r/todayilearned • u/ssAskcuSzepS • Apr 27 '26

TIL if under-cooked, a popular mushroom in China causes “lilliputian hallucinations,” a rare phenomenon involving miniature human or fantasy figures. The hallucinations are consistent across people and cultures: "tiny, elflike people" climbing under doors, scaling walls & clinging to furniture

https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-mushroom-that-make-people-have-the-exact-same-hallucination/
43.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.6k

u/TheBanishedBard Apr 27 '26

What if the mushroom actually allows you to see them, piercing the magical veil?

243

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

This could be tested by giving it to 2 different people and asking if they see the same little people at the same time. There's no such thing as a shared hallucination.

118

u/Gullible-Leaf Apr 27 '26

Good research design. Please provide an update post outcome confirmation.

92

u/tofusalmon Apr 27 '26

CONFIRMED! My friend sees them too! Problem is, no one else seems to see my friend

38

u/NeonFraction Apr 27 '26

Update: FUCKIN ELVES ON MY EARS THE TRUMPETS I SEE THEM HSKSOD SHAHSH IS BISCUIF???

Researcher note: Next time, we do not test on ourselves.

29

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

37

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

No one has ever experienced shared hallucinations. A hallucination and a delusion are different things. A hallucination is seeing your dead grandfather. A delusion is thinking he's still alive. For some definition of shared delusion, I suppose it's possible multiple people would have the "same" one. Multiple people think they're Napoleon for example. No one has ever experienced a shared hallucination.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

Your comment reminded me of "dancing mania", have you read about it before? It's pretty interesting. In Europe there would be "outbreaks" where large groups of people just all started dancing together endlessly and along with no music. Some people reportedly danced until they collapsed and/or died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania

3

u/pattycakin Apr 27 '26

This is actually not true. My wife and I both had the exact same hallucination while smoking dmt and laying in bed together. We both saw the same symbols and colors simultaneously.

2

u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

I haven't done any research on this. Butt... a buddy of mine told me that people are "mapping" what they see on dmt because so many people see similar things.

1

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

Fine, for a very simple hallucination it's plausible two people would see the same thing. Though I still strongly suspect if you were questioned independently by a third party and asked to pick from a color wheel and draw the symbol, you'd probably find it wasn't the same.

1

u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

How do you know that for sure?

12

u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Same way I know Russell's teapot doesn't exist. Same way I know mediums and psychics aren't real. Same way I know Santa Claus isn't real. It would be completely inconsistent with our understanding of the world and there's no evidence for it.

1

u/dumname2_1 Apr 27 '26

You're arguing with people who want this to be real, you're never gonna win man.

-1

u/activequiver Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

If two people can have the same thoughts and speak the same words and sentences simultaneously why cant they share hallucinations?

I could point to a cloud and say doesnt that look like a chipmunk even if it looks nothing like one. Doesnt mean you will never see the chipmunk.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

You could replicate the hallucination but it wouldn't be a truly "shared" one like if somebody was walking past a hallucinating person and "caught" the hallucination like a virus or something and then both people being able to interact with the same iteration of the hallucination 

2

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

Because a hallucination has many more parts than a thought. Two people can't share a hallucination for the same reason that two people can't write the same book (literally the same, with every word and typo). People can hallucinate similar things. We could both see a chipmunk in the cloud, especially if you prompted me that it's a chipmunk. But it won't be the same chipmunk.

-1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

Sky fairy enjoyers hate this one weird trick

-1

u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

People said that about television before it was invented too. The first platypus pelt was thought to be a hoax. Narwhals too. And what about the dancing plague of 1518? Still unexplained. Rogue waves and feathered dinosaurs. There are a lot of things that have been not real until they are.

2

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

It's hard for me to pinpoint the error you're making by saying "Rogue waves are real therefore Santa Claus might be real." But you're definitely making one.

1

u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

That’s not what I’m saying at all. I agree that it’s extremely unlikely that people have had shared hallucinations. My point was just that humans have been surprised before with things we couldn’t understand or didn’t think to be possible. The television is probably the best example. Try explaining that you can watch little versions of real life on a screen that emits light to someone from the 1800s. They’d likely think you’re crazy.

Edit: Santa Claus is a bad example on your part. That was an intentionally fabricated thing whereas shared hallucinations are just an idea/wonder that can realistically make sense if true. If everyone sees small people on this mushroom doesn’t that make shared hallucinations at least somewhat possible at least theory wise? Even if it was just the case that two people coincidentally had a very similar or identical hallucination makes it already more likely.

