One thing I’ve learned in my 30-plus years as a Pokémon fan: The games can be scary, man! It’s abundantly clear that the developers relish throwing strange people, places, and moments into the games to catch the player off guard. Some moments are slightly off-putting. Others are genuinely unsettling. Some veer as close to nightmare fuel as you can get in an E-rated game series. Here are a few of the spookiest Pokémon moments of all time.
The old chateau (Pokémon Diamond and Pearl)
This anything-but-quaint forest dwelling doesn’t offer any singular overtly creepy moment in particular, but rather a collection of smaller ones. Glowing eyes in paintings that stop glowing as you approach them. A little girl in an adjoining room who, on entering the room yourself, mysteriously vanishes. An old man in the dining hall floating offscreen with no explanation or means of interacting with him. Personally, I didn’t even notice most of these elements during my first playthrough of Diamond and Pearl back in the day, which makes their blink-and-you-miss-it inclusion even more unsettling.
The scary house (Pokémon X and Y)
For a game series that tantalizes you to explore every house you stumble across, it sure knows how to make you regret doing just that. Case in point: the Scary House in Pokémon X and Y. As soon as you enter, the music grinds to a sudden halt, as if you’ve stepped into another world. The home’s sole inhabitant: a pale older man standing in the dimly lit room. Eerie music sets in, and the camera warps at unnatural angles as he recounts how he stumbled upon the home years ago and encountered a horde of faceless men. And woe to you if you don’t tip him handsomely for telling you the scary story. According to him, something scary may happen if you don’t…
The strange house (Pokémon Black and White 2)
This place absolutely lives up to its name. The furniture constantly rearranges itself every time you enter. But what takes this house from strange to spooky territory is the creepy little girl who intermittently appears, stating that she’s trapped in everlasting darkness away from her family and Pokémon. While it’s not stated outright, surrounding game lore implies the ghostly girl was killed by Darkrai after being ensnared in an unending nightmare. Yikes!
Seven mysteries of the trainer school (Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon)
Every Pokémon game has a trainers school, but this one carries an extra creepy component. Visit at night, and you can meet a young girl — accompanied by her appropriately unsettling Driftloon — who mentions seven mysteries surrounding the school she wants you to investigate. None of them turn out to be anything substantial, merely misunderstandings by the teachers and students. But upon completing them and returning outside to the girl, she’s nowhere to be seen. According to a diary entry found in the school afterward, a girl at the school was taken away by a Driftloon and never seen again. If you’re up on your Driftloon lore, you’ll understand why this moment makes fans’ blood run cold.
The Lumiose City ghost girl (Pokémon X and Y)
This is arguably the granddaddy of spooky Pokémon moments. After entering a seemingly innocuous office building, you proceed to the second floor. Suddenly, the music stops. The screen fades to black and back. A mysterious girl now stands behind you. Instead of walking, she simply floats in place, her sprite locked in a static frame. She utters the cryptic words “No. You’re not the one” before floating off-screen. She’s never seen or referenced again. Even the recent Pokémon Legends: ZA, which takes place several years after XY, makes it clear that citygoers still have no idea who — or what — she is… or who she’s after.
