The Curia has advised parents to discuss the Charlie Charlie Challenge with their children in a “calm and mature” way but at the same time it did not rule out a supernatural explanation for the game.
The ‘challenge’ is a Twitter phenomenon that has spread through Maltese schools and caused concern as children were reported getting scared playing the game.
It involves participants asking ‘Charlie’, described as a Mexican demon, a series of yes-or-no questions. The movement of two pencils placed on top of another supposedly indicates the demon’s response.
“The fact is the pencils do move. What makes them move? We simply do not know for sure,” say Church guidelines to parents distributed in Church schools last week.
“The explanation could range from physics, collective psychology, psychic forces, brainpower, imagination, fantasy, sheer peer pressure to spiritual, occult forces or a combination of them all.”
The guidelines encourage parents to avoid panic and to discuss the game in an “unprejudiced, calm and mature way”, while trusting in children’s “innate ability to distinguish between what is harmful and what is positively beneficial.”
The fact is the pencils do move. What makes them move? We simply do not know for sure
However, it also states that a supernatural explanation for the game cannot be ruled out, and warns parents about the “effects of this occult-magical phenomenon”.
Scientists have attributed the game, which some believe originated as part of a viral marketing campaign for a horror film called The Gallows, to nothing more spooky than gravity and the unstable arrangement of the pencils.
Fr Paul Chetcuti, a member of the Curia’s education committee who authored the document, told Times of Malta that he could not exclude there being “realities we are not aware of”.
He said the need for guidelines was felt because the game was spreading through schools “like wildfire” and teachers were reporting children as young as six being scared and even traumatised by their experience.
“We’ve even had cases of children being bullied or deliberately frightened by other students,” he said.
Fr Chetcuti said that the game was likely to be a fad that would eventually come to nothing, but cautioned that, where spirits are involved, the potential for harm is always there.
“Spirits do exist, but the only spirits that we can trust is the spirit of God. If they are spirits of evil, we shouldn’t give them a chance or ever contemplate any form of submission.
“My concern is that it could start as a game, but in the absence of a material explanation, children will resort to other explanations. The biggest risk is that fear takes over, and then anything is possible.”
There have in fact been reports on social media of children having to be calmed down by their class teacher after playing their game. One mother claimed her children were unable to sleep out of fear of ‘Charlie’.
Psychotherapist Bro. Saviour Gatt has warned that any game that causes fear in children could not be dismissed as purely innocent and suggested it might lead to bad dreams or sleeplessness.
However, a child psychologist, Denise Borg, has played down the fears, saying a game created by children for children was generally something that a child’s mind could handle, and that the multimedia exposure was more likely to be an issue.