Friday, June 26, 2009

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.

3 comments:

  1. Great observation! You always have such a good attitude about things--definitely got your head square on your shoulders.

    Drape climbers, yup. I have to admit that I did my first ghost hunt at 10, sitting on the stairs at night with my dad's recorder trying to capture the footsteps to prove the haunting to kids at school.

    I think kids are super ghost magnets in that their open-mindedness and the way their brains work, simply makes them ideal. My problems are the same ones I have when I deal with owners of homes with activity. I don't want to use the "G" word around kids. People think ghost and suddenly it's some unseen person peeping at them and wishing them ill will. I don't think letting kids know they're growing up in a haunted house is necessary good unless you have a healthy way to teach the to view it. My parents encouraged the concept that the Civil War soldiers were protecting us since they no longer had families to care for. Knowing I had my own guards at hand gave me a new perspective. When they acted up, mom would simply say that they were having a bad day, like my sister Kathy, and tended to want to throw things.

    I'm not sure about how these kids on the show's parents taught them to view what they're doing. Are they promoting good mental hygiene so that they can come home from a hunt and not feel like there's something following them or worrying about unseen forces in general?

    I think it's probably better to arm them with EMF meters than Ouija boards, but still neither is really all that appropriate.

    Obviously, the show is an attempt to do something we do often, make shows about "little people" and baby versions of cartoon favorites. It's cute and all, but is it really helping the industry or spoofing it?

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  2. This show airs on Cartoon Network, so I take it for what it is. The target demographic is not the 20-45 year old paranormal aficionado. Still, I do think kids have a better dialed-in sixth sense, plus aren't pubescent girls a big attractant factor for poltergeists? So maybe they should change the name of the show to Ghost Bait. heh.

    --Lisa
    http://authorlisalogan.blogspot.com

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  3. Oh Lisa..."Ghost Bait".... can't tell you how hard that made me LOL/LMAO!

    And AutumnForest, you brought up something I hadn't even considered: their psychic well being. (Also, your comment about arming them with EMFS vs Ouija boards was also a chuckler.)

    And how did you think of using the tape recorder at 10 to try and capture "evidence" to show your friends? That's very clever. I'm pretty sure at 10 I wouldn't have thought of that. (Although, that said, I've always been a bit of a "late bloomer" mentally. Even now...)

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