Paranormal, Supernatural, Fantasy. Same, Same, but Different. Of the three, Fantasy is the easiest to recognize. Fairies, elves, unicorns, and dragons are hard to miss. The line between Paranormal and Supernatural isn’t as distinct.
As explained to me, Paranormal is something not understood by current scientific knowledge, but has the possibility of someday being explained - Big Foot, for example. Supernatural is phenomenon that is beyond our capability to ever understand because it doesn’t operate under our rules - angels and demons are some good examples. Clear as mud, right?
LORD OF THE RINGS is fantasy, as it contains wizards, Middle Earth (an imagined world), and hobbits. The movie, POLTERGEIST is paranormal while THE AMITYVILLE HORROR is supernatural. Of course, as in everything, there are exceptions, contradictions, and crossovers. To my mind, HARRY POTTER is all three. HARRY is categorized as fantasy, but the evil that is the essence of Lord Voldemort is certainly supernatural yet the ghost, Nearly Headless Nick is paranormal.
From what I can tell, the words paranormal and supernatural are used interchangeably and the difference is so slight it doesn’t really matter. What does matter, however, is that scary unexplained stuff draws us like moths to flame.
MAGIC TRICKS
Establish powers in the beginning
Experience is the best teacher
Learn the lingo
More than any other genre, paranormal characters and situations are only limited to how high the author dares to fly. In fact, (writers take note!) publishers welcome new creations. Vampires, werewolves, and zombies are old news. In my novella, THE ROOK AND THE RAVEN, I created a new paranormal character; The Rook, who is captain of the Sentinels who guard all life in the universe. I’d never heard of this entity before. Neither had my publisher. A sure-fire win, win.
If there are rules for paranormal writing, I’m not aware of any. Stephanie Myers in her TWILIGHT series had a huge mistake. Jacob is not a werewolf but rather a shapeshifter. Big difference. However, this faux pas didn’t seem to bother anyone other than myself, and Stephanie is laughing all the way to the bank, so again, does it really matter? It does to me. It goes to credibility and knowledge of your craft. A B-B gun and an AK47 are both rifles but one is quite different than the other.