Charlie Charlie Challenge - How to summon a Mexican demon Spirit - Unexplained Mysteries

Source : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news

The game Charlie Charlie Challenge has taken the Internet by storm and has gone viral. Everyone on the Internet knows it's creepy but they still want to know, "is the pencil game real?" The Charlie Charlie Challenge is also known as "Charlie Charlie: The Pencil Game." Apparently, it is believed to be based on an old Mexican tradition of invoking the spirits and in this case, a little boy named Charlie. The Internet has labeled the Charlie Charlie Challenge as a paranormal game that gets in touch with the "sixth sense." To put it another way, it helps people connect with the spiritual medium. #CharlieCharlieChallenge is trending on Twitter and Twitterati worldwide are sharing videos and images about playing the spooky game. While more than 2 million people have used the hashtag #CharlieCharlieChallenge in the last two days, some people are creating parody videos and posts about the game "Six Pencils" or "Charlie Charlie Can We Play?" Although it has been around for quite some time, the challenge, which involves using pencils and a piece of paper to summon a spirit named Charlie, has really taken off this week. To play, participants are required to take a piece of paper, balance two pencils in a cross shape in the middle and then write the words "yes" and "no" at the four corners of the page. To begin, those taking part must then clearly recite the phrase "Charlie, Charlie, are you here?". If the pencil moves then, according to the myth surrounding the game, the spirit of Charlie will have arrived to begin answering your questions. Despite the widespread uptake of the challenge on social media this week however the mechanism behind this alleged paranormal communication is actually very simple - the pencils will invariably move by themselves no matter what because they are so precariously balanced. The vibration of a footstep, someone shuffling around in the room or even a subtle draft from a window or door can make it seem as though Charlie has come out to play. Nevertheless with the "Charlie Charlie Challenge" becoming increasingly popular online it is likely that we will be seeing quite a few reaction videos of pencils moving over the next few weeks This isn’t a new game as much as it’s a Vine-ready pastiche of kitsch occultism. The idea of summoning an otherworldly spirit through group incantation has been a thing people have done to freak themselves out for years, chanting “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror or chanting “Beetlejuice” after thinking too much about the volatile career of Michael Keaton. The pencils-on-a-grid-moving-to-signify-supernatural-presence has the familiar pull of pareidolia—when your mind tricks you into reading meaning into random or meaningless stimuli. It’s the same thing that happens when you play with a Ouija board, and it has the same nonsense exoticism as Ouija (which was invented by an American businessman, despite the foreign-sounding name). But it’s been around for longer than that. In 2008, a user called twilightfan posted a story about playing the pencil game to contact “a ghost named Charlie that had died of child abuse” on YourGhostStories.com. On digital sadness aggregator Yahoo! Answers, people have been asking about the Charlie demon pencil game since 2010. comments powered by Disqus Submit News/Videos/Links | Discuss article | Article Link More Unsolved and Unexplained Mysteries