all, was dead.
Hokemon Red and Green had become something else, entirely, something

(01:06:35):
that was reaching far beyond the game itself and destroying
anyone who touched it. Gotta catch them all, oh no, baby,
More like gotta kill them all well, the lead detective
on the case had had enough. He made the decision
to close the case for good. The man responsible was dead,

(01:06:55):
with no one left to pursue or charge, there was
no reason, in the eyes of the department to keep digging,
So everything, including the cartridges, the letters, the notes, every
scrap of evidence was locked away, filed, sealed, and buried
away in the dark. Over time, the story faded into
an urban legend, the one we know today, little conversations

(01:07:19):
behind closed doors, passing mentions over coffee or in the
precinct break room, and today on forums and whatnot and
on Urban Legends website. But even with time, a lot
of those began to vanish. In fact, I can remember
hearing about this story over a decade ago, and as
time has gone less unless people seem to actually know

(01:07:42):
about it, it's almost like the memory of it is
getting erased, at least online or wherever else. It's like
it's getting a raised. It was just a shadow that
lived in the minds of those who had seen it
up close. Well, let's jump forward now ten years. The
date was now February twenty seventh, two thousand and six,

(01:08:07):
and the lead detective was now long retired from the force,
and he was suddenly reminded of the case he had
locked away a decade earlier. Though it was no longer active,
he still had access to the files. He helped when
he could, but this day would pull him back in.
He returned to the sealed container, the one holding all

(01:08:30):
of the evidence from the Dark Chapter a decade before.
With apprehension, he opened it. He read through the letters,
the notes, all the pieces that once threatened his life insanity,
and then he remembered the woman who had appeared on

(01:08:50):
the street one day, unannounced, pressing a letter into his hand.
The letter would change everything for him and blow the
case case wide open. Who was she and where did
she come from? Shiro's mother, maybe Susuitkes. It didn't matter now,
it was far too late to chase those answers. He

(01:09:11):
sealed the container again, closing away the past with shaking hands.
But then just behind it, he noticed a second container,
one he hadn't seen before. So curious, he pulled it
forward and read the label at the top, which read
Evidence number two ten four A. He opened it. Inside

(01:09:34):
were exactly one hundred and four pokemon red and green cartridges,
each one in perfect condition, untouched since they had last
been examined ten years ago. He reached in pulled one out.
It was Pokemon red. It felt strange holding one again.
He hadn't done so in years, Unsure why he felt

(01:09:57):
compelled to do so. He opened the drawer pulled out
an old game boy, dusty and worn but still working.
It had belonged to his son, who was long gone,
now his wife too. He slid the cartridge into the
back of the game boy, and then he turned it on.
The title screen flickered to life, then the options continue

(01:10:22):
or new game. He noticed the save file Tanaka. That
was the child's name, the one who had played cartridge first.
He was likely dead now, as the others were. The
detective selected new game, and everything felt normal. He used
his in game avatar to walk around talk to the

(01:10:42):
endgame mother. Stepped outside into the familiar pixelated streets of Palettetown,
and then he started walking towards the tall grass. In
his head, he could still hear Susuke Tamata's voice like
it had never left, even though he never met the
man himself, never seen his face, but could still hear

(01:11:06):
that voice from that recorded interview that ended tragically with
the deaths of two detectives and Tamata himself. The voice sang,
come follow me. He was getting closer. Just a few
more steps, roll the wheel, and who knows, maybe you'll

(01:11:26):
learn the secret for yourself. He took the step and
entered the grass. The screen didn't react, not at first,
nothing happened. It just sat there, so did he like time.
It frozen just for the two of them. Then the
screen went black. A moment later it lit up again

(01:11:50):
that iconic green background, and on it black text began
to appear. The lead detective's weary eyes widened. He couldn't
stop himself. He read the words aloud as they appeared
on screen.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Come follow me, Come follow me, Come follow me. I
miss you, Dad, I miss you, my husband, I miss.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
You so much. Tears welled up, slipping down his cheeks.
Screen after screen of texts flowed across the display, and
he clicked the A button over and over, desperately trying
to keep up. It was them, his wife and child.
They were talking to him, calling for him, crying with him.
They wanted to see him. They loved him. I love

(01:12:37):
you too, he muttered, his voice hoarse and dry and breaking.
The screen continued, Come follow me, be new again. We
want to see you and hold you and be with
you forever and.

