The Charlie Charlie Challenge that originated in Mexico is fast travelling through teen social media accounts across the globe driving teens over the edge in a type of mass hysteria. It seems like harmless fun and yet it has already caused group of children to be hospitalized in the Dominican Republic while parents have gone so far as to seek help from their local municipalities believing that their children were possessed by the devil.

Supernatural games have been popular with teenagers around the world for decades with teens holding séances and playing Ouija boards to conjure spirits. The latest craze – the Charlie Charlie Challenge – appears no different. It involves placing two pencils on a blank piece of paper in the shape of the cross with the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ written on either side of the pencils. Players say, “Charlie, Charlie can we play?” so as to channel the nearest demon. Players ask questions of the demon and the pencils move around due to gravitational forces – but with a stretch of the imagination children can convince themselves that spiritual machinations are at play.

Hundreds of videos have surfaced on social media from the UK, United States, Sweden and Singapore showing the game, and demonic spirits supposedly at work.

Harmless fun? In South America things have got a big carried away with four Colombian students heading to the emergency ward babbling and screaming. Doctors found nothing physically wrong with them and diagnosed panic attacks.

An entire community in the Dominican Republic are terrified with a number of people claiming inexplicable bruises on their body and psychological trauma.Children in the community have complained of being unable to sleep due to the devil’s intervention. Hato Mayor del Rey Hospital doctor Keleven Guerrero told the Daily Mail that the craze has gone too far. “The entire community had been very disturbed by it. It’s caused a lot of trauma,” he said.

Deputy Headmistress of Juan Pablo Duarte Primary School in Hato Mayor, Jovita Jimenez, said that children have been absent from school as their parents believed that they were possessed by the devil.

The game has concerned the Catholic Church with Father Stephen McCarthy writing an open letter to students that states:

“There is a dangerous game going around on social media which openly encourages impressionable young people to summon demons. I want to remind you all there is no such thing as ‘innocently playing with demons’. Please be sure to NOT participate and encourage others to avoid participation as well. The problem with opening yourself up to demonic activity is that it opens a window of possibilities which is not easily closed.”