Autism and the Supernatural

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 cognitive science of religion is that belief in invisible agents depends on intuitive mindreading abilities - the human capacity to imagine what others are thinking and intending. Because autism is associated with differences in social cognition, scholars have suggested that autistic individuals would be less likely to form supernatural relationships. The narratives in this book challenge that assumption, as well as the idea that autistic individuals would be less imaginative, in profound ways. Visuri shows how autistic individuals may come to experience invisible others through alternative pathways rooted in sensory perception, narrative immersion, imaginative practice, and embodied experience. Rather than treating autistic religiosity as a deficit or anomaly, the book reveals how supernatural worlds can become emotionally vivid, socially meaningful, and profoundly real. Combining cognitive anthropology, psychology of religion, and neurodiversity studies, Autism and the Supernatural offers a deeply original account of how humans cultivate relationships with invisible beings - and what these invisible relationships reveal about culture, cognition, imagination, and the varieties of human experience.