Supernatural experiences - an aspie thing?

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Jabberwokky
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03 Nov 2014, 5:41 am

I'm wondering if experiences of the supernatural happens to aspies more than normal people. Of course, if you have never experienced the supernatural directly and don't believe it exists then I would take that as a 'no'.

An example of my own experiences of the supernatural was today. Of course, what happened might be regarded as coincidence but I'll leave that for you to decide.

Until today I have never (in 46 years) been involved in a vehicle accident. I left the office today and the vehicle door light came on and the 'door not closed properly' alarm came on and wouldn't go away. Its never done that before. About 500m down the road, I'm the front car in a 3-car nose-to-tail crash. Nothing life threatening but extensive damage to the back of the car.

I also have a frequent sense of knowing that allows me to 'navigate' in the corporate world. It more than compensates for my social deficits as an aspie. I also have a strange relationship with the 1 December. I start jobs or resign from jobs on 1 December (on multiple occasions) and my father died on the 1 December. There are many reasons why this may be coincidental but I'm not so sure. I also dream of places and then I find myself in those places at a later time.

There is a whole lot more I could relate about my supernatural experiences in life but I'm more interested to know if there is a tendency for aspies to be more affected, aware of or inclined to the supernatural?

Of course, if these things did not happen to me I would be very skeptical of others who make such claims. In other words, if you are very skeptical of claims of the supernatural, I fully understand your position. Maybe I am merely a little too imaginative?


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nerdygirl
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03 Nov 2014, 5:57 am

I don't think experiences with the supernatural are an AS thing. I know plenty of NTs who also experience such things.

I have also experienced various sorts of things that many people would chalk up to coincidence. But there are too many details that are needed to be "right" for such things to be a coincidence. My list is very long.

In addition to these random occurrences, I have also had dreams and have had *very* strong impressions that I needed to do or say something at a particular moment. Also, I have knowledge about things that I didn't get from experience or a conversation - how do I just "know" these things, like facts about people.



seaturtleisland
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03 Nov 2014, 6:57 am

I wish supernatural experiences were an AS thing. Where do I sign up?

Nope. I'm completely unsusceptible to those kind of experiences and I can't help but believe in the supernatural. I had a lifelong obsession with it so it was very hard not to have those experiences. It was so hard that I tried to kill myself over it.

Supernatural experiences are an aspie thing? Can I go back in time and not overdose now? Oh wait they aren't an Aspie thing. That's why that had to happen and I had to adjust.

So to answer your question: No.



Nambo
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03 Nov 2014, 7:05 am

I've had a supernatural experience that was so profound it's unbelievable and I wouldn't dare admit to this community due to the ridicule some members are prone to.



anthropic_principle
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03 Nov 2014, 7:22 am

so what, these coincidences you automatically classify as supernatural? why?
coincidences happen all the time... you just attribute some sort of 'supernatural cause' to it because it happened to you so it must be significant or special right?
also.. think of all the things that you've experienced that have been mundane.. coincidences are likely to crop up here and there and those are the things you take note of but not the boring things.



seaturtleisland
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03 Nov 2014, 7:29 am

Nambo wrote:
I've had a supernatural experience that was so profound it's unbelievable and I wouldn't dare admit to this community due to the ridicule some members are prone to.


I wouldn't ridicule you. I'm not sure if I could defend you because the skeptics aren't technically wrong. In fact they make more sense than I do. I'm just inclined to believe in things when I have no rational reason to. I definitely wouldn't ridicule you though.



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03 Nov 2014, 7:33 am

My classmates talk about they supernatural experiences, so it's not an aspie thing.



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03 Nov 2014, 7:49 am

I've had multiple supernatural experiences. I DO NOT TALK ABOUT THEM.

I think anyone can have a supernatural experience. It's not an ASD thing, though I have before heard it hinted that some of us might be more likely to "listen" than the average NT.

Word of warning: Be extremely careful in talking about it. We tend to understand that stuff differently than NTs. We're more likely to take it, or anyway express it, as literally real. We're less likely to remember to express uncertainty about it all. We're less likely to be concerned about what others will think, less likely to be careful who we tell and how we tell it. And because of all that, we're a lot more likely to have a supernatural experience perceived, and treated, as a hallucination or delusion. Be very, very skeptical and very, very, very wary.


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03 Nov 2014, 9:18 am

I think people on the spectrum tend to be more aware of things others aren't. Different sounds, changes in temperature etc and mentally cataloging minute things, that give us more of a sixth sense felling.



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03 Nov 2014, 9:29 am

Jabberwokky wrote:
Supernatural experiences - an aspie thing?

Not exclusively. Many toddlers, drunks, drug users, schizophrenics, dropouts, and ignorant riff-raff also report having "Suprnatural" experiences.


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vickygleitz
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03 Nov 2014, 10:07 am

I think as with y AS traits, we tend to be much more or much less attuned to the supernatural, Very few in between.



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03 Nov 2014, 11:06 am

I would think aspies in general would be more skeptical about supernatural experiences - depending on what you mean by that. Encounters with ghosts? Space aliens? Leprechauns? I know I'm skeptical about such things anyway. Nearly 100% of the time people who thought their homes were haunted it turned out the strange sounds or whatever were made by animals infesting their walls. And sometimes is a somewhat higher life form...
I once heard a story on TV about a woman who'd kept coming home after work to find her house a mess with eaten food and cigarette butts everywhere, and there was no sign of forced entry at all. She thought it was crazy but maybe it was ghosts (which people seem to jump to when they don't have any other explanation). it turned out that her home had an infestation of the worst kind of vermin: teenagers! They somehow found they get into her attic through an open window at night. They would hide up there until she left for work and then make like Goldilocks. :lol:



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03 Nov 2014, 12:36 pm

Jabberwokky wrote:

Until today I have never (in 46 years) been involved in a vehicle accident. I left the office today and the vehicle door light came on and the 'door not closed properly' alarm came on and wouldn't go away. Its never done that before. About 500m down the road, I'm the front car in a 3-car nose-to-tail crash. Nothing life threatening but extensive damage to the back of the car.

