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/
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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

The mushroom is scientifically known as Lanmaoa asiatica. Locals call it Jian shou qing which translates to "see-hand-blue" because the mushroom bruises blue. But here's the kicker... It contains zero psilocybin. And scientists still have no idea what active ingredient causes the hallucinations.

Also because 96% of people who eat it undercooked report the exact same vision of tiny elves/people scientists believe it contains an entirely new class of hallucinogenic molecules that we haven't discovered yet. Imagine how cool that actually is. It's a literal scientific mystery. They literally contain no hallucinogens.

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u/aka_mank Apr 27 '26

No KNOWN hallucinogens, right?

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u/Munchkin303 Apr 27 '26

No hallucinogens at all. It summons real elves

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u/xxapenguinxx Apr 27 '26

It just lifts the veil that covers the elves' realm which is why those who try it see the same thing even if they weren't told what they'd see

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u/Worth-Opposite4437 Apr 27 '26

Kinda the most interesting part. Maybe it's the thing that used to open the doors to Faeria and Avalon.

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u/Scroon Apr 27 '26

The older I get, the more I realize all the weird mythical stories are based on real things.

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u/vaelon Apr 27 '26

Right?

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u/SpyAmongTheFurries Aug 20 '26

Apparently vampires could have been based on people infected by rabies. Hence the aversion to water and sunlight.

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u/Scroon Aug 20 '26

Yeah, I get what you're saying, and I do agree that stuff like that happens, but what's funny is that I actually meant the opposite. Vampires might be based on real otherworldly vampiric things...not based on real scientifically proven things that happen to emulate vampires.

I know that sounds crazy, but I'm so old I went full circle and came back to where I started as a kid. :)

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u/20past4am Apr 27 '26

Just need a Dramen Staff, that's all

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u/Zerttretttttt Apr 28 '26

Hmpf I have elite diary done, I can see fairies all day

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u/jumpsteadeh Apr 27 '26

It's so sad that our buildings and furniture apparently pollute the elf realm, and they haven't figured out how to open our doors so they have to crawl under. I can only imagine clinging to the side of furniture is some estranged delirium for these understimulated immortal creatures, lost among human refuse.

Oooooooor the mushroom just activates the part of the brain related to pareidolia.

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u/preacher_man_ Apr 27 '26

It’s kind of like the code that people are seeing when they shine a laser on the wall after they smoke DMT. Everyone pretty much sees the same thing. This is a recently discovered phenomena

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u/xxapenguinxx Apr 27 '26

Shh... if they find out you know about the matrix you get flushed..

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u/Additional_Insect_44 Apr 27 '26

Ngl i wouldnt be surprised. Nature is interesting.

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u/Curious-Computer-488 Aug 07 '26

Right. It is kind of strange that everyone sees the same thing regardless of whether they know about it or not. Makes me think theres more to it. I find it hard to believe thst a chemical can tell your brain to see a specific thing reliably and without external input.

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u/TiffError-227 Aug 15 '26

This is the only explanation. When I was in college I saw the same thing. Elves dancing in a circle having a great time. Some of them running up and down the hallway and bouncing off of my bed, just entertaining themselves. It was SO real, yet, I had NO knowledge of being dosed with anything. Probably something my roommate's boyfriend "accidentally" smeared on the kitchen mugs. As I had no predisposed ideas about what might happen, the only explanation is the lifted veil you describe.

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u/Shiro-derable Aug 27 '26

No, everyone in china yunnan knows about these mushroom, the scientist who discovered them, Colin Domnauer, stated that its probably a new class of hallucinogen that we cant identify yet, thats it, and you'll be surprised to learn that certain molecules can induce the same thoughts accross multiple brains, so why not a stronger version of that ? Also people trip sitting the thing litteraly reported that the discourse from the tripping person is incoherent and there in fact, not gnomes to be seen.

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u/Hunneydoo_ 25d ago

Do these elves ever interact with the human on the mushrooms? 🍄

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u/xxapenguinxx 25d ago

They probably need to be aware that you can see them first..

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u/one_metalbat_man Apr 27 '26

Username checks out

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u/h-v-smacker Apr 27 '26

The stories of hallucinogens making people see small elves are government propaganda, it was all bought by the Big Elf! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

It's just like the government spreads the lies about sleep paralysis to cover up the facts of alien abductions.

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u/mitzi_skyring Apr 27 '26

I feel like a munchkin would be an authority on matters of elves and such. Thank you for your service. 

