“Charlie Charlie”, a joke that can do much harm

Years ago, a journalist from Londrina did a research in public schools in the city and found that in most of them the elementary school children took advantage of the recess time to make the calls "sessions cup" in which playful spirits allegedly participated to play with the unwary that penetrate an area of activity - the psychic practice - offering real danger to those who perform without knowledge and without serious purpose.

The research which we have referred proved a fact that was already known, that is, many people - not just children - have, in Brazil, the habit of dealing with such practices, ignoring the risks that that entails.

Once, a friend of ours met a family that was terrified with the information obtained in sessions of this type carried out by mere fun for a group of Catholic women. Playing with those people, a supposed spirit gave the group a notice according to which the mother of one of those people would die before Carnival, whose date was close.

Of course it was a scam, a frivolity, but it caused unnecessary worries, although up to ridiculous consequences in the face of what can really happen as a result of such practices. Obsession is one of them.

We have remembered this fact because a similar joke is happening with children and adolescents in Portugal, as the reader can verify it in a report signed by Joana Ferreira da Costa, published in the newspaper SOL on last July 1. Here is the link that refers to matter - http://www.sol.pt/noticia/400024, which is reproduced the text below:

Suddenly the panic settled in the recess time of a primary school in Alcantara. Some students of six and seven years old started crying and running to the helpers asking to take them home. "They were terrified with fear of Charlie and no one could calm them down", a school employee has said to SOL, explaining the reason for so much confusion was a game of child spiritism that the students of 1st and 2nd year were playing.

This challenge, known as 'Charlie Charlie' and in which children and adolescents evoke an alleged spirit with this name for answers about the future, it is running the world and recently reached Portugal. But the fear and anxiety that it causes to students is driving many national schools to ban the game in its facilities. The same has occurred in several countries, such as Brazil, where last month several schools of Manaus suspended classes, or in England, where some Catholic schools have banned the ritual. To make the challenge it just needs a piece of paper on which lay two pencil-shaped cross, and write the words yes and no.

Then make questions 'Charlie', which supposedly responds through the motions of pencils. It was this ritual that scared the students in that public school. "They were terrified because they said that the pencil had moved", it has said the employee. (...)

No one knows exactly how it has come up this challenge. It is suspected that might be a new version of Latin American game called lapiceras, in which it also tries to guess the future. More recently it came the explanation that is part of the advertising campaign of the new supernatural film from Warner Bros. The Gallows, which opens in July in the US, where one of the protagonists is Charlie, a student who died in a play. (SOL Journal on July 1, 2015.) 

The report heard several people and fortunately also heard our brother Vitor Mora Feria, president of the Portuguese Spirit Federation (PSF), which expressed very clearly stating that children and adolescents should not adhere to these practices. "They are dealing with unfamiliar situations for them and that can upset them", said the president of the PSF, adding that there are specific rules of spiritual doctrine to hold such sessions. "All communication should only be done in the presence of someone with knowledge" explained the colleague.

To all who read this text is asked: do not allow your children to participate in practices as that. Mediumship is something very serious to be the object of jokes as mentioned in the above report, whatever its participants - children, youth or adults.