Paranormal Jelly: An Anthology of Whimsical Narratives Regarding the Comical Facets of the Occult by Zwahk Muchoney

Paranormal Jelly: An Anthology of Whimsical Narratives Regarding the Comical Facets of the Occult by Zwahk Muchoney
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Paranormal Jelly blends the bizarre with the everyday in the early internet era of 1996. Middle-aged author Albert runs a popular website, sharing tales of eldritch horrors, baby Sasquatches, cigarette-smoking ghosts, and dark cultists. A skeptic at heart, he dismisses it all as fiction—until reality starts to blur. Cryptids and hauntings become alarmingly frequent, always just out of the reporter’s sight, but impossible to ignore. As Albert struggles to document these strange events, he’s drawn into a web of the supernatural that threatens his very existence.

Both skeptics and true believers are welcomed here.

I loved the playful and humorous tone of Albert’s adventures. The fantasy and science fiction themes were subtle in some places, but that only made those scenes even more exciting once they popped up again and made me look at what just happened in a new light. It was a nice contrast to the more skeptical characters who didn’t always believe the stories about ghosts, cryptids, aliens, and other creatures they heard.

As much as I liked reading about the various characters in this novella, there were so many of them that only the protagonist was given a chance to become more well rounded. Even then, I didn’t feel like I got to know Albert as deeply as I would have liked to due to the relatively short length of this piece and how much was going on with the plot. With stronger character development, this could have been a four or five-star work as the storyline and themes themselves were fantastic.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that provided scientific explanations for why things like orbs sometimes appear in photos and why certain types of people are more – or less – likely to believe in conspiracy theories and the paranormal in general. There are many different reasons why strange things happen and why people can have a wide variety of responses to the same event. I thought these passages treated both believers and skeptics fairly and assumed the best of everyone. That makes these sorts of stories so much more interesting to read as I knew the author had good intentions and wanted everyone to think critically about what they’ve read, heard, or maybe even seen with their own two eyes.

Paranormal Jelly: An Anthology of Whimsical Narratives Regarding the Comical Facets of the Occult kept me guessing.