Ever since the past weekend, the Charlie Charlie game has taken the online world by storm, as millions of people have taken to social media to supposedly summon a "Mexican demon" into the room so it'll answer questions for them - spooking many in the process.
However, while there's a lot of legend revolving the Charlie Charlie game (which is something fairly similar to a Ouija board in many aspects), there's little awareness as to how exactly did this new Twitter and Vine trend came to happen, and its origins are mostly unknown as fans (mostly teenagers) will believe the urban legend that it's a long Mexican tradition invoking a demon.
The Independent reports that there's "no trace" of the Charlie Charlie game being an old Mexican tradition, though it's clear that it's been going around in the Spanish-speaking world for some time now - there are even years-old threads on Yahoo! Respuestas (the Spanish language version of Yahoo! Answers) about similar games.
The Charlie Charlie game, which goes under the hashtag #CharlieCharlieChallenge on social media, apparently has nothing to do with Mexican folklore whatsoever.
"There's no demon called 'Charlie' in Mexico," said Maria Elena Navez, an expert on the subject, to BBC. "Mexican legends often come from ancient Aztec and Maya history, or from the many beliefs that began circulating during the Spanish conquest. In Mexican mythology you can find gods with names like 'Tlaltecuhtli' or 'Tezcatlipoca' in the Nahuatl language. But if this legend began after the Spanish conquest, I'm sure it would've been called 'Carlitos' (Charlie in Spanish)."
According to The Washington Post, the possible origin story for the Charlie Charlie game is a long-standing schoolyard game in the Spanish-speaking world, though it's unclear whether the trend truly started in Mexico, and there's also another version called the "Juego de la Lapicera," which roughly translates to "Pencil Game" and it involves colored pencils - and the two have apparently merged into one.
While the Charlie Charlie game is fairly new on the English-speaking world, there have been other equally odd trends on Twitter lately, most notably the Kylie Jenner challenge in which teens hurt themselves trying to get the same lips as the youngest Kardashian sister.
