Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Ethan chateaus himself in the creepiest place in the Pokémon world...
Ah, Lavender Town — the place where the journeys of old Pokémon end and the nightmares of young trainers are born. This gothic locale from the original Game Boy titles has transcended its franchise into an iconic piece of pop culture in its own right, and it’s not hard to see why. Between its downbeat aesthetic, its surprisingly forward exploration of mortality, and its plethora of associated internet legends, Lavender Town absolutely deserves its reputation as one of the most memorably spooky places in gaming.
Okay, we’ve got the niceties out of the way. For all of that notoriety, Lavender Town is far from the scariest place Pokémon Trainers can visit — nor is it the place that tormented my dreams as a child. For that, one must venture all the way to the Eterna Forest in Sinnoh. There, deep in the woods, lies an abandoned mansion known as the Old Chateau.
Featured in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Platinum, and their Switch remakes, the Old Chateau immediately distinguishes itself from Lavender Town in one notable department. Unlike the Kantonian settlement, the Old Chateau is a completely optional area that your average player would be forgiven for missing on a breezy playthrough. It lurks in the shadows off the beaten path of the Eterna Forest and requires the Cut HM, meaning that you must intentionally backtrack and stumble upon it after your first time through the area.
As a young Pokémon player with no prior knowledge of the Gen 4 games, limited internet access, and a craving for adventure, I was thrilled when I discovered the Old Chateau for the first time. Of course, that intrigue quickly turned into abject horror when I realized just what exactly I had found.
From its exterior, the Old Chateau looks like an unassuming if rather gloomy manor. However, upon entrance, the soundtrack wastes barely a millisecond in informing you that you have made a massive mistake in coming here. The building’s theme is a warped, disjointed melody that invokes a strong feeling of unpleasantness, with wavering tones and unsettling moans sprinkled throughout. It was this song that signaled something important to my eight-year-old self: where Lavender Town is somber, the Old Chateau is downright sinister.
Inside the dilapidated mansion, you can explore a number of rooms spread across two floors. The Old Chateau’s layout and aesthetic aren’t anything too out of the ordinary, but it only takes a little bit of exploring to understand that something isn’t quite right. Observing a statue in the foyer, it feels like it’s glaring right at you. In one of the bedrooms, you are watched by a classical painting with glowing red eyes that suddenly disappear when you look directly at it. In yet another room, an old-fashioned TV blares static with what the game identifies as an “oddly malevolent feel.”
These little details are creepy enough on their own, but the total lack of interactable NPCs or fellow Trainers makes exploring quite the daunting task. You are completely alone as you plunge into the depths of this derelict locale — at least, that’s what you might believe at first.
Perhaps the most infamous aspect of the Old Chateau is that Ghost-type Pokémon aren’t the only phantoms it houses. Exploring various parts of the house can result in sightings of honest-to-goodness human specters. In one of the bedrooms, there’s a chance you will witness a little girl standing in the adjacent room, who wordlessly glides out into the hallway and out of sight. A similar encounter can occur in the dining room, where you may see an old man hover toward the kitchen, only for him to disappear if followed.
These supernatural episodes are brief and quiet, but they were more than enough to make me hot-foot it back outside when I first saw them. Perhaps even more unnerving than these encounters is the fact that they happen completely at random — there’s no way to definitively trigger them, and a player who is none the wiser to their existence has a solid shot of never encountering them at all.
I was terrified by the Old Chateau as a kid. That’s to be expected — it’s a place expressly crafted to scare the pants off of unsuspecting players. But I think the way that this specific location stuck in my mind has much to do with its mystery.
As spooky as it may be, I understand Lavender Town. I understand why the vengeful spirit of Marowak haunts Pokémon Tower. The Old Chateau offers no such explanations for its various phenomena. The identities of phantoms who roam its halls are unknown. In fact, the Old Chateau is seldom mentioned anywhere else in the game. It exists in a strange little bubble, completely removed from everything else. That ambiguity serves as the perfect slate for the imagination to run wild.
Left with few clues, players have attempted to glean details about the mansion and its ghostly inhabitants through thin threads of environmental storytelling. One common theory is that the unknown little girl fell deathly ill, and the old man unsuccessfully attempted to cure her ailment — hence the telltale Antidote that can be found in the kitchen’s waste bin. Then, there’s the matter of Rotom, a Pokémon living in the mansion’s TV who seemingly bears ties to both the history of the Old Chateau and Team Galactic Commander Charon, as implied by several in-game documents and journals. These bits of speculation represent the tip of the iceberg, and fan discussion gives the Old Chateau an even darker edge.
As much as I love the Old Chateau and all the creepy lore surrounding it, I must admit that the scare factor of visiting the place has dulled a bit for me. I’m not the impressionable kid I once was, and I’m familiar with the manor’s layout and tricks.
Still, I couldn’t help but get a few goosebumps while collecting footage for this article as I re-entered the mansion and heard that chilling OST for the umpteenth time. As I revisited rooms I thought were oh-so-familiar, my heart dropped the same way it did years before when I heard a sinister laugh before entering one of the bedrooms — a fresh touch added in the Switch remakes.
Even a childhood and change later, the Old Chateau still finds ways to get under the skin.