Speaker 6 (01:12:51):
Ever and ever and ever end ev.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Don't stay away. You can see us too. I miss you.
Come follow me. We love youth. The screen went black.
The detective's mouth dropped open, his eyes locked to the void,
and then the screen lit up again, and there stood
Professor Oak, leading the character out of the grass. Come

(01:13:19):
follow me, says Oak. No, no, the detective screamed, dropping
the game boy onto the floor. He collapsed forward, scooping
it back up with trembling hands, The screen once again
inches from his face. Bring them back, Bring them back
to me, But the game just continued as it normally.

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
Would my wife, my child, listen to me, Bring them
back to me, I said, no response, just the game,
as if nothing had happened at all.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
And that was when he heard voices, hundreds of voices.
The lead detective turned from his seat, twisting around slowly,
fear crawling up his spine, and there, standing in his
small room were children, dozens of them. Some had no eyes,

(01:14:17):
some bore bruised rings around their necks, others were charred
their skin cracked and blackened, and they were screaming, their
arms reaching out towards them, their mouths stretched wide in
horror and pain. Bring back my mommy, bring back my daddy,
Bring back my pet, they wailed and chorus, stumbling toward him.

(01:14:38):
I don't want them to go away. Bring them back
to me, Bring them back to me. No, the detective screamed,
clutching the game boy tight to his chest. It's mine,
My family is here. Don't touch it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
Orror flooded his face, and then a voice, soft, cool,
and all too familiar, cut through the screaming, Come follow me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
The detective's eyes snapped to the corner of the room,
and there he stood Susuke Tamata, a smile stretched across
his face, too wide, too smooth.

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
Come follow me, The detective jumped up, backing away, stumbling
over himself as the children crawled towards him, their arms
reaching for the game boy clenched in his shaking hands.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
What's going on here? What's going on? Where's my family?
Susuke smiled calmly. I'll show you, he said, I'll help
you get away from them, you see, Just follow me.
He reached down, opening a drawer on the desk beside him.
The lead detective, pushing his way through the crowd of

(01:15:54):
the now screaming children, managed to look inside, and there
it was, his old service weapon, covered in dust, untouched
since the day he left the force. He had locked
it away and tried to forget the things he'd done
with it, the lives that had taken. But now now

(01:16:14):
it didn't look like death. It looked like freedom. Just
follow me, Sosuke said again.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
Gently placing the gun into the detective's trembling hand. He
curled the man's fingers around the grip, raised it up.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
To his temple, just pulled the trigger. That's all. The
lead detective turn. The children were clawing at his legs,
dragging him down, their mouths hung open in endless cries.
They reached for the game boy, for the cartridge, for
his family. He turned back towards the suke and smiled,

(01:16:54):
my family, I'll follow you. Bang. His brains painted the wall,
and he fell to the floor dead. It was days
before anyone found the body. He lay there in the
blood soaked room in one hand an empty gun, and

(01:17:18):
the other classic game boy still clutched tight inside. It
was Pokemon. Red screen was long, dead, just a cold,
empty black That was the final straw. The remaining authorities
made the decision. The last living detective involved in the
case personally gathered all one hundred and four cartridges and

(01:17:41):
burned them, every last one. They would kill no more.
But this is not the end, because the code is
said to have survived. Some claimed it was passed on
copied into other language versions of the game. So if

(01:18:02):
you have an old Pokemon game lying around, slide in
that cartridge into the back of that game boy, turn
it on. Who knows, maybe you'll learn the secret for yourself. Now,
that is the end of the tale. So let's go

(01:18:24):
back to the beginning and you'll find now why this
is kind of a unique story for us to cover
here on Creepstream. For all the theories surrounding Lavender Town,
there exists an even greater number of videos, articles, and
discussions that attempt to refute them. So look at what
we've actually said so far. There's not a single confirmed report.