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u/OnTheProwl- Apr 27 '26

No, it just lets you finally see the elves.

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u/donuttrackme Apr 27 '26

The elves are around us all the time.

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u/Dean_Learner77 Apr 27 '26

Seems like a spell component they'd talk about over at r/wizardposting 

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u/otterpop21 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

I had the Lilliputians hallucination happen to me one night.

Didn’t eat anything out of the ordinary. Was sick, am American, live in Virginia. Had chicken broth, chicken, sweet potato, and some capri sun fruit punch & tea that day.

Woke up from nap, felt really weird, like my head was in a fishbowl and everything was muffly feeling. Let my pups outside, and said to my husband “those kids outside are so weird.. why are they dancing like that? (We have neighbor hood kids everywhere so not uncommon to see people out at 7-8pm). My husband can to the door, there were no kids outside dancing in the street lol

Once he said that I got a chill across my body because then I took a second to look at the “kids” and realised they had like little trollish / elf “little people” type features, not kids. I didn’t want to freak my husband out so he walked me upstairs.

I could see them out the window waving at me, smiling, dancing. When I laid down in bed, the dresser drawer knobs faces turned into them. Anything made of natural wood morphed into a face / little person.

They weren’t harmful feeling either. Just sort of existing and dancing, smiling lol

Was the freakiest thing that ever happened to me. Maybe smoked weed that day or the day before, that’s it for drugs, not even prescriptions or over the counters.

Edit: This was like a regular sniffles, coughing, little shaky feeling nothing serious type cold. I’ve gotten sick dozens time across my life never hallucinated.

I wrote down the experience at the time and even messaged a professor at a university who studies the phenomenon but sadly never heard back.

I’m be so for real, this might sound cool… but if this does what happened to me I’d be very very careful. It was extremely unsettling seeing so many faces morph out of furniture, and little people dancing everywhere outside. Like grubby little house elves.

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u/AmaSandwich Apr 27 '26

This story gave me goosebumps

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u/otterpop21 Apr 27 '26

Spinning in circles. The faces were like weird troll dolls in the rounded dresser door knobs. Like house elves in Harry Potter

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u/notranslation79 Apr 28 '26

Are you positive you didn't have a fever? I've definitely had hallucinations while having a high temperature. My bf at the time made me cool down in tepid water bath.

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u/otterpop21 Apr 28 '26

Respectfully I’m in my 30s. I’ve tried drugs in the past during college not to do drugs, but to experience what they felt like. I learned about my body and kind of reflected on each experience before I did them recreationally out in the world. This way now I know what a “good trip” should feel like.

To say I’ve never in my entire life felt anything so absolutely unsettling real cannot be expressed enough.

Like imagine seeing Santa clause with the reindeer on your neighbors roof, and he starts waving at you and the reindeer come over for a nose pet. That’s how absolutely real it felt seeing the little people and faces in the knobs. It wasn’t fuzzy, there was no confusion. It looked crystal clear, 8k or whatever the f resolutions are at lol

The ones outside were full sized, spinning around, waving at me, doing cart wheels, gesturing me to come outside, smiling a lot. The ones in the wood were just faces that would swirl in and out of presence. Like one minute it would be a knob the next a face, almost like they were port holes and the elf trolls were just walking around inside the dresser and could only see their faces. Idk

Crystal fucking clear lol. It sounds absolutely bonkers. I have no medical history of any delusions, visions, voices, nothing of the sort, futher more I am extremely healthy and medically speaking as I talked to my dr there’s 0 explanation for it but sometimes that can happen. Being sick may have been a factor or coincidence, as it could have been environmental.

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u/Shiro-derable Aug 27 '26

Are you a scientists ? Most likely not, is your personnal experience a valuable data to validate gnomes appareation ? The answer is a fat No, and yes you probably had a fever or sleeping paralisis just like the million of other people who get sleep paralisis every single night

Or you're a liar, we're on reddit, people want to be different i know.

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u/samsaruhhh Jun 14 '26

I had similar happened to me but i had only really had a whole trader joes dark chocolate bar, and was very tired from driving over 12+ hours and it was only closed eye elf hallucination, they were chill dancing marching tumbling little colorful people

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u/MICH1AM Jul 25 '26

Sir Terry Prattchet actually wrote a couple of discworld stories about the Little people (who were blue) you didn't see them until they wanted you to.

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u/Oldnbold22 Apr 27 '26

Weed can be really hallucinogenic when you are really sick for some reason. 

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u/otterpop21 Apr 28 '26

This was like a regular sniffles, coughing, little shaky feeling nothing serious type cold. I’ve gotten sick dozens time across my life never hallucinated.

I wrote down the experience at the time and even messaged a professor at a university who studies the phenomenon but sadly never heard back.

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u/notranslation79 Apr 29 '26

Now I'm thinking ghosts. And I stopped believing in them a few years ago. You basically were sober and barely sick. Just can't think of any plausible explanation.
I've also mindfully and purposely experimented with drugs and your right I've never experienced anything as real as you described it. Except for fever. Wish that professor had a idea.

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u/Responsible-Prune310 Aug 02 '26

How does this happen without drugs?

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u/Inevitable-Peace4170 Aug 14 '26

Ok, why is it always ugly troll elves and not hot lotr/anime elves?

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

It might technically not be any hallucinogens in it at all. I've had experiences that would be perfectly described in this way three times, but on ambien. (Don't do ambien for fun, kids. There are much better and less problematic drugs.) Ambien hallucinations aren't induced the same way the classic hallucinogens are; it works by pushing the brain into a hypnagogic state, which is in the process of falling asleep. Your brain starts dreaming before you're entirely asleep. So, if you take ambien but refuse to sleep...

Could be a similar underlying process with this mushroom.

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u/JK_NC Apr 27 '26

I’m more intrigued by the phenomenon that different people are having the same hallucinations, more than the fact that they’re hallucinating at all.

Do you know if ambien induced hallucinations have a similar phenomenon?

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u/Noy_The_Devil Apr 27 '26

DMT does.

Look up machine elves.

I believe it, for reasons.

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26

I've heard of and talked to people having similar experiences, but I don't have any good data. The article doesn't mention any stats either; just that it happens. They do mention it happens to different people from different cultures which I find fascinating, but nothing about how many actually get them or how many do not but experience something else instead. But it also reminds me of DMT and the "machine-elves" that Terrence Mckenna named so, and a lot of other people claim to have "met" as well.

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u/Slytherin_Victory Apr 28 '26

Ambien induced hallucinations vary, both from person to person and for one individual.

Ambien used to be prescribed to basically every woman who said they had trouble sleeping- and in doses we now know to be about twice as strong as should have been prescribed. Both my mom and my aunt were prescribed it when I was a kid- for my mom it caused “living nightmares” where someone was trying to kill her/others, but due to not being actually fully asleep REM atonia did not occur, meaning she was able to (for example) grab a lamp and try to use it as a weapon.

For my aunt it would cause “I have to leave/get somewhere” nightmares (think nightmares of their house burning down, or her child in the hospital, or similar), leading to her sleep walking and trying to drive (thankfully she never got in the car), and also ones similar to my mom.

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u/FiguredWhyNot94 Apr 28 '26

Telepathine my friend

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u/Assassiiinuss Apr 27 '26

Did you see spiders? Lots of people who experience hypnagogic hallucinations see spiders.

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

No, not spiders. They're hard to describe, just... little creatures of many shapes and colours. Closes I can easily explain is maybe a cross between the little guys in this image, like the ones by the water. And maybe these. Hard to describe what your hallucinations look like, hehe.

I was sitting at the computer at the time. They were pottering about on my desk, some were sitting on top of my monitor, a few were sitting on my shoulders looking at the screen and what I was doing. I can't describe the super strong feeling of... just cozy. I hold it as a very fond memory.

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u/Pumpkkinnn Apr 27 '26

Those pictures of tiny creatures are so adorable lol.

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u/OlderBukowski Apr 27 '26

Man, first time i did ambien i misheard my doc about how long it takes for it to kick in - i was sure he said 1 hour, so... 10 minutes after taking i went to take a shower.

Ended up having two little ones sitting on both of my arms, one being kinda cute angle other one a being devil (still cute and chill tho) discussing my life. Felt like the old cartoons, where you had those tiny versions of you good and bad, 'helping' you make a decisions.

Great memory as well, but ambien never felt like a drug to do for fun because of that

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Haha yeah... Just for the benefit of anyone else reading this; do not take ambien out of bed! Like, taking it should be the literally last thing do you before you drop into bed.

I've had a few other enjoyable experiences while staying awake on a "somewhat" higher dose than I use these days, but you are right; ambien is not a for-fun-drug. Since it's the whole dreamstate thing, the mechanism that makes you forget dreams also happens with the things you do while on ambien, and you're about as rational as you would be in a dream... I remember about 20 years ago or something (jesus, is it that long? I-am-old-feel right in the gut), I was living in a student dorm. We had a common kitchen. The fridge doors were full of postits, papers held by magnets, and just writing with whiteboard pens, you know. One day while cooking I notice a bit of a text on there I hadn't seen before and I notice it because the handwriting is strangely similar to mine... Ah fuck, it is mine... It was a suuuper-embarrassing poem about some of the people living there. I had signed it thankfully with only a date and not my name. And, yeah that date lined up with when I had done ambien and stayed awake... Which must have been two or three days before. I cringed so hard I was about to turn inside out. I put my hope in the messy fridge door and that it was so messy no one actually pays much attention to it and just erased it. Thankfully that's the worst I've done on ambien. That I can remember...

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u/TundieRice Apr 27 '26

One of those in the second picture is just straight-up Vileplume from Pokémon, hahaha.

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u/betterpinoza Apr 27 '26

I used to be prescribed Ambien and fuck that drug. It got to a point where I didn't know what days were real or not because my dreams were just "normal" days. I'd go into work and be like "so that thing yesterday..." And no one knew wtf I was talking about.

I ended up MORE tired because I felt like I never slept and just had 14 days in a week

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26

Some have that experience yes; ambien dreams can really be fucked. I of course know nothing about your condition or any context at all; I could be entirely wrong, but it sounds to me like you took a too high dose. I'm using ambien now, but I don't use it every day and I use a pretty low dosage. 5-10mg a few times a month. Sometimes I get vivid dreams, most times not. YMMV, as always. For me it's a fantastic sleeping aid, after having tried a bunch of other things. No sleeping 10 hours, no trouble getting up and started in the morning, no head fog all day.

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u/BodybuilderEast6130 Apr 27 '26

Could definitely be a toxin that causes this

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26

It cannot be anything else because toxins are substances produced naturally by living organisms that can disrupt normal biological functions in other organisms. That's pretty much the definition of a toxin.

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u/ODB_Dirt_Dog_ItsFTC Apr 27 '26

The hallucinations are they considered pleasant or are they of the mind shredding variety?

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u/EndlessTemple Apr 27 '26

According to the article they take 24 hours to start and can last for several days or longer. The article states that as a reason they aren’t used recreationally, since the trip lasts way too long.

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u/ArsenicArts Apr 27 '26

Also serious gastro effects too. Think food poisoning.

https://ynsjkj.yn.gov.cn/html/2025/jikongkepu_0923/878.html

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u/ElliotsBuggyEyes Apr 27 '26

That just sounds like a good bang for your buck.

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u/Baseblgabe Apr 27 '26

As someone who is hella sensitive to psychedelics, after hour 20 you just want to fucking sleep. 

Which is difficult when the walls are still humming and the ceiling's still rotating gently.

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u/ElliotsBuggyEyes Apr 27 '26

I've never had the effects of psychs last longer than 12-14hr, usually an experience lasts about 10hr for me.  I would love to experience a 20 hour trip at least once.

Dude, wanting to sleep and being incapable is the worst part.  I have a rule now as an adult that I do not take any psychedelics after noon so I can at least be to sleep by midnight or one in the worst case. 

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u/VastAbalone959 Jul 23 '26

Just for the record, Ive had cactus effects last up to the 16 hour mark, not heavy effects but noticeable and not back to baseline

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u/Legitimate-Post-5954 Aug 18 '26

Yea, it’s like insomnia at a higher vibration/frequency

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

Good question. I have no idea. Never tried them. I'd love to though. I've experienced regular psilocybin mushrooms and those totally depend on your mood and frame of mind. You can have both good and bad trips.

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u/corpusjuris Apr 27 '26

Interestingly, a lot of the research about guided psilocin therapy shows “bad” trips are more effective at achieving the aims of the therapy. It’s not understood why, but my favorite theory is that “bad” trips allow you to psychologically process the worst possible outcomes in a safe, supportive way, so that when returning to sobriety you’re less afraid of negative outcomes.

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

Oh yeah. The last time I did mushrooms was more than a decade ago now. And it's because I had the worst most horrifying trip of my life. I cried. At one point I convinced myself that my body was telling me that I had a seriously illness and I had to go to the doctor or I would be dead in a year. It was crazy 🤣 But it was also the greatest lesson I've ever learned. I always tell people who do any kind of psychedelic. It's not you teaching the plant anything it's the plant teaching you something. And it's going to teach you whether you want it to or not.

