Shiny pink Drowzee is the only shiny Pokemon I ever deleted from my Pokemon Go’s storage. It all started when I refused to get into this car with a middle aged acquaintance I used to raid battle with. I will refer to him as ‘Mister Familyman’.
It was 2017. Pokemon Go was not like how it is now. There was no ‘remote raid pass’, no ‘battling’, not even ‘trading’. Pokemon Go was pretty similar to how it was first released, with the addition of daily research tasks and raid bosses.
At the time, I was attending an international private school in Thailand. There were over 20 Pokestops and 10 Gyms inside the school (I think this was because people were playing Ingress before). I am an introvert and prefer playing the game by myself, but I had to join a local group chat of other players if I were to have any chance against the raid bosses.
Inside this group chat, there were students and teachers, yes, but more than half of the members were people from the outside. Their ages ranged from 30-60 years old. They were local business owners, taxi drivers, workers from a nearby airport and country club. Mister Familyman, the man at the center of this story, was a dispatch for a shuttle service of a nearby hotel.
At the time, what everybody wanted was Mewtwo. Mewtwo was an Ex-Raid boss, meaning we know exactly when and where he will show up. A Pokemon that is more valuable than Mewtwo however, was a Pokemon that is Mewtwo’s weakness. That pokemon was Tyranitar. And Tyranitar was rare. Its base form, Lavitar, was so rare, I only saw it twice before community day. The only way to get your hand on Tyranitar was when it showed up as a 3 star raid boss. When Tyranitar appeared, the chat lit up, all the members went insane.
One time, a Tyranitar raid appeared in an area outside of the school with no sidewalk, like, it was just a gate in the middle of a field. It was also night time. Pokemon Go did not have raid battles at night, but I think that was the last raid of the day. So Mister Familyman said that he will pick me and my friends up at the dorm with his truck so we can raid Tyranitar together. However, my friends bailed out at the last minute. When I found out it was only going to be me, getting into Mister Familyman’s truck, I had a second thought.
I didn’t know what came over me. I am a guy, but small stature and some might call soft. And I’m sure Mister Familyman was not going to do anything to me. But when his truck rolled up, it hit me. This man was a complete stranger. He did not work for the school. It was night time. I was about to enter his truck alone to go off into a very secluded area in the middle of a field. It will just be him and me. Maybe I was paranoid, but it did not feel right.
So I told him I was not going with him. Then, he did something that I thought was pretty weird. He took out his smartphone, and it showed an animated gif of a pink (shiny) Drowzee. Shiny Drowzee was not released on Pokemon Go yet at the time, but he just showed the gif he had probably downloaded from the internet. He said Drowzee wanted me to get into the car with him.
I was speechless. I was so creeped out my heart sank. I politely bowed and backed away. Then, Mister Familyman snapped. He talked about how people don’t take the game seriously, and that I wasted his time before sped off. I didn’t know what just happened. I was shook.
There were over 300 people in our group, and Mister Familyman liked to think of himself as the leader, even though there were 2 other people who acted more like a leader. Mister Familyman was just the loudest. He always makes loud jokes and announcements while we wait for the raid to start. They were obnoxious but nothing offensive. After the canceled Tyranitar raid, Mister Familyman still talk to me normally, but I could feel that he was not happy with me and just put up a front. We all needed each other to raid the bosses.
I also feel that he was jealous of the other pack leaders of the group. Another man, let’s call him Husbandman, had his wife bring roasted chickens and curry to give to us when Pokemon Go had an event called Community Day. I think Mister Familyman was jealous of this, he started bringing his own wife and children to the raid more and more. They usually just stayed in the car, though. He started to tell the story of his family more and more while we were waiting for the raid to start. It was like he was running a political campaign.
Things came to a head when Mister Familyman detailed in the group that one of his family members was sick, and that he will not be playing a lot of Pokemon Go due to this. With that knowledge, the other ‘leaders’ of the group did not type into the group chat when a Tyranitar raid showed up near the school. We told each other about the raid outside of the main group chat and just went to get it together. Well, when Mister Familyman found out he missed a Tyranitar raid, he was beyond furious. I was not there for the blow out, but the people who witnessed it thought it was a bad scene. He ranted in the group chat, which I missed (he unsent all the messages later).
