The Lavender Town Syndrome (also known as "Lavender Town Tone" or "Lavender Town Suicides") was a peak in suicides and illness of children between the ages of 7-12 shortly after the release of Pokmon Red and Green in Japan, back in February 27, 1996.

Rumors say that these suicides and illness only occurred after the children playing the game reached Lavender Town, whose theme music had extremely high frequencies, that studies showed that only children and young teens can hear, since their ears are not fully developed.


Due to the Lavender Tone, at least two-hundred children supposedly committed suicide, and many more developed illnesses and afflictions. The children who committed suicide usually did so by hanging or jumping from heights. Those who did not acted irrationally complained of severe headaches after listening to Lavender Town's theme.


Although Lavender Town now sounds differently depending on the game, this mass hysteria was caused by the first Pokmon game released. After the Lavender Tone incident, the programmers had fixed Lavender Town's theme music to be at a lower frequency, and since children were no longer affected by it.


One video appeared in 2010 using special software" to analyze the audio of Lavender Town's music. When played, the software created images of the Unown near the end of the audio. This raised a controversy, since the Unown didn't appear until the Generation 2 games: Silver, Gold, and Crystal. The Unown translate to "LEAVE NOW".&nbsp There is also the said Beta Version of Lavender Town.


It is said that the Beta Version of Pocket Monsters was released to some kids to test the games.

About
Lavender Town Syndrome, also known as The Lavender Town Conspiracy, The Lavender Town Tone, or The Lavender Town Suicides, is a series of creepypasta stories and videos that detail a conspiracy to cover up mass child suicides. These suicides were allegedly caused by listening to the first version of the Lavender Town Theme in the Japanese version of the Pokemon Red and Green games.
Origin
Introduced in Pokemon Red and Green, Lavender Town is the designated graveyard for deceased monsters and is known for its ghost sightings. The first edition of these games was released in Japan in February 1996. By the time the games were released in the United States two years later, the original music for Lavender Town, composed by Junichi Masuda had been changed. Since the ambience of the town was that of a graveyard, the music was relatively creepy, with players on gaming message boards Serebii and NintendoWorlds.net discussing this in 2008 and 2009. A remix of the song appeared in early 2010, attempting to intensify its spookiness.



The first version of the creepypasta story was uploaded to Past(e)bin on February 21st, 2010. It stated that after the first few days after the release of Pokemon Red and Green in Japan, there were over 100 suicides among children ages 10-15. During the investigation, the detective concluded that the music that played in Lavender Town, thanks to a secret code included in 104 of the original cartridges, was driving children to kill themselves.


Spread
This version was mentioned on 4chans /x/ (paranormal) board as early as March 3rd, 2010, with a shorter, modified version posted to /x/ a week later. Several other versions of the original pasta were uploaded to ImageShack, personal blogs, pop culture blog Rickey, and Pastebin between April and July 2010. The other versions range from scientific studies pulled from a textbook to an interview with the art director of the games who claimed Satoshi Tajiri asked designers to only include the song in the Red version.
Through 2010, the copypasta was discussed on Pokemopolis, multiple video game forums including the MarioKart Wii Forums, iOGaming Community and Gamespot, music forum AbsolutePunk and was defined on Urban Dictionary. In 2011, a version of the story was added to the Creepypasta Index. The story continues to be inquired about on Yahoo! Answers, with over 20 questions about it asked since April 2010, and on Tumblr.