In his book The Soul of Autism, Bill Stillman describes dozens of stories of people with autism spectrum disorder who have had to deal with all sorts of abnormal or mysterious (call it whatever) phenomena.
Silman, himself suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, writes of these experiences with a thorough understanding of the subject. Another author, Donna Williams, who also suffers from autism spectrum disorder, describes her own story and experiences very unusual for most of us, which she associates with heightened sensory sensitivity and the fluid boundaries between what we consider "normal" and "abnormal."
Even people with savant syndrome (who have extraordinary abilities and make up about 10 percent of all autistic people) practically do not encounter the abnormal phenomena, which will be discussed below.
A large-scale study of the 1970s identified only a few children whose parents insisted on anomalous events associated with their daughter or son. A similar study of recent times has also shown that such cases are rare.
Probably, such statistics reflect the real difference in the processing of sensory information by different people and, as a consequence, a different sense of their own "I".
The collected evidence confirms that people with autism spectrum disorder (or, in this case, with impaired perception of sensory information), from early childhood are forced to cope with a powerful flow of sensory information that their minds are unable to filter out.
For them, the boundaries between “outside” and “inside” are much thinner and more fragile than for most of us. Such people easily immerse themselves in their own inner world, fencing off from external stimuli and hardly communicating with the real world and real people.
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The following story can serve as the clearest illustration:
With 58-year-old Briton Matthew Manning, starting from the age of eleven, abnormal phenomena began to occur. It all started with moving cutlery, mugs and flower pots all of a sudden. At the age of 15, it came to flying furniture and flying household items in the old (18th century) house of the Manning family in Cambridgeshire.
Further more. On the walls of Manning's bedroom, "messages" from long-dead people began to appear. There were several hundred of them, and all were scribbled in different handwritings.
The first letter was signed with the name of Robert Webb, who lived in the 17th century. Judging by the inscription, this "spirit" did not even suspect that he had left the world of the living long ago.
One day, Menning's father took his entire family out into the garden, after locking his son's room and leaving a pencil on his bed. Ten minutes later they returned and found a fresh inscription.
But this is not the strangest thing in this story. The Menning family moved to another house, after which the anomalous activity, in the words of Brother Matthew, “exploded like a volcano. When it became completely unbearable, I moved to my sister's room. Since we had just moved, there were no carpets in the house, and this made the poltergeist even more noise: there were constantly spanking, stamping and crashing sounds. We did not find any reasonable explanation for these sounds. But we just wanted it all to stop."
After a while, Matthew went to study at a closed boarding school and his family members were able to breathe freely. However, similar problems soon began at school. One of Menning's former classmates recalls:
“Our bedroom had 24 bunk beds. And everyone saw how it happened. It is not known where the water came from. I remember how my bed suddenly began to move, although there was no one next to it. Once right out of thin air, out of nowhere, plates began to fall and break. Where did they come from? Matthew himself was mortally frightened. I was so terrified that it was impossible to convey. It is impossible to believe in it if you do not see it with your own eyes.
But the story doesn't end there. Matthew was writing an essay and suddenly found that his own hand was suddenly tracing words in an unfamiliar handwriting. "Mostly they were nonsense, but then I suddenly started writing in Chinese and Arabic … These languages, as far as I know, could not be in my subconscious."
A similar story happened with painting. Matthew himself is not endowed with great artistic talent. However, again under the influence of an unknown force, he painted several paintings in different styles, reminiscent of the work of completely different masters, from Albrecht Durer to Pablo Picasso. And although, according to experienced experts, small errors can be found in small details, on the whole it is a strikingly accurate imitation of the creative manner of the great painters.
As a child, Matthew's autism symptoms were especially pronounced. Psychologist Peter Bander recalls that he was “an introvert who completely refused to talk to strangers. If he was scolded for his pranks, he would sit in a corner and sit there, sometimes for many hours, all alone. " The boarding school teacher describes him as "a loner and apathetic boy."
It is also necessary to mention the memories of Matthew's mother of how, three weeks before his birth, she suffered a severe electric shock and almost lost her son.
How this is connected (and whether it is connected) with his anomalous experiences is difficult to say.
