A Meme Demon Caused Real Life Drama in the Bahamas

Last week, teenagers in the US flipped out over the Charlie Charlie Challenge—a Ouija-inspired game that involved summoning then communicating with a dead Mexican demon called Charlie. Like most social media trends, it quickly blew up, then died down. But not in the Bahamas, where, much to the chagrin of my UK-based Bahamian friends, it seems to have pretty much taken on a life of its own.

Following on from their tip, I reached out to some people over in the Bahamas, who've been caught up in the Charlie Charlie incident, to investigate just how much it's affecting some of the people on the island.

In a nutshell, the Charlie Charlie Challenge invites participants to cross one pencil over another to create a grid over sections labelled "yes" or "no." To summon the spirit, teenagers chant "Charlie Charlie are you here?" or "Charlie Charlie can we play?" The game spread like wildfire when teens recorded, then posted videos of so-called ghoulish happenings or demonic possessions on social media sites such as YouTube and WhatsApp.

So far, some have explained the pencil twitching phenomena with gravity, and more recently reports have concluded that the meme may have actually been created to bolster a viral marketing campaign for the soon-to-be released horror film The Gallows (or maybe not). Whatever the reasons, the meme has inspired a serious religious response, with even the Vatican issuing an official statement. And in the Bahamas, some people aren't taking old Charlie lightly.

Bahamas-based radio personality and social activist Farrell Goff told me that the Bahamas had pretty much whipped itself into a frenzy over the Charlie Charlie demon over the last week. "It's been wild and bizarre," said Goff, who said he was even accused of being an "agent of Satan" when he gave a more grounded scientific explanation of the pencil moving phenomenon on Facebook. But brushing this aside with some good humour, Goff said that there were some socio-cultural reasons behind people's reactions toward Charlie in the Bahamas.

"We are a very traditional Christian nation. People don't just follow the teachings of Jesus, but actually believe in the Scripture, which leaves them susceptible to all kinds of things, the Charlie Charlie Challenge just happened to be one of those things," said Goff, who mentioned that there was actually no physical evidence to suggest that the Charlie demon had paid the Bahamians a visit.

"We're a deeply religious society in the literal sense—a lot of the commentary on the radio was very depressing. There was a lot of talk of demonic this, and God that, and we need deliverance from this, and you can't let the demon [Charlie] into your home," said Goff.

"There were a lot of voice notes going around with kids apparently saying some incoherent things, but I don't think that the voicemails were any demonic manifestation," said Goff, who noted that the whole thing was probably down to kids just having fun. "I think it's more about kids allowing their minds to be overtaken by the mystery and hype of the situation—almost like being in a rock concert where you give yourself to the moment."

But not everyone's convinced.

"The children started having seizures, screaming, hearing voices and laughing all over the place," pastor Theo Smith from the Prophetic Fire Jubilee Ministries told me. Smith heard about the phenomenon over Facebook, and admitted he was still coming to grips with the whole incident himself.

"The Charlie demon seeks control of the person it has entered," explained the pastor, who noted that the demon didn't just come alone, but actually opened up a portal to a whole bunch of other Charlies. According to Smith, the demon has so far reared its head in three schools in the Bahamas.

Pastor Smith is just one of some concerned Bahamians from the nation's Christian community who have been organising a series of prayer sessions to keep the pesky demon at bay. Last week, worried staff from the Anatol Rodgers High School in Nassau wrote to the Ministry of Education, calling on pastors and ministers to pray on their campuses.

Basically… Farrell GoffMay 29, 2015

According to a report by the Nassau Guardian, Anatol Rodgers High School headmistress Myrtle McPhee said that her students were "experimenting with a homosexual Mexican demon called Charlie," and that she saw video recordings where the two pencils moved when a student said anything with a sexual bent. "You can't take chances with this," she told the paper, asserting that she wanted to keep her school kids out of harm's way.

So far, Charlie's origins have proved untraceable, with the BBC reporting that none of its Spanish-speaking journalists could trace the spirit back to Mexico, where it purportedly comes from. In the original stories, the spirit wasn't gay either.

While the Christian Council in the Bahamas has not yet issued an official statement to the phenomena, Bahamian newspaper Tribune 242 reported that the Ministry of Education "sent a memo to school administrators around the country, urging them to prevent students from playing the 'Charlie Charlie' game that some believe involves the summoning of supernatural spirits."

I tried to reach out to the Ministry of Education, but was informed that the director was out of the island till Thursday.

The memo displays the extent to which a social media fad has preoccupied a fraction of people in the Bahamas. And according to Goff, who hosts a twice weekly radio show Morning Blend on the Guardian Radio, the Charlie Charlie incident has "brought up a wider conversation on religion, how progressive we are as a modern nation, and some of the changes that will have to take place to start the transition from where we are now."

Much like the game telephone, where an end statement winds up being unrecognisable to the original statement by the game's finish, the Charlie Charlie challenge has pretty much morphed into a phenomenon that blurs fact and fiction.

Wulff RoadMay 30, 2015

"You just don't know what is really true or happening in some of these institutions," Bishop Michael Eldon High School principal Anita Doherty told me. "The Charlie Charlie Challenge is something that has taken on a life of its own in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, and indeed in the rest of the world with all the stories and the exaggeration."

Throughout the supposed frenzy, Doherty has chosen to stick by measured and rational explanations of the challenge. When Charlie first floated through Bahamian society, she issued a cautionary letter to the parents of her school kids, writing that although the challenge "supposedly involves the occult[, it] is in fact involving nothing of the kind but can be scary and possibly lead suggestible kids in the wrong direction […] we will have science teachers bring it up in class as an example of gravity, fulcrums, balance and the power of ignorance."

Doherty told me that as kids in the Bahamas are super tech-savvy, the Charlie Charlie incident has probably been a whole lot scarier for some older folks who might not use social media as much, or who might just be a bit more religious than their younger counterparts.

"In another two, three weeks, there will be something else that will grab the attention of all the kids in the world, and we'll be looking and worrying about that, and having some other conversation," said Doherty. "In any case, there's not a whole lot of demons who could be in Mexico and called Charlie. Wouldn't that be Carlos or Juan?"