When I was a young boy, my parents told me there were no such thing as ghosts. Growing up I really believed that. That’s pretty crazy, right? Now we know ghosts are quite real and many famous trainers specialize in training the ghost-type Pokémon. It was Professor Oak and Elite Agatha who first speculated the existence of the ghost-type and it was because of their theories and the strange happenings going on at Pokémon Tower that they sent me, and Blue before me, to investigate and uncover the truth. I don’t know what Blue endured within the tower before I got to Lavender Town, but I know he realized the prototype Silph Scope was absolutely necessary to see just what was really going on inside. I didn’t know what I’d find inside, but I was confident that it wasn’t going to be ghosts. They weren’t real.
Professor Oak had sent me some urgent messages that I picked up at the Pokémon Center in Lavender. They sounded quite desperate. Apparently some of the other field research teams that he had dispatched to the tower had met with disaster. They had all abandoned the project. The rumors around town that whatever was going on inside the tower had involved Team Rocket somehow which I’m sure prompted Blue to take action in Celadon. It also explained why the Silph Scope was found among their stolen experimental devices in their headquarters.
“The tower is closed to the public until further notice,” the attendant at the front counter told me as I entered the site. “Mr. Fuji is quite adamant that no one else be allowed to enter until a thorough investigation has been conducted.”
“I was sent by Professor Oak,” I stammered, hoping it would give me enough credibility to proceed.
“So were most of the others,” she replied. “They didn’t last very long inside. Neither did those Team Rocket members who forced their way in soon after. The tower is too dangerous right now.”
“How so?” I asked. I knew the tower was used as a memorial for Pokémon that had passed on, but all the chatter around town of ghosts lurking in the darkness just seemed ridiculous to me. Ghosts weren’t real.
“There was a team from Saffron City that went in about a week ago. Not a single one of them has come back. I personally won’t even set foot on the first step up those stairs,” she said motioning to the large winding stairway that worked its way up the floors of the tower. “Just forget about it and go home. I’m sorry if you lost a Pokémon dear to you, but it’s just not safe up there.”
She wasn’t going to budge on the issue, but as far as I knew the tower was an open building day and night. There was no front gate, no locked doors, nothing to bar entry once this attendant had gone home for the night. Professor Oak’s researchers had failed. Team Rocket had fled. Blue certainly wasn’t inclined to come back after whatever happened to him. Not to mention a team of investigators from Saffron City had disappeared inside not too long ago. I needed to know what was going on inside and I was the only one with a Silph Scope that Blue assured me was necessary. So I waited patiently discreetly down the street from the path winding up to the Pokémon Tower and waited for night to fall.
As I had surmised, the tower was completely unguarded at night. The troubling rumors and the fact that it was a Pokémon graveyard probably kept most of the townsfolk far from the tower at night. I was the only one dumb enough to set foot inside after dark, and as soon as I stepped off the stairs my heart was racing. Even though it was early May and summer was just around the corner, the air was chilled. Even so, I was sweating up a storm as I crossed the first floor towards the next set of stairs leading up to the third floor.
The tower was dimly lit. Small candles burned on the memorials that were left for lost Pokémon, but there was no other light source. There were windows along the edges of the tower, but for some reason the moonlight was not making its way inside. As I passed by the memorials, I wondered, who had lit these candles if no one was allowed up here? I convinced myself that it must have been the team from Saffron City that were still lingering in the tower for whatever reason. I tried not to ask myself how they had survived for a week without access to food or water. Certainly they must have brought enough supplies. Right?
As my nerves began to falter, I popped the Silph Scope down over my eyes and glanced around. I was hoping they’d allow me to see better in the darkness, but sadly they did not. Everything looked normal through the lenses of the Silph Scope. Still, I wouldn’t take them off now that they were on. They brought me some small amount of comfort and that was enough to get me to take those steps up to the next floor. It made me feel safe at first, but that began to dwindle with every passing moment spent in the tower.