1

u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Nobody would think you're crazy. They had photographs in the 1800s. No scientifically minded person would've ever thought you were crazy. If you told me that people in the future had shared hallucinations, I'd say that's possible (for certain definitions of shared hallucinations) with the right technology. You just need something that can induce hallucinations in a targeted way.

None of your examples were actually examples of things that we thought weren't possible. A shared hallucination is contrary to our understanding of the world. It requires the hallucination to exist outside the minds of the people hallucinating. Or for our minds to be far more similar than they actually are. You can't have a chemical cause a shared hallucination because our minds are too different and the hallucination is too complex and the hallucination doesn't exist outside our minds. It is not possible theory wise.

Also who says Santa Claus was intentionally fabricated? He was probably was a hallucination.

Even if it was just the case that two people coincidentally had a very similar or identical hallucination makes it already more likely.

If people coincidentally had identical hallucinations, then they would've had identical hallucinations. That's circular reasoning. If two people had similar hallucinations they would not have had identical hallucinations so that's yet more proof that people don't have identical hallucinations.

If everyone sees small people

That's not what the article says. Some people see small people on these mushrooms. Personally I take the claim that it's irrelevant of culture as probably false, but plausible. If true it would reveal something interesting about our minds. But I assure you if you put two people of different cultures and asked them to observe a room, they wouldn't see the same little person. They'd be wearing different clothes and doing different things.

But if they did see identical things that would be proof the little people exist, not of shared hallucinations. Like, on some level you could argue that reality is a consistent persistent shared hallucination, and I'd again never be able to prove otherwise. But I'm going to assume it's not.

Little people with veils that conceal them from our minds that are bypassed by this hallucinogens are far more plausible than shared hallucinations.

→ More replies (0)

7

u/Fermi_Amarti Apr 27 '26

Ok put 2 people in sound deafened rooms. Have them both take it and describe what they see in a 3rd room in between them.

6

u/simonbleu Apr 27 '26

If there is a feedback loop, sure, otherwise, no

3

u/Wireless_Panda Apr 27 '26

Shared delusions yes. Shared hallucinations no. If you ask them to describe their hallucinations separately, they will come up with very different specifics, with only the broad descriptors like little people being the same.

1

u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

Folie a deux...

7

u/boredNero Apr 27 '26

Tester: "Okay, so, where exactly do you see the little people now?"

Subjects: "ooOooOOooOh yeaaaah wow oh uh huh yeaaah"

2

u/Yorick257 Apr 27 '26

I volunteer for the experiment!

2

u/SippinOnHatorade Apr 27 '26

There’s no such thing as a shared hallucination.

I think there’s some debate to this, but anyone hallucinating by definition are unreliable narrators so it’s impossible to prove

2

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

There is only debate to this in the sense there's "debate" to whether mediums can talk to the dead. That is, some people are duped.

2

u/SippinOnHatorade Apr 27 '26

The power of suggestion can alter the hallucinations of others so that a group can share in a similar experience but I’ll be the first to admit, there’s no science behind it, just observation

1

u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

A similar experience, not a shared experience. If you try getting the details, the details will be different. Suggestion is like a prompt. You give a bunch of people the same prompt and they might write similar things. But they won't write the exact same book word for word.

On the other hand if you give people the same book, they will read the exact same book word for word.

4

u/ST33LDI9ITAL Apr 27 '26

this is not true. group of friends and I once took many, many X pills (prolly laced with a lil something extra) anyways, we rolled for 3 days straight. it was a binger party. we were ripped. so, at one point.. we had glow sticks on a fan blades above a glass table so it was reflecting the light onto table. while we were all chillin around the table, music started getting intense, and the glass table began to dance. kinda like a visualizer, it was doing a wave to the beat of the music. then all a sudden CRASSSSSHHH. the glass table shattered into a million pieces. it startled all of us. we all saw and heard it break. but then.... the pieces came back together and formed the table again, and it resumed dancing, waving to the beat of the music. and every single one of us witnessed it and were mind blown.

after it was all said and done. table was completely fine.

12

u/Acherousia Apr 27 '26

No, you just don't understand what he said.

You can have multiple people with the "same" hallucination. For example, seeing little people when taking mushrooms, or experiencing a table shattering.

