Pascal Arogorn Ibe
The game went viral after terrifying incidences in the Dominican Republic
Involves balancing pencil on top of another and daring demon to come out
Scientists say that gravity causes the pencil to seemingly move by itself
But parents in Hato Mayor, where it began, say ‘Satan is possessing kids’
‘They are opening the door to the devil by playing game,’ local priest said
The four Colombian high school students were brought to the emergency room two weeks ago screaming and babbling.
There was nothing physically wrong with them. Instead doctors diagnosed a case of ‘mass hysteria’.
The cause? They had been trying to summon a ‘Mexican demon’ with two pencils balanced on a piece of paper, like a modern version of the ouija board.
In fact the spirit-summoning game known as ‘Charlie Charlie’ or the CharlieCharlieChallenge has since blazed a trail across the internet in recent days.
It went viral after one video surfaced in the Dominican Republic where it was taken probably a little too seriously by parents, priests and teachers.
The game involves balancing one pencil on top of another and daring a demon called Charlie to answer questions by making it point to pre-written answers on the paper below.
Hundreds of teens have uploaded videos – from the UK to the United States, Sweden and Singapore – in which they ask, ‘Charlie, Charlie, are you there?’ and then flee in terror when the pencil appears to move by itself.
Scientists put the supernatural phenomenon down to simple gravity and behaviour known as ‘response expectancy’, which means people will try to move the pencil through their movement or breathing without realising because they are so engrossed in the moment.
‘Trying to balance one pencil upon another results in a very unstable system,’ the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the University of London told Live Science.
Christopher French added: ‘Even the slightest [draft] or someone’s breath will cause the top pencil to move… and the precariously placed pencils will move around regardless of whether you summon a demon after balancing them.’
But parents at the Juan Pablo Duarte Primary School in the town of Hato Mayor in the Dominican Republic, where the original video came from, say their children were ‘possessed by Satan’ after playing the playground game.
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