Soapbox options allow our particular person writers and contributors to voice their opinions on scorching subjects and random stuff they have been chewing over. Right now, Ethan chateaus himself within the creepiest place within the Pokémon world…
Ah, Lavender City — the place the place the journeys of outdated Pokémon finish and the nightmares of younger trainers are born. This gothic locale from the unique Sport 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 popularity as one of the vital memorably spooky locations in gaming.
Okay, we’ve bought the niceties out of the way in which. 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 goals as a baby. For that, one should enterprise all the way in which 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 Swap remakes, the Previous Chateau instantly distinguishes itself from Lavender City in a single notable division. In contrast to the Kantonian settlement, the Previous Chateau is a very non-compulsory 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 need to deliberately backtrack and bump into it after your first time via 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 after I found the Previous Chateau for the primary time. After all, that intrigue shortly become abject horror after I realized simply what precisely I had discovered.
From its exterior, the Previous Chateau seems like an unassuming if quite gloomy manor. Nonetheless, 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 powerful feeling of unpleasantness, with wavering tones and unsettling moans sprinkled all through. It was this tune that signaled one thing vital to my eight-year-old self: the place Lavender City is somber, the Previous Chateau is downright sinister.
Contained in the dilapidated mansion, you’ll be able to discover quite a lot of rooms unfold throughout two flooring. The Previous Chateau’s format and aesthetic aren’t something too out of the atypical, however it 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 obvious 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 instantly at it. In one more room, an old style 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 whole lack of interactable NPCs or fellow Trainers makes exploring fairly the daunting job. You might be fully alone as you plunge into the depths of this derelict locale — at the very least, that’s what you would possibly imagine 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 varied elements of the home can lead to 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 analogous encounter can happen within the eating room, the place you might even see an outdated 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 outdoors after I first noticed them. Maybe much more unnerving than these encounters is the truth that they occur fully at random — there’s no solution 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 feel the way in which 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 City. I perceive why the vengeful spirit of Marowak haunts Pokémon Tower. The Previous Chateau presents no such explanations for its varied phenomena. The identities of phantoms who roam its halls are unknown. In actual fact, the Previous Chateau is seldom talked about wherever else within the recreation. It exists in an odd little bubble, fully faraway from the whole lot 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 via skinny threads of environmental storytelling. One frequent concept is that the unknown little woman fell deathly in poor health, 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 Previous Chateau and Workforce Galactic Commander Charon, as implied by a number of in-game paperwork and journals. These bits of hypothesis symbolize the tip of the iceberg, and fan dialogue offers the Previous Chateau a good darker edge.
As a lot as I really 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 conversant in the manor’s format and methods.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t assist however get a couple of 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 after I heard a sinister giggle earlier than coming into one of many bedrooms — a recent contact added within the Swap remakes.
Even a childhood and alter later, the Previous Chateau nonetheless finds methods to get beneath the pores and skin.
See Additionally
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