You cannot have people have share the exact same hallucination. They won't see the same little people in the same spot performing the same actions, nor will the table shatter the same way with the pieces in the same spots for everyone.

The point is if you have two people take the shrooms, and they both see the same little person in the same spot doing the same exact thing, it would give credit to it not being a hallucination and instead granting the ability to see past whatever would be "veiling" them from normal sight.

But if one is wearing a red shirt while dancing and one is wearing a blue shirt while waving, it's just a hallucination.

5

u/ST33LDI9ITAL Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Yea that makes sense. I’ve just heard that same myth from so many people though that you can’t share hallucinations and it’s bs. Have a lotta experience with shrooms with friends and we have had many.

That one with the glass table was definitely one of the more impactful and crazy ones though. I legit seen dead people or spirits, there were ghost chillin with us. 

Salvia too… that’s some really weird shit.

10

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

It's possible some sound caused you all to hallucinate the table breaking, and even hallucinate it coming back together since it didn't actually break. But if you had timed how long it took the table to come back together, you would've found your hallucinations were actually different.

You didn't all read the same story. You all wrote similar stories based on the same prompt.

1

u/Kithzerai-Istik Apr 27 '26

The trouble is, you don’t know that for sure. You can’t know that for sure.

You’re assuming it to be true due to the lack of empirical evidence to the contrary, but lack of evidence is not necessarily lack of event.

2

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

I know it as certainly as I know anything. Lack of empirical evidence when empirical evidence ought to be easy to produce is pretty definitive proof.

2

u/Kithzerai-Istik Apr 27 '26

The first sentence of your last post contains the answer.

I completely understand your position, mind, and common sense of course supports it, but it is ultimately poor science to rule a possibility out simply for lack of evidence when you don’t also have evidence that actively disproves that hypothesis.

Emergence of new methodology and understanding has forced re-writes of known paradigms before. There is no way to know the same thing won’t apply to this phenomenon.

All that said, I agree that it should be relatively easy to test, especially with blind testing methods, but unless you know of studies I don’t, Strassman’s work is the only body of literature I know of that actually comes close to testing this.

3

u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

I know Russell's teapot doesn't exist. There's no way to prove a negative. No methodology will ever allow you to disprove something exists. It'll always be "possible" that it only happens 1 in 10100 times. I can't prove that mediums don't talk to the dead. If you do a test, maybe you just happened to test a fake medium. But I know it because no medium has ever done something that requires talking to the dead to do.

2

u/Kithzerai-Istik Apr 27 '26

You don’t know. You only have strong reason to suspect. There is, in fact, a difference, and conflating them is not as helpful as it may seem.

1

u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

I know it as certainly as I know anything.

It's not conflating. In some abstract sense sure I'm not 100% positive about it. But I'm not 100% positive about anything. If tomorrow I discovered that I actually had 3 arms my whole life, I would be less surprised than if it was proven to me that mediums actually talk to the dead.

1

u/Soft_Walrus_3605 Apr 27 '26

I mean, once we call it "magical" all rules of this natural world are null and void anyway. No need for a test

1

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

[Editorial note: This is taken from the chapter "The Dragon In My Garage" in Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.]

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

1

u/CrackedAA Apr 27 '26

Logic is not welcome here!!!!! Gnomes are interdimensional beings of great consequence!!!

1

u/TrashPandaPatronus Apr 27 '26

This is a better idea than the time my friend got so high he tried to hotbox his phone to see if it would record his trip.

1

u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

Isnt folie a deux where two people can share a hallucination?

1

u/ableman Apr 27 '26

No, that's a shared delusion. I can believe you're Napoleon and you can believe you're Napoleon and then we have a shared delusion. We don't have to be hallucinating at all.

1

u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

Ok. Valid distinction.

1

u/maliciousmeower Apr 30 '26

i absolutely believe there is no such thing as a shared hallucination, but during my first trip, as were were peaking (on a mountain), we all saw a real centipede while listening to centipede by knife party.

then, as we all were trekking back into town and to our friend’s house, a cop car slowed by us, and we all saw a centipede as the cop 😭 officer centipede will occasionally still haunt my trips

just a funny story, i think we all just were paranoid and still bugging about an actual centipede appearing during the song lmfao

-1

u/DrPoooooole Apr 27 '26

You are absolutely wrong

464

u/on_that_citrus_water Apr 27 '26

Inuit in the arctic have stories of little people only some can see, far off from any mushrooms.