I have no trouble believing this. To be honest, reading it I was expecting some major payoff. You were in a car accident, you weren't hurt, you didn't shut a door properly or a sensor stopped working.



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03 Nov 2014, 12:46 pm

Jabberwokky wrote:
Until today I have never (in 46 years) been involved in a vehicle accident. I left the office today and the vehicle door light came on and the 'door not closed properly' alarm came on and wouldn't go away. Its never done that before. About 500m down the road, I'm the front car in a 3-car nose-to-tail crash. Nothing life threatening but extensive damage to the back of the car.


Not supernatural and not even really a coincidence. Two unrelated things just happened to your car on the same day. Or maybe they actually are related and your car had some sort of technical malfunction which both caused the door alarm and contributed to the crash.

Quote:
I also have a frequent sense of knowing that allows me to 'navigate' in the corporate world. It more than compensates for my social deficits as an aspie.

That isn't supernatural. It's knowledge (which may be subconscious knowledge) that accumulates with experience. EzraS notes this. It might feel uncanny but it's grounded in sensory experience.

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I also have a strange relationship with the 1 December. I start jobs or resign from jobs on 1 December (on multiple occasions) and my father died on the 1 December. There are many reasons why this may be coincidental but I'm not so sure.

Not a coincidence since you are in charge of when you start or resign from jobs. Although the employer tends to set the start date, you set the time for when you most aggresively job hunt and it you go all out in Fall, a start date of Dec 1 is pretty likely. You are probably doing this subconsciously.

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I also dream of places and then I find myself in those places at a later time.

Or you make plans subconsciously but follow through on those plans consciously

Quote:
There is a whole lot more I could relate about my supernatural experiences in life but I'm more interested to know if there is a tendency for aspies to be more affected, aware of or inclined to the supernatural?


Less, actually. Or at least some research has shown that aspies are less likely than NTs to attribute supernatural rather than naturalistic explanations for things.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs ... eir-lives/
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Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger?s syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the "Bering in Mind" blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American MIND), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened?for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger?s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response?for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.


Don't just read the article. Read the comments too, which start with a shout-out to wrongplanet and progress nicely from there.



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03 Nov 2014, 1:00 pm

Not an Aspie thing, but apparently autistic teens tend to have a lot of schizotypal traits, which may suggest that it is a statistical tendency. Just not a definitive thing, and certainly not something that comes to mind when autistic people come up in conversation.

As far as genuine supernatural experiences, I find that this tends to be a matter of interpretation as to whether genuine experiences can even happen, let alone whether they've happened to anyone in particular.



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03 Nov 2014, 1:05 pm

Jabberwokky wrote:
Until today I have never (in 46 years) been involved in a vehicle accident. I left the office today and the vehicle door light came on and the 'door not closed properly' alarm came on and wouldn't go away. Its never done that before. About 500m down the road, I'm the front car in a 3-car nose-to-tail crash. Nothing life threatening but extensive damage to the back of the car.

My opinion? You were distracted by the noise, light and thinking about them so you didn't pay enough attention to the road. Then you either hit the brake too fast or speed up too slow(depending what was the cause) so the driver behind you had no chance to react.
Or perhaps there was something stuck between the door and the car. The driver behind you seen it and got distracted so he didn't pay attention.
Either way - it has plenty of not supernatural reason-result explanations.


But I can get what you mean. I was "experiencing" supernatual things for a long time, with the peak when I was a teenager - I could see future in my dreams. Literal interpretation, without using dream symbolism books. The dreams were coming true within max 3 days so it wasn't an "everything is going to happen someday" deal. For example I dreamed about a supermarket roof falling down at people inside and 2 days later I heared in the News that a market hall roof just collapsed and they are trying to rescue people buried inside.

Currently I think dreams like that were just coincidence and overinterpretation. After dream like this I was obsessively watching and reading News to see if it comes true and it wasn't so hard to find something...

BTW. All guys I ever dated were born either 4,5 or 6th of April. I had no idea about it when I agreed to date them(they fell in love with me and asked me out). I acknowledged it much later.
But since there was only 3 of them it might be a coincidence. Or perhaps I attract people born in early April because they all are influenced by some thing. Perhaps having birthday soon after Prima Aprilis makes you easygoing enough to date someone so hard to deal with as me? xD I imagine they might hear "Good joke, dude." quite a lot when they were asking people to comer to their birthday parties. And they must be getting some weird gifts too. Or maybe its just springtime that makes them that way. They were born with the Sun and watched the world more and more colorful everyday and every day longer and warmer than the previous one. It might affect their personality and life choices. I am just a poor late autumn child, I was born in middle of night, 1st day of snowfall. I seen nothing but darkness, white and cold for the first months of my life. I was also stuck inside house because parents were afraid of me catching a cold. Maybe the spring boys subconsciously want to give me some of the Sun and colors they experienced and thats why they choose me and I agree because I want the Sun and colors they bring? Too bad it never works out in the end... :lol: