The Othersiders: Too Young To Hunt Ghosts?

While I was watching Cartoon Network's "The Othersiders" investigation of the Queen Mary, I found myself thinking, "Perhaps these kids aren't too young to hunt ghosts after all."

With that said, I guess it's a good time to admit that I shared the sentiments fellow blogger AutumnForest expressed in one of her posts about "The Othersiders." Kids hunting ghosts? (Or as she put it, "drape climbers," which just cracked me up.) Come on, be serious. Someone's really trying to make a mockery of ghost hunting now.

However, the Queen Mary investigation made me stop and go "Hmmm...."

RELATE-ABILITY FACTOR

Personally, I think "The Othersiders" is kind of boring as ghost hunting shows go. (Although, maybe if I was a kid I'd think it was great.)

I also have a hard time believing the five were friends before the show and weren't "casted" for it. However, I have to admit a ghost hunting team comprised of teens might allow for different results than a team of just adults.

For instance, any children ghosts might be more inclined to make contact with someone nearer their own age. Likewise, older spirits may find younger ghost hunters more approachable and less threatening than an adult.

But on the converse of that, people who didn't much care for kids in life might be irritated by the presence of younger ghost hunters. (Talk about a new method of provocation!) Older ghosts (or, rather, people who were older when they passed) might relate more to someone their own age.

DID SHE SING BECAUSE THEY DID?

That's what I wondered when the Othersiders played the EVP of the little girl singing in the pool area. Perhaps they caught that EVP based on something they did during the investigation.

They tried to cajole the girl ghost said to haunt the pool area into singing, as its reported she does, by singing themselves. They picked "Ring around the Rosy." A simple song, a common enough one, but it impressed me nonetheless. Why?

I don't have kids and it's been a while since I was one. When they made the decision to sing period my first thought was, "What on earth song would I have sung if that was me investigating?"

When they went with "Ring around the Rosy" it was both obvious and genius. Of course I knew it. What person didn't sing it at some point in their own youth? But it never would have occurred to me to pick that one.

Now if they truly came up with it on their own or had some help from a producer, who knows. And who knows if they would have caught the EVP anyway without singing, but it was a pretty good EVP...perhaps because of what they did.

GHOST HUNTING TEAMS: THE ADVANTAGE OF DIVERSITY

It was because of the song they picked that I reconsidered my stance on teenage ghost hunters. Instead I thought, "What an advantage it is for those teams that are as diverse as possible."

Think about it. If you have good coverage of the age spectrum (youngsters on up to senior citizens), as well as a mix of males and females plus people from a variety of walks of life, you cover the gamut. The age/gender/ethnicity/etc might be as much of a factor or influence of the type of results your investigations turn up as anything else.