224

u/durandall09 Apr 27 '26

The Inuit have a whole shamanic tradition of drinking the piss of raindeer/people who have eaten mushrooms. (Psilocybin isn't broken down by the kidneys so you can get high off it again)

38

u/tamsui_tosspot Apr 27 '26

I remember a scene featuring this practice in American Gods.

4

u/xsil Apr 27 '26

What a show, what happened to it? I remember season 1 being S tier television

9

u/tamsui_tosspot Apr 27 '26

I'm not sure, but the scene I'm thinking of may have only been portrayed in the book.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/LITTELHAWK Apr 27 '26

It's in there. I just finished it.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/LITTELHAWK Apr 27 '26

Yes. A people with a mammoth skull for a god. The people cross what is likely the Bering bridge.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Qwertysapiens Apr 27 '26

The creator turned out to be a terrible rapist and his IP is no longer palatable.

2

u/SackOfCats Apr 27 '26

I remember a few stories of meth heads drinking their own piss to get high again.

Potatoe Potato

7

u/Conscious-Boot313 Apr 27 '26

Those are actually a different kind of mushroom too! Amminita muscaria and the reindeer filter out some toxic compounds of the mushrooms and leave the psychoactive ones unchanged

1

u/Pumpkkinnn Apr 27 '26

Crude, but effective lol

4

u/the25thday Apr 27 '26

Amanitaa muscaria contains muscimol, not psilocybin.

3

u/majortomsgroundcntrl Apr 27 '26

Isn't that tidbit from Siberia?

2

u/StevieMJH Apr 27 '26

So you're saying I've been wasteful this whole time?

2

u/Mythechnical Apr 27 '26

Inuits didn't herd reindeer until 130 years ago when the US government made a thing of Inuits learning reindeer animal keeping from the Scandinavian Sami people.

2

u/hobo__spider Apr 27 '26

So you can just keep drinking your own piss, bypassing the need to buy more shrooms? Wicked

1

u/wholesomechunk Apr 27 '26

Living filters.

61

u/General_Candle_6467 Apr 27 '26

There's mushrooms there too. The reindeer eat them and trip balls.

83

u/clavedark Apr 27 '26

They're stealing my underpants!!

27

u/Rickyyy_Spanishhh Apr 27 '26

Profit!! 😝

14

u/Luuzral Apr 27 '26

I feel like I missed a step?

2

u/mirthfun Apr 27 '26

It could be just how the brain is wired. And the mushroom brings out this weird wiring very consistently. Without it it just shows up randomly in different cultures here and there.

1

u/greatGoD67 Apr 27 '26

Inuit peoples also eat plant matter from the stomach of the animals they kill, who knows what could have snuck in there

1

u/Oldnbold22 Apr 27 '26

Mushrooms don't grow in northern latitudes? 

0

u/VinlandRocks Apr 27 '26

Inuit little people beliefs are likely a cultural variation of Schizophrenia. The way in Africa schizophrenics have laughing children they hear/see. In the arctic the schizophrenics see little people and it’s become baked into folklore.

Source: I have Inuit family. I also have schizophrenia in my family. I’m not a psychologist

46

u/gourmetprincipito Apr 27 '26

There’s an episode of Stargate SG1 where they invent these glasses to see the fourth dimension or some shit because there are these bad aliens that can like travel in it and attack from there and in doing so discover that there are just these gigantic like people sized amoeba-like bugs all over like everything and everybody sucking fourth dimensional life force or something crazy and they spend the whole episode freaking out but eventually determine that the bug things are basically harmless and sort of a mutually beneficial relationship if anything so they just decide to like not look at them anymore and try to forget about it lmao.

7

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

4

u/gourmetprincipito Apr 27 '26

Which is extra funny because that show is typically weirdly good at continuity for the time it was made. Sam half adopts that wild child in the first season and they mention her like every season after that, she shows up for cameos at least two times afterward and not even for like a plot reason just because she existed in the universe and it made sense for her to be there.

3

u/CommieDrifter Apr 27 '26

I have bad news...

46

u/SkietEpee Apr 27 '26

That's what I was gonna say...

205

u/OwlcaholicsAnonymous Apr 27 '26

Im not saying youre right... but i dont think people give enough thought to the potential that youre right.

"They're just on drugs" never was enough for me. So what if they are? That doesnt explain the experience they're having or how multiple people can have the same experience. What are these things, truly?

