Soapbox options allow our particular person writers and contributors to voice their opinions on scorching matters and random stuff they have been chewing over. Right this moment, Ethan chateaus himself within the creepiest place within the Pokémon world…
Ah, Lavender City — the place the place the journeys of previous Pokémon finish and the nightmares of younger trainers are born. This gothic locale from the unique Recreation Boy titles has transcended its franchise into an iconic piece of popular culture in its personal proper, and it’s not arduous to see why. Between its downbeat aesthetic, its surprisingly ahead exploration of mortality, and its plethora of related web legends, Lavender City completely deserves its status as one of the memorably spooky locations in gaming.
Okay, we’ve bought the niceties out of the best way. For all of that notoriety, Lavender City 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 generally known as the Previous Chateau.
Featured in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Platinum, and their Change remakes, the Previous Chateau instantly distinguishes itself from Lavender City in a single notable division. Not like the Kantonian settlement, the Previous Chateau is a totally elective space that your common participant could be forgiven for lacking on a breezy playthrough. It lurks within the shadows off the overwhelmed path of the Eterna Forest and requires the Lower HM, which means that you have to deliberately backtrack and bump into it after your first time by means of the world.
As a younger Pokémon participant with no prior data of the Gen 4 video games, restricted web entry, and a longing for journey, I used to be thrilled once I found the Previous Chateau for the primary time. After all, that intrigue rapidly changed into abject horror once I realized simply what precisely I had discovered.
From its exterior, the Previous Chateau seems to be like an unassuming if somewhat gloomy manor. Nonetheless, upon entrance, the soundtrack wastes barely a millisecond in informing you that you’ve made an enormous mistake in coming right here. The constructing’s theme is a warped, disjointed melody that invokes a powerful feeling of unpleasantness, with wavering tones and unsettling moans sprinkled all through. It was this tune that signaled one thing necessary to my eight-year-old self: the place Lavender City is somber, the Previous Chateau is downright sinister.
Contained in the dilapidated mansion, you possibly can discover a lot of rooms unfold throughout two flooring. The Previous Chateau’s format and aesthetic aren’t something too out of the odd, but it surely solely takes a little bit little bit of exploring to grasp that one thing isn’t fairly proper. Observing a statue within the lobby, it feels prefer it’s evident proper at you. In one of many bedrooms, you might be watched by a classical portray with glowing pink eyes that immediately disappear if you look immediately at it. In one more room, an old school TV blares static with what the sport identifies as an “oddly malevolent really 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 activity. You might be fully alone as you plunge into the depths of this derelict locale — no less than, that’s what you may consider at first.
Maybe probably the most notorious facet of the Previous Chateau is that Ghost-type Pokémon aren’t the one phantoms it homes. Exploring numerous elements 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 a little bit woman standing within the adjoining room, who wordlessly glides out into the hallway and out of sight. An identical encounter can happen within the eating room, the place you might even see an previous man hover towards the kitchen, just for him to vanish if adopted.
These supernatural episodes are temporary and quiet, however they have been greater than sufficient to make me hot-foot it again exterior once I first noticed them. Maybe much more unnerving than these encounters is the truth that they occur fully at random — there’s no option 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 Previous Chateau as a child. That’s to be anticipated — it’s a spot expressly crafted to scare the pants off of unsuspecting gamers. However 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 might be, I perceive Lavender City. I perceive why the vengeful spirit of Marowak haunts Pokémon Tower. The Previous Chateau gives no such explanations for its numerous phenomena. The identities of phantoms who roam its halls are unknown. In actual fact, the Previous Chateau is seldom talked about anyplace else within the sport. It exists in an odd little bubble, fully faraway from all the pieces else. That ambiguity serves as the proper 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 means of skinny threads of environmental storytelling. One frequent concept is that the unknown little woman fell deathly in poor health, and the previous man unsuccessfully tried to remedy 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 residing within the mansion’s TV who seemingly bears ties to each the historical past of the Previous Chateau and Workforce Galactic Commander Charon, as implied by a number of in-game paperwork and journals. These bits of hypothesis characterize the tip of the iceberg, and fan dialogue offers the Previous Chateau a fair darker edge.
As a lot as I like the Previous Chateau and all of the creepy lore surrounding it, I have 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 accustomed to the manor’s format and methods.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t assist however get just a few goosebumps whereas gathering footage for this text as I re-entered the mansion and heard that chilling OST for the umpteenth time. As I revisited rooms I believed have been oh-so-familiar, my coronary heart dropped the identical means it did years earlier than once I heard a sinister chortle earlier than getting into one of many bedrooms — a recent contact added within the Change remakes.
Even a childhood and alter later, the Previous Chateau nonetheless finds methods to get underneath the pores and skin.