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This is supposed to be an article about the current hot trend of paranormal books and movies, but to me, this isn’t a new trend. At a very young age (some would say too young), I’ve loved horror movies. Also at this young age (and more appropriate, many would agree) I loved Disney movies. Do those two things together sound odd? Not to me. What both had in common were elements of the paranormal.

Think about it – in many horror movies, the villain has a supernatural quality. Michael Meyers can’t be killed. Freddy Krueger can manifest lethally in dreams. Jason Vorhees died and came back as an unstoppable killer. The list goes on. And in many Disney movies, there are paranormal elements galore, such as the evil sorceress in Sleeping Beauty, or the fairy godmother in Cinderella, or the talking, far-seeing mirror in Snow White, to name a few. Beloved children’s books also have showcased supernatural creatures or elements, such as The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe series, or Where The Wild Things Are.

Myths, magic, and other paranormal elements have always been a part of human culture. Metaphors in paranormal fiction were used as one of the ways to confront taboos in society that people weren’t comfortable discussing openly. Examples of this would be sensuality in the Victorian era through Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or the fears of science and progress going awry in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among others.

In the eighties, Anne Rice explored homosexuality and eroticism in her Vampire Chronicles series, making vampires a household word again. In the nineties, The X-Files blasted onto TV with its addictive mixture of darkness, action, humor, and heat, making the exploration of alien conspiracies (among other paranormal things) cool. Later on in the nineties, feminism got an unlikely boost from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a heroine who managed to be kick-ass, wisecracking, sexy, and vulnerable all at the same time. Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series soon had readers flipping pages about a gun-toting, foul-mouthed heroine who navigated a world filled with necromancers, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. And then, of course, came Harry Potter – need I say more about the boom that series brought to books and movies? Then to the delight of comic book fans, Marvel and DC Comics started remaking movies from some of their hit comic series Blade, X Men, The Hulk, and Watchman, among others. Today, Charlaine Harris and Neil Gaiman are rocking book stores and the silver screen. Paranormal and fantasy might have been around a long time, but now, people who might not have considered themselves a fan of the paranormal are flocking to bookstores and theaters to get their supernatural fix.

It’s very cool for me, both as a reader, movie fan, and an author of a paranormal series. I started writing vampires – my personal paranormal creature of choice – because vampires were what I loved to read and watch. The fact that the audience for the paranormal market has grown means more people are likely to pick up my books. Paranormal fans are, thankfully, voracious. If they like author X, they’ll probably try Y and Z, too. As a fan, the boom in the market means I have a lot more of my favorite genre to read, watch in the theaters, or see on TV.

People talk about the paranormal bubble bursting because of oversaturation, but while trends may ebb and flow, I disagree that paranormal stories will ever truly go out of style. Paranormal stories have been around in one form or another as far back as our cultures record their history.

-Jeaniene Frost