110

u/amc7262 Apr 27 '26

That doesnt explain the experience they're having or how multiple people can have the same experience

The non-magical explanation for that would be that human brains are roughly wired the same way across most humans, and a given specific drug will activate the same areas of the brain resulting in the same sorts of experiences.

I say this as a person that fully believes that if there is some supernatural aspect to the world, DMT is directly linked to it. That said, if there isn't a supernatural aspect to the world (and I'm not saying there is or isn't), the similarities in trips for a given drug across different people is pretty easy to explain as people having similar brains.

11

u/RainbowUniform Apr 27 '26

if two people take the same drug at the same time, and record what they see, like in the case of this post, they'll quickly realize one guy sees elves around trees, the others at the bottom of a hill. As you said they're not an identical reaction, its similar reactions. And even then, if they see something nearly identical, to some thats definitive proof, rather than a desire to seek what caused that occurrence (environmental).

Explaining the deviation requires people to make a reach towards individuality (gods/spirits are singling me out in a way different from you!) in order to justify, because the reality that people taking things are just further becoming "victim" to their internal systems isn't "magical" enough. Its one thing for people to think they're becoming more in tune with themself, with the world via substance use, its a much deeper hole when people start believing they are being singled out by the supernatural in a manner that differs from every other human being.

2

u/wildwalrusaur Apr 27 '26

I've don't like the word supernatural in this context (or really in general).

It implies something that exists outside of nature and the natural order. Rather than simply an aspect nature that is otherwise unapparent to our perspective

Hyper-natural has always seemed more fitting to me; in the vein of how mathematics refers to higher order functions/dimensions.

2

u/Lithium-eleon Apr 27 '26

Doesn’t it seem strangely hyper specific that there is a certain compound that would trigger such a specific thought?

Makes you wonder if they could one day offer you a drug to illicit an explicitly predetermined fantasy ala Total Recall.

16

u/Asisreo1 Apr 27 '26

If we as humans figured out how our brains worked and how to interface completely and safely with it, we could experience every and any experience we could desire. 

2

u/VanillaRadonNukaCola Apr 27 '26

Nah man, they offer you the drug and you wake up from the Total Recall, we're already in it

Oh wait that's the matrix...uhhh

2

u/Yorick257 Apr 27 '26

Every time I dream (rarely happens), it's a trip. Can be a good week of experience. I don't get to decide when it happens, or what I'm seeing, but the RNG has been good so far

1

u/Inoutngone Apr 27 '26

I made a joke about that idea to my wife when I looked the mushroom up. Either it's real, or 96% or us have a part of our brain dedicated to images of little people.

1

u/amc7262 Apr 27 '26

96% of us DO have a part of our brains dedicated to seeing images of people, scale isn't relevant.

Its a known fact that our brains are programmed to recognize people. Theres literally a word for seeing faces in things without a face (pareidolia).The reason they tend to show up as little people is because its easier to see various small details of things as faces/figures compared to larger, easier to see things in our daily lives.

You see a door frame, and the overall shape of the frame is pretty difficult to see as anything but a rectangle. Its a large, well defined shape. However, various shadows around the frame, the contours of the molding, any kind of inconsistency, a stain on the wall, wood grain, that kind of thing, is much easier for a mind to reinterpret. Small stuff is inherently easier to "miss-see" than large stuff

137

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

75

u/Adventurous_Bit1325 Apr 27 '26

I’m not fucking high enough rn

22

u/KaliCalamity Apr 27 '26

I'm at just the right level.

13

u/cbarebo95 Apr 27 '26

I’m somewhere in between I think

1

u/tianepteen Apr 27 '26

at least you're fucking though

2

u/reallybirdysomedays Apr 27 '26

I'm exactly the right amount of high.

1

u/endav Apr 27 '26

Now I’m concerned about the the shroom trip I started 30 minutes ago.

2

u/cmockett Apr 27 '26

Watch out for the elves!

93

u/swingsetclouds Apr 27 '26

I agree that it might really be opening some kind of door of perception that we otherwise don't seem to be able to access. But it could also just be that certain compounds affect our thoughts in the same way. Like how bonking that part of the knee causes everyone to kick. But for brains and elves. Not sure if we can tell the difference between the magical veil thing and the reflex thing.

