New Arrival Autism and the Supernatural

Experiential Dimensions of Religiosity, Spirituality and Imagination

This book explores the relation between autistic cognition and the formation of supernatural beliefs in 17 autistic, young adults who all define themselves as religious and/or spiritual.

How do people come to experience invisible beings as real social presences? And what happens when those experiences emerge in minds that are assumed to struggle with social imagination?

In Autism and the Supernatural, Ingela Visuri explores the richly textured worlds of autistic young adults who describe vivid relationships with gods, spirits, ghosts, fictional characters, and unseen companions. Drawing on immersive ethnography in secular Sweden, the book follows participants who experience intimate relations, sensory experiences, and parasocial bonds that blur the boundaries between imagination, religion and everyday life.

A central assumption within the