The social media challenge that has gripped the Internet, the "Charlie Charlie Come Out Wherever You Are Game," are causing teens to become "possessed," parents and scientists from the Dominican Republic said, where the first video response to the #charliecharliechallenge originated.
"Charlie Charlie is a game that invokes Mexican demons. Four Colombian high school students were hospitalized for 'hysteria' after playing the game," the Daily Mail said.
"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," wrote Dan Piepenbring in the Paris Review.
"It's a craze that has gone too far," Doctor Kelven Guerrero, who works at the Hato Mayor del Rey Hospital, told MailOnline. "It's very dangerous for a young child to play with contacting the paranormal and diabolical."
"It can cause a great amount of trauma in a young person. One of the major problems has been that in order to start playing a child must ask permission of Charlie to play. But Charlie also has to give permission for the game to end," Dr. Guerrero added.
Scientists who have analyzed the game say the moving pencils are not a supernatural phenomenon and that it can be explained by the force of gravity. Behaviors called "response expectancy," describe how players might move the pencil through movement or breathing inadvertently if they are caught up 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, Christopher French told Live Science.
"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."
"This tendency to attribute a deeper meaning to meaningless or unrelated events persists in modern brains," French said. "This innate tendency could help explain why so many people believe that the random responses in the Charlie Charlie Challenge really are coming from an intelligence that is trying to send them a message."
Despite the theories and explanations behind "Charlie Charlie Come Out Wherever You Are" game, parents at the Juan Pablo Duarte Primary School in Dominican Republic's Hato Mayor, said their kids were "possessed" after playing the game with presumed Mexican origins. The original video of the #charliecharliechallenge is believed to have surfaced in Hato Mayor.