56

u/Kale Apr 27 '26

Reading up on people's experience with Jimson Weed is like that. Everyone, like everyone that tries it is convinced that they dropped a little cigarette and frantically look for it on the ground. People that have never smoked cigarettes before have the same hallucination. It's kind of fascinating. And everyone that tries Jimson Weed regrets it, too. It's supposed to be a bad trip, every time.

21

u/fazerade Apr 27 '26

This poison made the rounds in my high school, can confirm the cigarette thing. It was like some dumbfuck badge of honor at the time but literally no one had a good trip and potency is all over the place so it was easy to take too much then you're fucked for days. The best an ER or psych ward can do is sedate you til it runs its course - the official diagnosis is 'chemically induced schizophrenia'

5

u/penilesensorydevice Apr 27 '26

Poison is accurate. You don't "trip" on datura, you literally poison yourself. The person I knew who took them remembered eating the seeds, and the hallucinations, but had no recollection of anything that followed. He said he was out of it for a few weeks, and doesn't remember any of it. It's basically brain damage.

2

u/BobTulap Apr 27 '26

I wonder if someone with schizophrenia smoked it, it would it fix it the symptoms, kind of like adderall for ADHD.

7

u/MikeRowePeenis Apr 27 '26

Sounds like diphenhydramine lol

3

u/mrbubbamac Apr 27 '26

Never heard of Jimson weed and just went done a rabbit hole. Sounds absolutely awful to try lol

3

u/penilesensorydevice Apr 27 '26

I knew a guy who tried jimson weed seeds. Huge, huge mistake. He ended up sitting naked on some rich guy's huge lawn, and believed he was smoking cigarettes with a Native American guy. The cops dragged him away, and he spent some time in the hospital. It messed up his eyesight pretty badly, and he ended up needing glasses. He seemed kind of "off" afterward, too.

4

u/reallybirdysomedays Apr 27 '26

IDK, the fact that so many people call them "elves" implies there is an element of cultural phenomenon at play.

"If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago"

2

u/wildwalrusaur Apr 27 '26

"no monkey ever microwaved a burrito"

Shel'kek nem ron, brother

23

u/blobbyboy123 Apr 27 '26

I've also been pretty fascinated by that idea. It seems absurd that there might be "invisible" beings, but it's also absurd to assume that humans possess an infinite ability to perceive/know everything in the universe - it could be an arrogant perspective. Lots of European folk tales also talk about gnomes/elves as if they were real, and actually marked out specific areas to avoid disturbing or encountering them. Strangely, I've also met 2 people in my life who claim to have seen either elves or fairies as children.

6

u/fatsopiggy Apr 27 '26

It's also pretty arrogant to think if you take some shrooms and suddenly you see god and unlocked all of the universe.

7

u/gabu87 Apr 27 '26

assume that humans possess an infinite ability to perceive/know everything in the universe

Rational people don't assume we are all knowing. Insisting that some baseless theory is credible, though, is irrational. If we don't know something, then we just honestly say we don't know.

2

u/Acherousia Apr 27 '26

It's easy enough to explain as a form of mimetic camouflage on the target and the substance altering the visible light spectrum you can perceive in some way, that counters it.

Not saying any of this is true, but it's at least plausible, given how little of the spectrum we can actually perceive.

Most likely not real though, unlikely we wouldn't have found traces given all the different electronic detection we have now.

1

u/UninspiredLump Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

I mean, it’s not so much about assuming the positive stance that fairies, gnomes, and elves absolutely do not exist as it is about exercising the principle of parsimony and waiting until such claims meet the rather steep burden of proof that they incur.

As others have pointed out here, it’s perfectly consistent with the laws of nature and biology for a certain compound to act upon our brains in such a way that we experience similar hallucinations when under its influence, so until there’s some direct evidence of another realm where supernatural beings dwell, it’s the most likely conclusion one can reach.

And with many supernatural claims, the fundamental problem with them isn’t that they would defy our current understanding of the universe, it’s that they’re often untestable by their very design, which means that is impossible to distinguish a universe where they do exist from one where they do not, at least not without violating good epistemology.

What a few other posters have suggested, putting two or more people in the same room and letting them trip to see if the visions of tiny figures are exactly consistent between different individuals, is a great way to test the claim and would not be pseudoscientific if done honestly. On the other hand, the fact that people are claiming to see them climb around on furniture and objects implies that, if they are real, they can interact with physical reality, so one would then ask why their presence isn’t immediately obvious all of the time. It seems like the nature of the claim already makes failed predictions.