Every passing step up across the floors of the tower and I felt a huge weight on my stomach pressing down and making me feel ill. I began to grow more and more terrified, jumping at every shadow flickering in the candle light. Eventually I felt like I was moving at a snail’s pace as I made my way up the flights of stairs and across each new floor. It was deathly silent in here. Aside from the lit candles, that I hoped were being maintained by the Saffron crew, there was no sign or sound of anyone else inside. I felt tremendously alone.
It wasn’t until the third floor that I realized I wasn’t alone. I tossed out Dustin’s Poké Ball and he was instantly on alert. I don’t know what spooked him, but it didn’t reassure me much. Still, I was glad to have the company as Dustin pressed forward one step ahead of me. Thanks to knowing the useless Pokémon move “Flash” Dustin’s eyes managed to illuminate the darkness just a bit better than the candles, but a gloom still clung to the place.
I was certain we were being watched and Dustin seemed to agree. His eyes darted from corner to corner, lighting them up like a flashlight. As we progressed he would often stop and jerk his head around to peer into the corners behind us, as certain as I felt that there was something there. Neither his psychic prowess or my Silph Scope revealed anything, though. Whatever was lurking out there was quick to elude us and by the fifth floor, I think Dustin was making me more nervous than comforted with his erratic scanning of every dank nook and cranny of the tower.
Stepping off the stairs to the sixth floor, I could hear faint laughter or perhaps weeping coming from the final floor above us. It froze Dustin and I in our tracks. I saw him tilt his head as he reached out to probe with his mind. I envied him a little, but he didn’t seem reassured much by whatever his psychic scan revealed. The noises from above confirmed that we were not alone and that disturbed both of us. The hairs on my neck were standing on end and my entire skin was covered in goosebumps by this point. I could see my breath in front of my face in the dim candle light, even though it really shouldn’t have been that cold. Every instinct in my body told me to run back down the tower and out into the safety of the moonlit night, but I’d come too far. I’d faced down Team Rocket just two days ago and I wasn’t about to let some laughing or weeping creature scare me away from this tower.
I almost wish it had, though. What awaited above in the darkness haunts me still. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. As Dustin and I crossed the threshold of the seventh and final floor of the tower, we found ourselves surrounded by bodies - human bodies. They were strewn about the room like rag dolls that had been tossed aside, draped up against the walls and memorials, unmoving in the flickering candle light. The laughter, and I was confident it was laughter now, seemed to be coming from all around us. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from one of the bodies on strewn across the floor or not. It wasn’t until I looked at Dustin, who was staring intently up at the ceiling, that my stomach dropped and I slowly followed his gaze upward.
“Have you come to play?” A young woman was clutching the ceiling like some kind of spider or lizard, crouched on all fours, but staring down at us from across the room. Her face and neck were contorted in ways that didn’t look natural or comfortable and her mouth was in a wide, sneering grin. “My other dolls are broken now, and this one will soon be useless, too.” The voice was seething, but held a hint of laughter.
The girl dropped from the ceiling like a rock, but managed to contort herself in midair like a cat to land soundly on her bare feet and the palms of her hands. I could see she was wearing what remained of a very tattered dress, or perhaps tattered red hakama of a shrine maiden. Her wiry black hair fell around her face like a frame, but her grin did not change from the mocking crescent moon she held when we first saw her on the ceiling. “Answer me!” She insisted.
“I’m not here to play,” I shouted back. I don’t know where the words came from because I was trembling with intense fear.
“You never had a choice!” she screamed and rushed forward at insane speed. Fortunately Dustin raised his right hand, a pendulum forever swinging in his left and the girl was thrown backwards across the room, slamming harshly into the wall. It was then that I saw it through the Silph Scope. It wasn’t the girl that Dustin had attacked, but something inside her. A dark purple mass was attached to the girl and I could see the grin fade from her mouth as it began to coalesce behind her.
“Help me,” she gasped in a strained, but normal sounding human voice.
“Dustin! Hit it again!” Dustin took a step forward with his palm extended and I could feel a shock wave of his Confusion psychic attack blast whatever creature had hold of this young woman. This time she was freed entirely and her body fell to the floor in a heap. What remained was a round, dark purple Pokémon with large eyes with red sclera surrounding little black pupils. It held that same sickly wide grin that was splashed horrifically across the girls face. I was looking at a ghost - a ghost Pokémon which until recently had only been theorized.
