The supernatural in adolescents: Dealing with a contested feature

Some uneasy and dissatisfaction with current research on perceptions of supernatural in certain stages of children and youth development has motivated a search for an alternative approach that could be built on new empirical data and a method that could help to better assess how pre- and adolescents relate to extraordinary and supernatural phenomena. An exploratory survey has been designed on an ad hoc instrument, fitted for that age span and the research goals. The outcomes point to the persistence of these perceptions and interests in that age, their close relatedness with indicators of religiosity, and their slowly vanishing when growing up. More research is needed to better ascertain the role this factor still plays in religious and spiritual development despite the very secular context in which often those beliefs are held.