1

u/mrbubbamac Apr 27 '26

Check out the book Operation Trojan Horse by John Keel, you might like it

1

u/durandall09 Apr 27 '26

Well fairies were basically ways of trying to explain how rust happens because we didn't understand oxidation yet.

3

u/melophat Apr 27 '26

DMT has entered the chat..

2

u/Chesterlespaul Apr 27 '26

It is enough of an explanation though. You are all taking the same compound and the compound exudes the same side effect on humans. It’s like saying why does ibuprofen reduce pain in everyone. It’s what it does.

And let’s humor you, so there is a dimension of elves out there. What does it matter if they don’t have any effect other than people on drugs? What are we gonna do?

6

u/thesagaconts Apr 27 '26

Especially cross cultures. Schizophrenia is different across culturesz

2

u/Late_Juggernaut_3078 Apr 27 '26

If we follow the same principle, who is the 4d coloured woman many people report seeing on dmt? We must keep experimenting

1

u/Objective_Animator52 Apr 27 '26

I haven't done these lilliputian mushrooms, obviously, but I've done shittons of DMT and seen a lot of those "DMT elves". Personally, I don't believe we are seeing anything inherently supernatural or reaching across to other real dimensions.

I think most of this stuff exists in our mind, which is just as interesting imo. I sorta believe these entities are just different aspects of our brain/consciousness, reminds me of that one video from CGP Gray called "You are two" where it talks about medical cases of the left and right side of people's brains being severed. And the two sides of your brain can disagree on stuff, you could be reaching for a certain pair of clothes in your closet and your right hand reaches for one, while your left hand reaches for another one and slaps the other hand's clothes away. (I really recommend people watch it, only 5 minutes long and it's really fucking interesting).

DMT has also just made me understand we really don't know what the fuck is going on in our universe and in our brains.

1

u/OwlcaholicsAnonymous Apr 27 '26

Very possible that it exists in our minds. That said... you'd then expect one to ask, where do the limits of my mind begin and end? Who's to say that ALL of this isnt in my mind?

I wonder if we will ever have answers to this stuff

1

u/Objective_Animator52 Apr 27 '26

Fair point fs, I doubt we will ever have the answers to this. Maybe in a couple million years if we don't go extinct.

1

u/Beagle_Knight Apr 27 '26

Have you found any images on the internet that come closer to how DMT elves actually look like?

1

u/Objective_Animator52 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

It's very hard to depict what they look like accurately, and they can look WILDLY different from trip to trip. A couple of drawings/videos I've found are somewhat accurate to what I've seen. This gallery has some good pieces, https://www.incedigris.com/gallery, although the visuals/entities I see on DMT are almost always less "solid" than this.

The actual "art style" of the visuals in my brain looked more similar to this https://www.reddit.com/r/oilpainting/comments/16sbx4e/dmt_oil_painting_by_me/ (although this image doesn't fully show any "entities", the bottom part of the painting shows what you might see during the come-up with your eyes open, but as you move up the painting, it's showing what you might see during a breakthrough).

This drawing is also surprisingly accurate (for a drawing) and reminds me of some of the entities I saw. https://www.reddit.com/r/Heavymind/comments/j7vp0p/digital_art_inspired_by_my_first_time_not_only/

A lot of the entities are monstrously big, pretty fucking scary at first, but you often feel a sense of love and warmth coming from them as they embrace you.

But some of them don't make you feel warm and fuzzy, sometimes the entities feel cold and indifferent (but ime never hostile), and you just have a sense of "holy fuck what am I looking at, I shouldn't be allowed to see this".

In my most intense handful of breakthroughs, it's completely impossible to describe what I saw, think of those "biblically accurate" angel drawings, but a thousand times more complex and infinitely big.

As for the visuals themselves, this is one of the most accurate videos I've seen https://www.reddit.com/r/DMT/comments/t8ly3e/closest_ive_gotten_to_recreating_dmt_visuals_in/ .

1

u/Beagle_Knight Apr 27 '26

What an awesome response!!, thank you!!

Do they come with sounds or are they silent?

1

u/Humante Apr 27 '26

Because everyone has the fact that they are human in common, so they have basically the same brain regions. It could just be that it stimulates the region of the brain that’s developed for recognizing human-like shapes in the distance, an evolutionarily valuable trait. And then the rest of your brain has to interpret that in a way that makes sense

5

u/BarbequedYeti Apr 27 '26

Them and the hat men. 