A few nights later, Mister Familyman contacted me privately. He said that there was a Pokemon I always wanted, Lapras, that spawned outside of the hotel where he worked. It appeared every night at around 11 pm. But he said because I was a scaredy cat and wouldn’t get into his car alone, I will never get this Pokemon. I sent a laughing emoji, thinking this was a joke. He sent a gif of a shiny Drowzee again. ‘Come out. Come out.’ I was disturbed by this. I sent a laugh emoji but I was not laughing. Then, I suddenly realized, I was standing outside my dorm. It was 11 PM, why was I outside? As I was chatting with him my leg moved on its own. That freaked me out, but before I blame this on something supernatural, I do this a lot. My body just moved on its own when I was on the phone or chatting with someone. But that was the only time I walked that far. I didn’t even remember getting into the elevator.
Then, Mister Familyman missed a Mewtwo raid. This never happened before. Someone who worked at the same hotel as Mister Familyman said that he had a big argument with his wife, regarding the health crisis their family faced. It got so bad that they might divorce. Mister Familyman showed up once in a while after that. He usually stayed in his car and did not join the others like before, because he said that his GPS messed him up and he needed to be in the car to join the raid. He only walked out of his car to show that he got a shiny Kyogre one time. He was beaming and just wanted to show it to everybody. Then one day, he just didn’t show up anymore.
The hotel where he worked survived on tourists that came from the airport, but when a big hotel right next to the airport finished its construction, the customer decreased almost 80%. After a few months, the hotel was closed down for good. I haven’t seen Mister Familyman for a long time. That was until Shiny Drowzee was released on Pokemon Go in October 2018.
It was around 1 AM, and I noticed that the gym next to my dorm was under attack. I found it amusing and wanted to see who would take over my gym. That person put up a shiny Drowzee to guard the gym. The trainer’s screen name was MisterFamilymanisDead.
I was so disturbed by this I almost dropped my phone. I capped the screen, but I didn’t want to send it into a group chat because Mister Familyman was still in it. I contacted the other group members but there was no response, it was already 1 AM (the middle aged people sleep early… or because they have jobs). After being apprehensive for a while, I decided to just send the screencap to the group. I even @ Mister Familyman himself and asked, was this you? There was no response from anyone, even the next day.
MisterFamilymanisDead kept destroying the gym and replaced my Pokemon with a shiny Drowzee. One night, I felt like I had it, and just battled his shiny Drowzee to retake my gym. It felt kind of good to send my Pokemon to beat it up, not going to lie. Then, the OG Mister Familyman sent me a private chat message. It showed Lapras spawning where his hotel used to be. That night, it was a full moon, which always excited me for some weird reason, and I felt adventurous (or you may say, stupid). I asked my friend who has a car to go with me to that area and let’s get that Lapras. My friend was as dumb as me and he agreed.
I responded to Mister Familyman’s message by typing. ‘Thank you. I’m coming to it’ in the chat. He responded with the gif of a shiny Drowzee. Then typed. It worked. You are coming out. Come out. Come out. The exciting energy that I had disappeared. I was so creep out. But my friend already walked down stair with car keys in hand. I didn’t want to cancel it.
As I got into my friend’s car, I decided to tell some of the people in the group chat where I was going. I don’t know why I did this. It made no sense. Like, “I’m going to Mister Familyman’s old hotel to get a lapras, see ya.” But I did anyway. Then, to my surprise, Husbandman called me.
It was very weird to receive a phone call from someone from the Pokemon Go group. I picked up the phone and he said, Mister Familyman unalive himself a few months ago inside the hotel where he worked. Husbandman said he didn’t want to tell anyone in the group chat because he didn’t think anybody there liked Mister Familyman that much. He thought MisterFamilymanisDead was a prankster who knew I would be freaked out. No way it was the real him. I started freaking out. I hang up without telling Husbandman that Mister Familyman privately messaged me. I stared at the chat and I told my friend to not drive there anymore, I don’t care how upset he was going to be. I was so horrified I left the group chat and deleted Pokemon Go app.
A few years later, I think it was during the pandemic, I re downloaded Pokemon Go again. Who can resist magikarp community day, right? Well one time I saw a Pokemon I wanted spawned among several other Pokemon. I was trying to get that Pokemon, I didn’t even remember what it was, but my finger hit a Drowzee instead. That Drowzee was a shiny. I deleted it immediately. The Pokemon Go app was not having it, it kept asking me if I was sure. I think I might have been the only person in the history of the game that intentionally deleted a shiny. But you understand why, right?