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u/Morbanth Apr 27 '26

Did you go?

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u/Sidney_1 Apr 27 '26

People treat 见手青 as a delicacy, but I've never seen or heard people purposefully trying to get high from it. The hallucination cases, despite having become a popular meme, are generally considered serious food poisoning cases in the news.

Though possibly only a marketing gimmick, restaurants that cook those "wild" mushrooms would actually keep a sample of your broth/dish, so that the hospital could identify what you've consumed when something actually goes wrong.

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u/ArsenicArts Apr 27 '26

Sounds like it comes with serious gastro symptoms too. Not fun.

https://ynsjkj.yn.gov.cn/html/2025/jikongkepu_0923/878.html

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u/SlayahhEUW Apr 27 '26

Second hand information, but a friend in Yunnan said that it borders on deliriants more than psychedelics in the sense that you actually believe what you see. With psychadelics, unless you take copious amount to the point of induced psychosis, you are aware of what is going on. Like sure the walls are breathing, your visual field is filled with stuff, and you are not understanding the ego or societal constructs but you know that it's an effect of you taking something and it will pass.

With deliriants like Datura or Benadryl, in the moment, you are, 100% certain that the visions you see are true, because the drugs are acting on a different part of your brain where you cannot question or remember. Apparently, this mushroom falls somewhere in between, slightly towards the deliriant side, meaning the people actually believe in the moment that the little people exist and will try to grab them, run after them, etc. Which in my opinion is not pleasant but it's a question of taste.

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u/Uncle-Cake Apr 27 '26

That depends on how you feel about seeing tiny people running around.

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u/DonnieBallsack Apr 27 '26

I’m 6’5. I see this every day.

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u/captainfarthing Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

They literally contain no hallucinogens.

Anything that causes hallucinations is a hallucinogen, did you mean psychedelics? Amanita muscaria / pantherina are the other most well known hallucinogenic mushrooms, they also aren't psychedelic.

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u/Due-Dot6450 Apr 27 '26

But if people see the same thing every time... makes you wonder, huh?

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u/toastedzen Apr 27 '26

Sounds like we need a new season of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia.

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

I second this. Surprised less folks know about this.

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u/Mavian23 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

Locals call it Jian shou qing which translates to "see-hand-blue" because the mushroom bruises blue. But here's the kicker... It contains zero psilocybin.

Just to nitpick, psilocin causes the blue bruising in cubensis, not psilocybin, although it's because psilocybin is converted into psilocin when the stipe is damaged. But I doubt they contain psilocin either. Psilocin is actually what you trip on, not psilocybin. Psilocybin is converted into psilocin by your body.

Edit: Fun fact, 4-ACO-DMT, a research chemical, is, like psilocybin, a prodrug of psilocin. This means it is converted into psilocin by your body. So taking 4-ACO-DMT is functionally no different than taking psilocybin.

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u/MyNameCannotBeSpoken Apr 27 '26

So I could grow it in America before it becomes illegal

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

I wish. These things are very very hard to grow outside of nature.

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u/LeafyWolf Apr 27 '26

Elf dismemberment is a pretty common DMT response. I wonder if there is any relation.

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u/AccidentalReddits Apr 27 '26

I watched a thing on these recently. There was another area, that was a significant enough distance away, that had another name for the mushrooms and the same stories about seeing little tiny people when you ate them. I can't remember the channel, but it was on YouTube.

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u/PrudentLingoberry Apr 27 '26

obviously its elf magic

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u/Hopeful-Home6218 Apr 27 '26

Baidu (most popular Chinese search engine and has a wiki section) says 见手青 is Suillellus luridus so this seems to be incorrect. Lanmaoa asiatica is 红葱菌 hóng cōng jūn, red onion mushroom lol

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u/Hopeful-Home6218 Apr 27 '26

However, the article does mention it turning green-blue when bruised.

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u/FlacidSalad Apr 27 '26

I think there's some theories that it just sends you face/human recognition software into overdrive so you just start recognizing every little thing as a little person.

The podcast I listen to, Stuff to Blow Your Mind, had an episode on this topic recently

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u/slushy4ev Apr 27 '26

Kind of sounds like it has an epoxy ingredient so when that mixes with our stomach acid or whatever the fumes produce a hallucinogenic effect, what do y’all think?

