Lavender Town Syndrome

When I was in elementary school Pokemon came over to America. Everyone had a game boy pocket, and a copy of the game. It was everything a kid could want. Cute, tough, creepy, crazy, or cool looking monsters we owned. It was a lighthearted adventure with hours of grinding to keep young kids occupied. It wasn’t until recently, and by pure chance, that I started to listen to the Lavender Town background music. Lavender Town was a very small town in the game, and the only town with a graveyard in it. I noticed comments on a different video that brought up how the music to Lavender Town was changed when it came over seas. This isn’t a huge deal, and it happens all the time in the gaming world.

The more I looked into it, the more rumors kept popping up about the original games being quietly recalled in Japan. They in the original music for Lavender Town had certain high pitched frequencies that full developed ears couldn’t detect, but you children between 6-14 could. A few weeks after launch, there were many cases of kids having extreme headaches, and about 200 suicides. The suicides were either hanging, or a fall from a building. The only connections were they were all kids in the age range, they played Pokemon, and they used headphones when playing. This was conducted by “officials”, but they never really say what qualifies them to make sound judgement. Over time stories popped up in America. Story 1 and story 2 are for your reading pleasure. Whether you believe in the rumors or not, these are still some creepy stories. On that note, I won’t pretend I understand how the brain works. I won’t pretend to know how certain stimulus can effect our brain. I know that those high frequencies that only kids can hear are a pain. In high school there were these sound emitters that created a noise something like a cricket. None of the teachers could hear, but it would piss off a lot of kids in class. Here is an article presenting the other side. I am ambivalent here. Part of me would love to hear that it was true, but another part say, “In all likely hood it is not”.

2 thoughts on “Lavender Town Syndrome

  1. I can, and always happy to, give an unsatisfying/vague response. We create rumors based off the current social context. Like the people who perpetuate them, these rumors are alive. Those that don’t evolve to hold relevance in the current, fade away into the realm of forgot.

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