As the name suggests, it’s something that’s unusual, strange, or simply not normal. The word “paranormal” most often refers to ghosts, spirits, or anything ethereal.
There’s a reason why most people have superstitions about the paranormal: it “shouldn’t” exist. When we were young, our minds could fathom basic things, like “if the stove is red, then it is hot,” or “the sun’s shining outside, it’s warm outside.” We couldn’t yet fathom why magnets attracted to each other, or how salt “disappears” in water. We would think of these as “weird”, “paranormal”, and “supernatural.”
Then came science, which, through logical reasoning, explained to us why things happen. It broadened our view of the possibilities of the world, but at the same time, framed reality from supernaturality. Science could explain magnets, salt dissolving in water, solar eclipses, Chernekov radiation, et cetera. But at the same time, it taught us that ghosts and spirits were out of this world, because science simply couldn’t explain such phenomena. Now wait a minute.
Just because science can’t explain such ghosts and spirits, does it mean that such phenomena are supernatural? Back in the ancient times, philosophers believed that earthworms fell out of the sky because they would always be on the ground after it rained. The Chinese believed that solar eclipses were caused by a dragon swallowing up the Sun. Back then, there were a lot of phenomena that seemed supernatural, but today, scientists and just about everybody else knows that earthworms come from the ground, and solar eclipses are caused by the Sun, Moon, and Earth aligning with each other.
I believe that people believe in the paranormal just because we don’t yet have a way of explaining such a thing. I believe that the “paranormal” things in our world are totally normal, and natural occurrences that have yet to be explained. Two thousand years ago, solar eclipses were viewed as paranormal. Maybe two thousand years from now, we will have found an explanation for “ghosts” and they’ll be regarded as normal.