(01:18:47):
There's not one verifiable case to back any of this up.
Even if the stories were true, there's something missing scale.
The number of incidents should have been higher, the react
from the public should have been massive, if a game
really had such a catastrophic effect, if it had genuinely
triggered mass sides, the product would have been pulled immediately,

(01:19:11):
and legal consequences would have swooped in hard as a rock.
And then there are the incidents themselves. Taking a closer
look at the symptoms often tied to Lavender Town myth
reveals something far less mysterious and far more mundane. Take
for instance, reports of ear pain or discomfort when hearing

(01:19:34):
the song that could easily stem from long hours of
headphone use, especially in children, combined with something as simple
as poor personal hygiene. It doesn't take a cursed game
to cause an ear infection. Stress disorders those can arise
from a wide range of experiences, not just traumatic events,
but even minor stimuli, a strange line of dialogue and

(01:19:59):
eerie Just the sheer intensity of long gaming sessions on
a dim lit game Boy screen could be enough to
trigger a response in a susceptible mind. Even outbursts of
anger or emotional distress aren't unique to gaming. I mean, hell,
just watch any Call of Duty game for christ sake.
They can be brought on by a host of factors, diet, sleep, deprivation,

(01:20:23):
pre existing mental condition, or life circumstances far removed from
any video game cartridge, and most plausible of all is seizures,
and that one is very real, but again not rare
and not exclusive of course, to Pokemon. Seizures have occurred
to gamers exposed to certain repetitive light patterns, particular color

(01:20:47):
flashes or screen flickers, especially in the older games with
no epilepsy warning in place. None of this proves anything paranormal.
It just proves that real people react differently to stimuli,
and that sometimes gives a good myth is louder than facts. Now,
why I wanted to do this story is because I

(01:21:09):
think it's a good way to showcase what we mean
by you know, this is an urban legend, meaning urban,
the urban and urban legend. It doesn't refer to a
city environment. It refers to a relatively new legend, specifically
one that might be born online or in just local
your local neighborhood or whatnot, as opposed to longstanding legends

(01:21:30):
or myths you know that go back decades, centuries or whatnot.

Speaker 8 (01:21:34):
It's like the difference between slender Man as opposed to
the Boogeyman, right, apply the Boogeyman is not a good example.
I'm not sure how well the Boogeyman is, but you know,
like slender Man is opposed to the Luckness Monster, right, or.

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):
Look at it this way. The longer, let's say this
legend continues to go for another one hundred years, there
might be actual, real, bizarre, maybe even paranormal instances that
occur that are not related to it, but get pulled
into the legend. And when that happens, well, then the

(01:22:12):
legend actually partially does become real in a way because
that is now part of the legend because it's a
real thing that happened. Like I said, it might even
be a you know, a real paranormal event. But because
it might happen in coins in might coincide, right, because
it might coincide, something very real and very terrifying might

(01:22:32):
get brought into the legend.

Speaker 8 (01:22:34):
It's like the Chicken and the Egg exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
And that's you know, think about our just last week
King Arthur and aliens. You know the idea of obviously
we know, we've seen the government has released video. We
know there's things in the sky we can't explain now
whether they're from another planet or it's you know, secret technology.
Even if it's alien technology that we've captured and reversed, engineered,

(01:22:58):
who knows what it is, but we know those things
are real. People have claimed to be abducted, you know,
by these extraterrestrial forces. Well, think about last week's episode
and the idea of the faith folk. How a thousand
years ago people feared fairies and trolls, gnomes change links.
That was a very real fear for them, something that

(01:23:18):
might abduct their child right out of the crib. In
a lot of ways, the faith folk operated in similar
ways to what we associate extraterrestrials. In a way, this
idea of abduction. The act remains the same, but the
face the monster evolves or changes. Same thing can happen