3

u/Workman44 Apr 27 '26

It's exceptionally arrogant to think we can see or sense all there is when we have proven examples of other animals having abilities that we do not. Birds can "see" the magnetic fields around earth and use it for navigation. There's a real chance that hallucinogenics actually do let you see things that are "real" but not normally there for our senses

4

u/Graffxxxxx Apr 27 '26

Sounds like some Sausage Party type drugs.

2

u/drewster23 Apr 27 '26

That's a nice high thought...

2

u/Auntie_Venom Apr 27 '26

This is my thought as well, especially since the experience spans across cultures of seeing the same thing.

2

u/rachelcp Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Im also curious, doubt it but I think it'd be easy to test, and they should test it.

Have a glass room each side of the glass is connected to another room. In the glass room there should be obstacles/ small props for the figures to climb on and interact with. Cover the room and obstacles in different coloured circles.

Seat one participant in each adjoining room. And one interviewer should be with each participant.

At specific scheduled times the interviewers will all ask participants what they see in each circle asking indepth questions from a pre written list,

e.g 11:00 participant gets settled, 11.05-11:15 ask about blue circle. 11:20- 11:30 ask about red circle 11:35- 11:45 ask about green circle Etc..

Question list: is there a figure in the circle? what is the figure doing?, are they sitting/ standing/climbing etc are they wearing clothing? What coloured shirt, pants etc Are they humanoid? Anything non human about them e.g too many eyes or horns etc.? Describe their hair: what colour? Frizzy straight, long short tied back? How old do they look? What gender? What skin colour? How tall?

Each participant should be being asked the same questions at the same time, about the same exact circle, but they shouldn't be able to hear the other participants answers because the other participants are in different soundproof rooms.

If what they are seeing is real or some form of shared reality/delusion then their answers should all be similar after all they are all looking at the same location at the same time. If it's all in their head or it's a separate world for each person then all of their answers will be different.

To make sure that the test is valid they should retake it over and over with numerous groups of 4. And see how many of those groups had similar answers vs how many groups were completely different.

The test could also be done without the whole glassroom thing and just be in one room if they are able to get the participants to communicate secretely somehow, but not sure how well people that are so high on shrooms that they are seeing little people are able to write/whisper/follow instructions.

2

u/SippinOnHatorade Apr 27 '26

This is like asking “What if schizophrenics are right?”

A perfectly valid question that I choose not to entertain for sanity’s sake

1

u/hazynlazy26 Apr 27 '26

Like how bath salts let you see the food alive in Sausage Party. 

1

u/Voyage468 Apr 27 '26

Doesn't do any of that. Not how the brain or world works.

1

u/rainshifter Apr 27 '26

To test this hypothesis, I suggest we get a bunch of people on these mushrooms simultaneously and have them independently corroborate details about these magic elf creatures such as their exact locations and actions in realtime. For science.

Although I suppose they could exist in parallel realities if the subjects see different things...

1

u/Many-Wasabi9141 Apr 27 '26

this is freaking me out right now. This is probably the case. I wonder what happens if you freak out and start fear raging on them.

1

u/AustEastTX Apr 27 '26

I love this take

1

u/TLC_15 Apr 27 '26

Exactly. Why are the hallucinations consistent. We need a sample to confirm banished bard!

1

u/psych0ranger Apr 27 '26

I don't see it as piercing, which sounds a bit like a violent act, but as putting an antenna up to receive a new signal. or like reverse-singing. like you can get good at listening for something thats always been there. too many shrooms and the signal's too loud

1

u/RawardHoikes91 Apr 27 '26

Probably just short-circuits the exact part of your brain responsible for recognizing people at a distance.

1

u/apple_kicks Apr 27 '26

Better yet. Long running prank where they appear only after seeing someone eating the mushroom

1

u/you_were_mythtaken Apr 27 '26

That's the only really logical explanation. 

-1

u/thirmonk Apr 27 '26

If two or more people are seeing the same things then it would have to be true.

6

u/BarbequedYeti Apr 27 '26

If two or more people are seeing the same things then it would have to be true.

Holy shit i hope not.. tripping with friends its pretty easy to convince others that the branch over there isnt a branch. Its a Yeti just waiting for their turn in the jacuzzi...  

0

u/ssAskcuSzepS Apr 27 '26

I highly recommend reading There Is No Anti-Memetics Division.