Camille Clarke

Sev­er­al stu­dents at a north Trinidad sec­ondary school re­ceived the fright of their lives while en­gag­ing in a game which is the lat­est In­ter­net craze called "Char­lie Char­lie."

While play­ing the game at the school, some of the stu­dents claimed that chairs lev­i­tat­ed off the ground caus­ing a pan­ic and they scam­pered for safe­ty.

Lo­cal videos are pop­ping up over so­cial Web sites show­ing stu­dents chant­i­ng and play­ing the game while even some are mak­ing fun of it.

The game starts with chil­dren play­ing the "Char­lie Char­lie" chal­lenge of writ­ing "yes" and "no" on a sheet of pa­per and cross­ing two pen­cils.

The rit­u­al is said to be a Mex­i­can rit­u­al.

The chal­lenge has gone vi­ral over the In­ter­net and YouTube with a num­ber of teenagers post­ing videos of them­selves en­gag­ing in the Oui­ja-board like prac­tice.

Some of the chil­dren re­port­ed hear­ing eerie voic­es or see­ing strange things. Oth­ers warned chil­dren to stay away from the chal­lenge.

Lana Boodoo-Ma­haraj, founder of Stop the Bul­ly­ing and a moth­er of

three, urged par­ents to mon­i­tor their chil­dren.

"Its re­al and I urge adults and chil­dren not to try it. Par­ents must not let their chil­dren do it, in­vok­ing a spir­it," she said.

Boodoo-Ma­haraj said sev­er­al chil­dren at her son's school played the game and chairs start­ed to lev­i­tate.

"The prin­ci­pal held an emer­gency meet­ing with the chil­dren and asked them not to play the game again that it is black mag­ic. My chil­dren know bet­ter than to play that. It is not a game," she said.

An­oth­er stu­dent at­tend­ing an­oth­er school said: "It's some 'jumbie' thing like a Oui­ja board."

An­oth­er con­cerned par­ent told the T&T Guardian: "I not play­ing that one. There is good and there is bad. I go­ing to in­form my chil­dren not to play that be­fore I have to thump them."

Form of re­bel­lion

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh said it was a phase that teenagers and chil­dren go through when they seek the dark side.

"We al­ready have the Oui­ja board phe­nom­e­na and it seems it made an im­pact and it died out. There is al­ways a need for chil­dren and adults to ex­per­i­ment the dark side," he said.

He said vam­pires, were­wolves and su­per­nat­ur­al in­ter­ests were a phase they tend­ed to go through.

"This Char­lie game seems to be an­oth­er av­enue in seek­ing the dark side and a form of re­bel­lion," he said.

Ex­plain­ing the chairs that lev­i­tat­ed, Deyals­ingh said: "There was some mass hys­te­ria. Their il­lu­sion feeds on­to one an­oth­er.

"We had it in south where in some Schools a chair was ris­ing up. The dan­ger is a phase but some are ob­sessed and in­ves­ti­gate Sa­tan­ic wor­ship. It could be harm­ful."

An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berkley said many adults were con­cerned about the game.

"I know there is an anx­i­ety about it and there are many adults con­cerned about the ef­fects on the chil­dren and at this stage I would ad­vise cau­tion and read up on it more so we can come to an in­formed po­si­tion."

Berkley said he heard oth­er cler­gy­men warn­ing of the game.

"I would like to join the cho­rus of cau­tion and from where it comes and learn about it be­fore we con­tin­ue and be­come en­trapped in a scheme and take away our in­de­pen­dence on some­thing whose source we don't know where it comes from," he added.