(01:23:39):
with something like this, I mean, slender Man's good a
very good we know for a fact, and we've used
that example many times on the show. We know for
a fact slender Man did start on it as a
fictional story on internet forums. But since then, as we know,
there was the case of the girls who tried to
murder their friend. They made a whole HBO documentary about it,

(01:24:00):
claiming that they were doing it to appease slender Man.
And there's been other people, grown adults that have claimed
to have seen something like a slender Man, that have
encountered the slender Man. So it goes to wonder, is
it this thing of collective belief? Now? You know, like
I said, very real things might come along in the
years to come that are in the periphery that coincide

(01:24:20):
with this game and therefore get sucked into the legend.

Speaker 8 (01:24:24):
I mean, I keep doing this show just to appease Jud.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
You know, old Jud. Dang Old Jud. I mean you've
been stuck here in moonset for a while now, dang.

Speaker 8 (01:24:34):
It, I have man can't get out. I mean, not
that I want to.

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
I enjoy it. Yeah, well, I guess now is a
good time to give you my sources because I wanted
to save them for the end, because I think the title,
especially in one kind of might give it away. Lavendertown
Syndrome Is it just creepy pasta by Costas Nikolai at
begeek dot eu and the Lavendertown Syndrome at Ricky dot

(01:25:00):
So you can see why I wanted to because obviously
creepy pastas, as we know, are stories that some might
post them saying they're true, but it's supposed to be
that they're not real. There's other forums where you post
stories that are supposed to be real. Obviously we can't
verify them, but there's forums where it's supposed to be.
This is designated for fiction, this is designated for real experiences.

(01:25:23):
And we know that this originated in forums where you
know it was a fictional tale. For example, I mean,
I thought Lavendertown was simply about the music. I had
no idea about the whole, you know, it came before,
then the names of specific and then even the ending
ten years later. That part almost feels like it was

(01:25:43):
probably added on later by someone else. It feels like
an addendum, like an extra chapter added on. The old
detective ten years later pulls out the thing, you know,
and he goes through his experience, and so it's like
these things get added along the way, sometimes maybe even
real things. And it's like, well, then does the legend
itself in a way become real because it's incorporated things

(01:26:05):
into it. It's a weird, like you said, it's a
chicken in the egg thing. But that's why this is
something new for us, you know, Next week, I have
a freaky ass tale about a very real case of
medieval royalty and betrayal and murder and maybe even a
bit of the paranormal mixed in. And that's why I
wanted to add in this story. It kind of gives

(01:26:26):
like a modern look at how these things over centuries
will become something else. Like we said, the Romans observing
the ancient Celtic tribes obviously had an agenda. A lot
of what we know is secondhand, and as you said,
history is written by the victors. It's a phrase we
all know. So how do we know that things weren't

(01:26:46):
purposely misinterpreted or or just outright lies painted to make
these people seem more arbaric than they actually were. And
as millennia roll on, that's what we have to go
on in a lot of care. We don't have any
other choice, because the history is anything that they did
write down. And even like, for example, the Celts, I
mean it's a bad example because they didn't write. They

(01:27:07):
were more of an oral passed on their legends through
oral tradition. But anything that had been written down, you know,
might have been destroyed. Think about all the time you
hear a conquering army takes over and they burn everything.
They destroy the cost, you know, and so really, anything
you do learn, even if it's years later, in times
of change and attitudes of change, you're still going off
of what the conqueror said, and.

Speaker 8 (01:27:29):
There's no certainty. Well we'll never have certainty about any
of these things, but that doesn't mean that these stories
aren't valuable. They certainly tell us. They do give us
some insights.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Absolutely.

