The choking game sounds like the name of a spine-tingling horror film.
But for Sharron Grant, the horror is all too real: The nightmarish image of her 12-year-old son lying dead on his bedroom floor with a computer cord coiled around his neck replays constantly in her mind.
Jesse was not suicidal. He was seeking fun.
The Grade 7 pupil was playing a game that has long existed in the shadows but appears to be increasingly popular with preteens and teens.
It goes by names including space monkey, passout, flatliner and, most commonly, the choking game.
Simply put, the idea is to suffocate, to cut off oxygen to the brain to the point where it causes euphoria, but not death.
Jesse crossed the line.
"He honestly thought it was harmless," Ms. Grant said in an interview. "A lot of kids do. But somebody has to tell them the game can be deadly."
Since Jesse died in his Penetanguishene, Ont., home on April 23, 2005, Ms. Grant has made education her mission, channelling her grief, anger and energies into warning parents, teachers and health-care providers about the game and its potentially lethal consequences.
"There's people who say if you talk about this more kids will do it. But we can't just stick our heads in the sand," she said. "This is a lot more common than parents realize."
There are no official statistics, but Ms. Grant estimates that there are 500 deaths a year in North America related to the choking game.
Many are classified as suicides or as quirky accidents ("death by misadventure" in the jargon of coroners). As the practice is popularized on the Web, parents, too, are turning to cyberspace to fight back and find solace.
Two days before Christmas, one Alberta mother called her son for dinner and, when he didn't answer, she opened the bedroom door to find her son dead, on his knees, with his neck in a belt tied to the top bunk.
The nine-year-old had gone to play in his room only 15 minutes earlier.
" I never heard about the choking game before this," said the woman, who asked to be identified only as Amanda.
"Parents need to know this is happening -- not just somewhere else but right here," she said.
Amanda is now an active member of an on-line support group, which includes almost 100 parents who lost children to the choking game.
The Website Ms. Grant has created, http://www.deadlygameschildrenplay.com, features a number of chilling accounts, along with tips for spotting the tell-tale signs that your child might be playing the game.
Those include red marks or bruising on the neck that the child tries to cover up (don't assume they are hickeys), frequent headaches at night, ties or belts left lying around the bedroom, and casual questions about suffocation and oxygen deprivation.
Ms. Grant learned after Jesse's death that her son, an A student and athlete at Burkevale Elementary School, had been playing the game for some time, in groups and alone.
Jesse had asked his mother and teachers about the effects of suffocation, such as whether passing out would cause him to lose brain cells.
The day before his death, Ms. Grant and her son had directly discussed the "blackout game" -- which Jesse had learned about at summer camp.
But, like most parents, Ms. Grant assumed that he was too smart to engage in such dangerous games himself.
Mark Chandra, an emergency room physician at Huronia District Hospital in Midland, Ont., said the object of the game is to deprive the brain of blood -- and hence oxygen -- to the point of unconsciousness.
"As they pass out, they release the tension and the blood rushes into the brain and they get this rush," Dr. Chandra said.
In groups, teens often choke each other, using their bare hands, ties, belts, scarves and computer cords.
Dr. Chandra said that the rush becomes addictive, so the act is repeated with increasing frequency.
While risky in groups, the game is even more dangerous when played alone because, as in Jesse's case, once the player passes out, he or she cannot loosen the ligature and dies.
The game is most popular among pupils in Grades 5 through 9, an age at which boys and girls often begin to experiment with all sorts of risky behaviours, such as smoking, drinking, sniffing solvents and unsafe sex.
The paradox, Dr. Chandra said, is that it is often the responsible children -- those heeding the health warnings they receive in school -- who turn to the practice of choking.
"They believe drugs are dangerous, alcohol is dangerous, but what can be dangerous about this? After all, you don't have to break the law. It's perceived as a safe thing and that's absolutely wrong. It's totally dangerous, and I've had the misfortune of seeing that firsthand."
