While we have absolutely no proof the “Charlie Charlie” game is being played in Ladysmith schools, several high school children we spoke to all admitted having heard of the game. As a parent, we feel you have a right to know about the game.
We tested the game for several hours without results and frankly, it is very easy to pull off. With the slightest breeze, the pencils will move. We eventually used a straw to fool a few colleagues.
Now we, for one, are not going to rule out supernatural forces, but see the video below on how they made the pencils move very realistically without “Charlie’s” help.
Also, take note of how they arranged lighting and stage-managed the viewer into creating the correct mood to make the whole pencil game not only believable, but scary.
At the end, they debunk the whole thing. A good video to have your children watch if you feel they may have been exposed to the game at school and are disturbed by it.
The sad thing is that there are a lot of impressionable people out there and even with a sound explanation, it can still be very freaky…
So how did it suddenly become an international trending topic and is now being played or at least talked about in local schools?
Firstly, the game is as old as the hills, and every now and again surfaces as a hot demonic or Satanic game… A story on a local Dominican Republic TV station, broadcast in a very alarmist report about the “Satanic” game overtaking local schools, hit the country’s social media. They began tweeting, Instagramming and Vining about the game. The phrase “Charlie, Charlie” was soon trending on Dominican Twitter, an easy jump away from the rest of the Spanish-speaking Web.
A 17-year-old girl in Georgia Instagrammed her game and slapped it with the hashtag #CharlieCharlieChallenge. That hashtag was, apparently, all the kids needed: It’s been tweeted 1.6 million times since then. This was back in April.
While it’s hard to pin down a country of origin, “Charlie Charlie” (also spelled Charly Charly) has a long history as a schoolyard game in the Spanish-speaking world. Kids have played a version of the “classic game” in Spain and Mexico for generations.
A bit more history thanks to the Washington Post:
Traditionally, this version with the crossed pencils was called the “Juego de la Lapicera” – a term that still turns up lots of creepy stuff on Google – and “Charlie Charlie” was a distinct game, played with coloured pencils. At some point in their Internet and playground travels, the two games seem to have merged. In either case, both have always had demonic or supernatural connotations; one site calls Lapicera “the poor man’s Ouija board”.
If you really want to know more, click here.
Like everything else, it did not take long to hit SA shores in a wave of social media fanfare… The pencil game had arrived!
It’s fake!