Speaker 8 (01:27:42):
You know, another idea that occurs to me, which is
kind of fascinating, as what if everything, What if these legends,
even if say a slender man started off as a
quote fiction, What if the universe has such a thing
as destiny. What if things are and everything has a

(01:28:03):
birth right. We assume, like cryptids and things like this
didn't exist since the beginning of time, that they came
to be at some point. What if the universe does
have a predetermined path and that the things are invented
quote invented, but they actually are real, and that the
universe had a plan for us to talk about them,

(01:28:24):
to spread the legend because they actually are true exactly.
It's a fascinating idea absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
And another idea we've talked about many times, is the
idea of a tulpa or a thought form, something that
starts as fiction and collective belief brings it to material reality.

Speaker 8 (01:28:42):
Consciousness is the ultimate mystical part of our universe. The
fact that consciousness exists at all. There may be some
power to it that we still don't understand and may
never will.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
That is such a great point. And I'll tell you what,
Gay I got the fever to catch them all.

Speaker 8 (01:29:01):
Oh you do?

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Oh yeah, catch all of our top tier Patreon subscribers,
of course, The Dream James Watkins, The Finished Face Via Lungfist,
The Madman Marcus Hall, the Tenacious Teresa Hackworth, The Heartbreak Kid,
Chris Hackworth, Theoso Swave, Sean Richardson, the Notorious Nicholas Barker,
the Terrifying Taylor lash Met, The Count of Cool, Cameron Corlis,
the Archduke of Attitude, Adam Archer, the Sinister Sam Kiker,

(01:29:23):
The Nightmare of New Zealand, noeh Leine Viavilli, The Loathsome
Johnny Love, the Carnivorous Kevin Bogee, the Killer Stud, Carl
stab the fire Starter, Heather Carter, The conquer Christopher Damian Demeris,
the awfully awesome Annie, the murderous Maggie Leech, the ser
of Sexy Sam Hackworth, the evil Elizabeth Riley, Laura and
hell Fire Hernandez Lopez, the maniacal Laura Maynard, the vicious
Karen van Vier and the arch Nemesis Aaron Bird, the

(01:29:44):
sadistic Sergio Castillo, the rapt Scallion, Ryan Crumb, the Beast
Benjamin Whang, the devilish Chris Duceet, the Psycho Sam, the
Electric Emily Jong, the ghoulish Girt Hankum, the renegade Corey Ramos,
the crazed Carlos, the antagonist, Andrew Park, the monstrous MICHAELA. Sure,
the witchy Wonder j P. Weimer, Frenky Been Forsyth, the
barbaric Andrew Berry, the mysterious Marcella, the hillacious Kale Hoffman,

(01:30:05):
and Pug Borb the Poulter. Guys. That's right, that's right.
If you want to know what's going on inside our
poke balls, you just head on over to patreon dot
com slash creep Street Podcast for all sorts of goodies.

Speaker 8 (01:30:19):
I always wonder what it's like in those poke balls.
Is it cramped or is it I mean, is it
kind of like a nice cozy, little tiny home.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
I would have to imagine, kind of like a like
a genie, like maybe it's like your body. You know,
it reasserts itself to where it would be like a
spacious at least like a studio apartment.

Speaker 8 (01:30:37):
At least, I mean, come on, it's inhumane.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
Otherwise absolutely absolutely inhumane. Well, folks, thank you so much
for following us on this digital journey into pop culture,
relatively modern pop culture. Next week, we got a very
fun when a very spooky, scary one from medieval Europe.
Cannot wait to share it. Hell, I'll just go ahead

(01:30:59):
and tell you Isabelle the she Wolf Queen. Come back
next week to find out what that's all about.

Speaker 8 (01:31:07):
Baby Yeah, and send us your listeners stories too. We
would love to hear some of those.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
Yes. Yes, reach out to us d m us on
any of our socials or email us at creep Street
Podcast at gmail dot com. Citizens of the Milky Way,
my name is Dylan.

Speaker 8 (01:31:23):
Hackworth and I engage Hurley.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
Good night and goodbye,

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Ep243 - Video Game Urban Legends: Pokemon's Lavender Town Syndrome

Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep243 - Video Game Urban Legends: Pokemon's Lavender Town Syndrome