Ep 12. The Whistle Stop

Ash Ketchum, Misty, and Brock are traveling by train to their next destination as usual. They meet a fellow Pokemon Trainer, named Arielle, and her Ledyba on the train. She explains that there is a whistle stop that is rumored to be haunted. The train stops there briefly, and Arielle tells the story she has heard about the train over the loudspeaker: the story goes that one day a long time ago, a woman's Dunsparce fell off the train and disappeared. Since then, the whistle has been heard blowing every night. Arielle even has a picture of the ghostly figure that people have claimed to see near the stop.

As the train prepares to leave the stop, Ash and his friends see a Dunsparce on the tracks. They assume it belongs to the woman in the story and try to help it onto the train, but it is scared and runs away. They decide to investigate the stop further and depart the train with their Pokemon to look around.

As they walk around the open fields surrounding the stop, they hear the whistle and Arielle gets very excited telling them about it- it was exactly the sound that she had heard in the past from the ghost she believed to be there. Suddenly, they see a group of Hoothoot, Pidgey, Spearow, and other small bird Pokemon flying towards the stop. They follow them and find that they have all gathered around an old tree. It is then that they realize that the whistle sound they have been hearing has been coming from the tree's hollow!

The group investigates the tree and finds a small opening that they can enter. Inside the hollow, they find a small battered whistle and a photo of a woman holding a Dunsparce. Arielle recognizes the woman from the story and they begin to piece things together about the story of the whistle stop.

They discover that the woman in the picture, named Edna, used to be a teapot seller and traveled on the train with her Dunsparce, the same one that they had seen. She was able to avoid detection on the train because she was selling her wares in the other cars, but one day when she was walking her Dunsparce, it became frightened and ran off the train never to be seen again. She tried to search for it but couldn't find it. From that day on, her whistle has always been inside the hollowed-out tree, preventing her from ever completely losing the spirit of her Dunsparce.

Ash and his friends leave the whistle where they found it, but are able to reunite the woman's Dunsparce with her. They explain the story to the conductor, who decides to play the whistle every time the train passes through the stop, perhaps as a way to keep Edna's memory alive and also discourage anyone from believing the stop to be haunted.

The episode is a touching tribute to the idea of memories being preserved and carried on through objects. It also highlights the importance of never giving up on finding something that you lost, especially if it's something or someone that is important to you. The ghostly element to the story was an intriguing way to introduce viewers to the episode's underlying message. Overall, it was a heart-warming episode, and definitely not one to miss!