PARANORMAL – IS TOO STRONG A WORD

[image error] BECAUSE LIFE IS ONE BIG X-FILE

UFO = Unidentified Fictional Objectivity

Paranormal has become a four-letter word for those of us who write in its general vicinity. But softer words may be used to describe a ‘stranger than fiction’ story without horror and fright or to see dead people in a good way?

There IS a softer side to paranormal fiction where the curious reader is invited to innocently flirt with time.

Flow with impossible dreams. Indulge in a playful fling with the unreal and romance the sweetly surreal. Take a flight of fancy to the afterlife and dance the endless loops of reincarnation, lucid dreaming, quantum leaps of time-slipping, and venture into zones with more relaxed outer limits in novels where a reader can wander through the doors of perception and peek behind the looking glass without having to sleep with a light on afterwards.

Delight that the fictional afterlife is a country of your own making where you can die outside the box and reincarnate at will.

THE KEY WORD in paranormal fiction is ‘FICTION’ (translation: a story that exceeds the constraints of normal of lying)

It’s a heads-up promise that ‘SOMETHING UNUSUAL THIS WAY COMES’…

That something you’re about to read will not creep you out or give you nightmares for a month of Sundays. That said, it may even delight you or cause you to reflect outside the laws of physics for a change, and indulge freely inside the flexible laws of metaphysics.

The word FICTION notifies a reader that something or everything in a story is untrue; the word PARANORMAL informs a reader that a story operates within the flexible realms of metaphysics.

Language goes one better and adds prefixes to nice calm words in order to jazz up the tension: un, in, other, super, extra, and para (which means above). These beget: unexplained, unidentified, unreal, unbelievable, uncanny, untoward, unearthly, otherworldly, supernatural, unlikely, unknown, insubstantial, unidentifiable, inexplicable, psychic, intuitive, extraordinary, unknowable, and the para-deadly… ‘paranormal’. The words: enigmatic, mystical, visionary, ethereal, ghostly, mysterious, fantasy, fanciful, make-believe, magical, prescient, quixotic, brooding, telepathic, clairvoyant, occult, surreal, arcane, premonition, esoteric, and imaginative are roses made of icing on a deeply layered cake.

Sadly, Quixotic-Fiction is not an acceptable genre, but wouldn’t it be nice if it was!

WE WANT TO BELIEVE… if only for a few hours

We want to believe in the lighter side of the unexplained, defy gravity with flying objects, and dabble in the less arcane art of what-if. 
Here are some of my favorite works of Surreal-Fiction:

BOOKS (also MADE INTO FILMS): ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’, ‘The Lovely Bones’, and the ‘Harry Potter’ series. 

MOVIES: ‘The Lake House’, ‘What Dreams May Come’, ‘Somewhere in Time’, ‘Field of Dreams’, ‘Groundhog Day’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘Close Encounters’, ‘Jurassic Park’, and ‘Ghostbusters’ (one)

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITES?