Soapbox options allow our particular person writers and contributors to voice their opinions on sizzling subjects and random stuff they have been chewing over. Today, Ethan chateaus himself within the creepiest place within the Pokémon world…
Ah, Lavender Town — the place the place the journeys of outdated Pokémon finish and the nightmares of younger trainers are born. This gothic locale from the unique Game Boy titles has transcended its franchise into an iconic piece of popular culture in its personal proper, and it’s not laborious to see why. Between its downbeat aesthetic, its surprisingly ahead exploration of mortality, and its plethora of related web legends, Lavender Town completely deserves its repute as some of the memorably spooky locations in gaming.
Okay, we’ve acquired the niceties out of the best way. For all of that notoriety, Lavender Town is much from the scariest place Pokémon Trainers can go to — neither is it the place that tormented my desires as a toddler. For that, one should enterprise all the best way to the Eterna Forest in Sinnoh. There, deep within the woods, lies an deserted mansion often called the Old Chateau.
Featured in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Platinum, and their Switch remakes, the Old Chateau instantly distinguishes itself from Lavender Town in a single notable division. Unlike the Kantonian settlement, the Old Chateau is a very optionally available space that your common participant could be forgiven for lacking on a breezy playthrough. It lurks within the shadows off the crushed path of the Eterna Forest and requires the Cut HM, which means that it’s essential to deliberately backtrack and bump into it after your first time by the realm.
As a younger Pokémon participant with no prior information of the Gen 4 video games, restricted web entry, and a longing for journey, I used to be thrilled once I found the Old Chateau for the primary time. Of course, that intrigue shortly was abject horror once I realized simply what precisely I had discovered.
From its exterior, the Old Chateau appears to be like like an unassuming if moderately gloomy manor. However, upon entrance, the soundtrack wastes barely a millisecond in informing you that you’ve got made an enormous mistake in coming right here. The constructing’s theme is a warped, disjointed melody that invokes a robust feeling of unpleasantness, with wavering tones and unsettling moans sprinkled all through. It was this track that signaled one thing essential to my eight-year-old self: the place Lavender Town is somber, the Old Chateau is downright sinister.
Inside the dilapidated mansion, you’ll be able to discover various rooms unfold throughout two flooring. The Old Chateau’s format and aesthetic aren’t something too out of the extraordinary, however it solely takes somewhat little bit of exploring to grasp that one thing isn’t fairly proper. Observing a statue within the lobby, it feels prefer it’s obtrusive proper at you. In one of many bedrooms, you might be watched by a classical portray with glowing pink eyes that immediately disappear once you look straight at it. In one more room, an old school TV blares static with what the sport identifies as an “oddly malevolent feel.”
These little particulars are creepy sufficient on their very own, however the complete lack of interactable NPCs or fellow Trainers makes exploring fairly the daunting job. You are utterly alone as you plunge into the depths of this derelict locale — not less than, that’s what you may consider at first.
Perhaps probably the most notorious side of the Old Chateau is that Ghost-type Pokémon aren’t the one phantoms it homes. Exploring varied components of the home may end up in sightings of honest-to-goodness human specters. In one of many bedrooms, there’s an opportunity you’ll witness somewhat woman standing within the adjoining room, who wordlessly glides out into the hallway and out of sight. The same encounter can happen within the eating room, the place you may even see an outdated man hover towards the kitchen, just for him to vanish if adopted.
These supernatural episodes are transient and quiet, however they have been greater than sufficient to make me hot-foot it again outdoors once I first noticed them. Perhaps much more unnerving than these encounters is the truth that they occur utterly at random — there’s no method to definitively set off them, and a participant who’s none the wiser to their existence has a stable shot of by no means encountering them in any respect.
I used to be terrified by the Old Chateau as a child. That’s to be anticipated — it’s a spot expressly crafted to scare the pants off of unsuspecting gamers. But I believe the best way that this particular location caught in my thoughts has a lot to do with its thriller.
As spooky as it could be, I perceive Lavender Town. I perceive why the vengeful spirit of Marowak haunts Pokémon Tower. The Old Chateau affords no such explanations for its varied phenomena. The identities of phantoms who roam its halls are unknown. In reality, the Old Chateau is seldom talked about anyplace else within the recreation. It exists in a wierd little bubble, utterly faraway from every little thing else. That ambiguity serves as the right slate for the creativeness to run wild.
Left with few clues, gamers have tried to glean particulars in regards to the mansion and its ghostly inhabitants by skinny threads of environmental storytelling. One frequent idea is that the unknown little woman fell deathly sick, and the outdated man unsuccessfully tried to treatment her ailment — therefore the telltale Antidote that may be discovered within the kitchen’s waste bin. Then, there’s the matter of Rotom, a Pokémon dwelling within the mansion’s TV who seemingly bears ties to each the historical past of the Old Chateau and Team Galactic Commander Charon, as implied by a number of in-game paperwork and journals. These bits of hypothesis signify the tip of the iceberg, and fan dialogue offers the Old Chateau a fair darker edge.
As a lot as I like the Old Chateau and all of the creepy lore surrounding it, I need to admit that the scare issue of visiting the place has dulled a bit for me. I’m not the impressionable child I as soon as was, and I’m conversant in the manor’s format and methods.
Still, I couldn’t assist however get a number of goosebumps whereas accumulating footage for this text as I re-entered the mansion and heard that chilling OST for the umpteenth time. As I revisited rooms I assumed have been oh-so-familiar, my coronary heart dropped the identical manner it did years earlier than once I heard a sinister giggle earlier than coming into one of many bedrooms — a recent contact added within the Switch remakes.
Even a childhood and alter later, the Old Chateau nonetheless finds methods to get beneath the pores and skin.
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