10 Creepy Myths Surrounding Popular Songs

Frequenters of our gaming section might already be familiar with this particular tale, but it often jumps back into the public’s collective consciousness around Halloween, or upon the release of a new Pokémon game.

The story goes that there was a surge in child suicides in Japan, right around the time Pokémon Red and Green was released. People claimed that code had been hidden within the game, specifically within the song that played during the Lavender Town portion of Pokémon Red and Green, which subliminally told children to kill themselves.

All manner of grisly suicide methods were described and attributed to the event by online commenters, and the story eventually gained traction as one of the most popular urban legends within the games industry.

Were it true, the story of the ‘Lavender Town Suicides’ would be downright harrowing. Thankfully for the children of Japan (and the legions of Pokémon fans worldwide), the story was fabricated as a particularly inventive creepypasta.

The reason it was so effective, and ultimately spread like wildfire, was because it played on older generations’ fears of video games hurting the minds of children, and children’s fears surrounding Lavender Town itself, a place where dead Pokémon go to be buried within the series’ fiction.