It looked at me and Dustin with some disbelief behind its twisted grin. It apparently didn’t expect to be pushed out like that. Dustin protectively stood between me and the creature. Before my eyes, two more creatures materialized out of apparently thin air. One of them a gaseous purple and black ball with eyes and a mouth, the other a floating purple apparition with two detached purple hands floating in front of it. I was all but locked up in terror at this point, but Dustin and I both knew that I was in danger.
Dustin sized up the opponents squarely. His gaze passed from one to the other. Finally I urged him to action. He hypnotized the gaseous orb which the Pokédex would come to identify as Gastly and it slowly drifted down to the floor in sleep. I quickly tossed out a Poké Ball to capture it if I could and get it off the battlefield. I didn’t have time to see if it was successful as the apparition with disembodied hands lunged forward with a gigantic tongue rolling out of its gaping maw. It looked as though it were going to lick Dustin, but he was having none of it. Confusion absolutely decimated the apparition later identified as Haunter. It left only the original creature, the leader of this mischievous trio, staring coldly at us across the room.
Dustin and the Gengar appeared to be having some kind of intense staring contest and for a moment I wondered if they were engaged in some kind of psychic battle. It was unfortunately too late that I realized this ghost Pokémon was using one of my beloved techniques against us! Dustin was sound asleep and this creature was somehow feasting on his dreams and gaining strength. How could I have been so stupid? I fumbled for Dustin’s ball to withdraw him and protect him, but before I could, a faint sound came trickling in from somewhere. It was the soft sound of a flute.
I didn’t have time to be puzzled by this because Dustin was instantly awake and taking action. He leaned forward to send a final blast of Confusion at the Gengar which squealed in pain and then suddenly vanished into the night. The candles flared up dramatically, enveloping the whole room in bright light before returning to a normal, healthy glow. The gloom that had been hanging around this place had been lifted. I saw the faint blinking light of my Poké Ball and knew I had captured that one gaseous orb. I took a deep breath and felt like a huge weight had been lifted. I’d forgotten completely about the faint flute music.
“Are you all right?” I asked rushing over to the young woman who had been tossed backwards by Dustin’s psychic attack.
“I am now,” she said in an exhausted tone. “Thank you.”
I didn’t really know what to say. Dustin had done most of the work. I had been practically frozen in fear. I helped the woman to her feet. She looked around at the other bodies. She frowned.
“They are alive,” she said. I wasn’t sure how she knew what I was asking in my head. “I can sense them breathing, dreaming. They are just weak. That Pokémon was playing with us like toys and draining our energy. We might not have made it much longer if you hadn’t shown up.” Her voice was raspy and quiet.
“Stay here with your friends,” I said. “I’ll go get help.”
“No need!” came a loud voice from the stairway. Dustin, the girl and I all snapped our heads in his direction, surprised by the announcement. Standing at the stairs, we saw an old, bald man in a kimono beside an old woman in a purple and white dress leaning heavily on a cane. The man looked genuinely ecstatic while the woman had a dark grin spread across her face. “We saw you come in armed with that scope there and knew we had to follow. I’d been waiting for Agatha here for days to help me investigate the tower and it appears her predictions were correct. There were ghost-type Pokémon in here!”
“May I?” she asked, pointing at the Poké Ball that now held Spectre the Gastly. I handed it to her. I’d like to reiterate, I had no idea who I was talking to at the time. As a newcomer to Kanto, I didn’t realize I was in the presence of two well known authorities on Pokémon in the region, one of them a member of the Elite Four. All I knew was I was exhausted from this ordeal and they were here to help. It had been a long night. In my exhaustion, I never even noticed the flute clutched in the old man’s hands.
Current Team:
Attacks in Blue are recently learned.
Current Team:
Bill's Storage: Kiwi (Pidgeotto), Vesper (Zubat), Spectre (Gastly)
Old Man Daycare: Charlie (Pidgey)
