I've been super into Wolf Pack lately. And who could blame me?
I love stories about the paranormal. I love reading them, writing them, and watching them, in film, TV, or even animated form. I love stories about ghosts and hauntings, eerie possessions and exorcisms, and of course, supernatural creature features. So it's no surprise I've fallen in love with the world of vampires, werewolves, demons, and angels.
It should come as no surprise that I'm also a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer die-hard. I can even tell you which season we're watching based solely on Sarah Michelle Gellar's haircut. You can't imagine how giddy it makes me to see her in another supernatural role!
I'll never forget Buffy's speech to a cult of vampire worshippers in Season 2 of the series, regarding what happens when a vampire transforms a human:
You die, and a demon sets up shop in your old house, and it walks, and it talks, and it remembers your life, but it's not you.
This very line sums up the foundation of my feelings on demons. Whether it's a vampire, a werewolf, a witch, an incubus, or a shadow-walker, the demons are not the people they were before they were transformed. The change destroys the person that was, and brings on a true creature of the damned in its place.
Have you ever looked at the word "paranormal"? It literally means, "to one side of normal; beyond normal". It's the world we know, everything that's normal, but it's twisted away, lying at some illogical angle. So when your good friend becomes a werewolf, zombie, or vampire, they're not the good old normal person you knew; they're skewed.
Paranormal is like a funhouse mirror for the soul. The world of the paranormal, now, that's a whole house of mirrors, where everything is just to one side of what you recognize. Everything is so beautifully, beautifully strange.
The best paranormal tales, in my opinion, are ones rooted in actual mythology, with deep ties to true beliefs. Vampires compelled to count the grains of salt you throw at their feet. Werewolves whose weakness isn't just silver, but silver inherited from another. I love it when the paranormal isn't easy to deal with, and requires knowledge, ritual, coordination, and sacrifice. Even if we want a hero to prevail over the dark, uncanny valley of spirits and monsters, we still want to delve into those secret passages and discover all the fascinating mystery.
And if it's strange and eerie and haunting and bizarre, that's all part of the thrill. It's a funhouse, darlings...and all the spirits within are ready to play.
If you're like me, you can't get enough of this stuff. So do me a solid and leave a comment with your best paranormal recommendations! Books, comics, movies, anime, TV shows... anything that takes us away to that just-off-side of normal!