The four Colombian high school students were brought to the emergency room two weeks ago screaming and babbling.
There was nothing physically wrong with them. Instead doctors diagnosed a case of ‘mass hysteria’.
The cause? They had been trying to summon a ‘Mexican demon’ with two pencils balanced on a piece of paper, like a modern version of the ouija board.
In fact the spirit-summoning game known as ‘Charlie Charlie’ or the CharlieCharlieChallenge has since blazed a trail across the internet in recent days.
It went viral after one video surfaced in the Dominican Republic where it was taken probably a little too seriously by parents, priests and teachers.
The game involves balancing one pencil on top of another and daring a demon called Charlie to answer questions by making it point to pre-written answers on the paper below.
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.