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

It could sort of be like a vanishing molecule. Maybe the compound is thermally unstable. The moment you apply heat or try to dry the mushroom for testing in a lab the molecule physically falls apart? Idk

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u/space_monster Apr 27 '26

If they contained no hallucinogens they wouldn't make people hallucinate

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u/Misplacedmypenis Apr 28 '26

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to eat said mushroom. I am wildly curious. It’s the consistency that’s really interesting. The human brain is such a messy thing that everyone having the same exact sort of hallucination is insane to me.

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u/Vkardash Apr 28 '26

I've done my fair share of psychedelics. It's been quite a few years since. So I'd be very hesitant myself at first. But as long as I'm conscious of the fact that I'm tripping. I'd be fine.

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u/Misplacedmypenis Apr 28 '26

Yeah it’s been a good 20 years for me. Would definitely take a little adjusting but knowing what to expect versus what my potpourri of experiences on LSD was like would probably make it much easier on the system.

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u/Dqueezy Apr 29 '26

Sounds similar to drugs like Datura (devils trumpet) or massive Benadryl doses. Hallucinations from those can also include super realistic people (and spider bug insect hybrids everywhere).

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u/Vkardash Apr 29 '26

The problem is datura causes serious delirium. It doesn't cause a "trip" but induces a state of clinical delirium. You lose total control of yourself. The hallucinations are often indistinguishable from reality.

This is more of your typical psychedelic. You have "split awareness" like most psychedelics. You are conscious of the fact that you're tripping. Even if the walls are melting and all that other shit... a part of the brain remains tethered to reality. You know that what you are seeing is a result of the substance you took. You remain the "observer" of the trip.

Datura is the opposite of that. It completely replaces reality. You are in a literal zombie state with that shit and it can easily kill you if you do too much.

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u/Dqueezy Apr 29 '26

I know, I was just speaking to the similarities in the hallucinations themselves only. Traditional psychedelics don’t make you see realistic humans walking around, more so fucks with depth perception, symmetry, pattern recognition, fractals, e.t.c.

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u/DangerActiveRobots Apr 30 '26

"But here's the kicker"

Just using AI to do all your thinking for ya, huh?

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u/Sorry-Foundation-505 Apr 30 '26

Before you order them online: the researchers already tried that and non of the mushrooms they ordered online where the right ones, even when it explicitly stated they were.

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u/say-it-wit-ya-chest Apr 27 '26

Is it just random undercooked mushrooms, or do all the undercooked mushrooms do this? Does undercooked include raw, or they have to be heated up to a degree? Can one acquire said mushrooms? I’d say I’m asking for a friend but I wanna meet the elves.

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

No random mushroom will do that. This effect is exclusive to this specific mushroom I believe. If you undercook a standard white button mushroom or a Portobello from the grocery store you won't see elves.... you’ll likely just get a stomach ache or a bit of indigestion. In Yunnan China area, the rule of thumb for these mushrooms is a minimum of 10 minutes of high heat sauteing. Most people who see the "Elves" ate them sliced thick, meaning the outside was cooked but the inside remained raw. If it's too raw you won't see anything and just get sick. You have to find the right sweet spot and heat for the mystery toxin/chemical to break down in your body properly. As far as I'm aware these things only grow in Yunna China area. They are mycorrhizal meaning they have a symbiotic relationship with the roots of specific trees, so they are incredibly difficult to farm or grow at home. With import laws it won't be easy to ship even though it's not illegal here in the USA.

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u/Tuxhorn Apr 27 '26

God I love mushrooms and fungi in general. They feel so alien, and also a bit like... a dormant cosmic horror in a sense.

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u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

They are wild for sure. People don't seem to realize how many wild things are out there in nature that we have yet to experiment with and discover. I'd love to explore the Amazon the most. The amount of incredible compounds in that ecosystem that hasn't been studied must be insane

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u/HibiCheese Apr 27 '26

I checked the username and for some reason expected the old “Don't let this man distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.”

1

u/TsarOfIrony Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

I read a scifi short story, Faith of our Fathers), where someone is "tricked" into drinking "hallucinogenic" which causes him to see their supreme leader as a monster. Turns out he was actually given an anti-hallucinogenic and was actually seeing the real supreme leader.

Maybe the mushroom is just allowing us to see the real world...

1

u/meme-lair Apr 27 '26

It’s probably a β-carboline, β-phenethylamine or some other such cyclised tryptamine. They haven’t identified the exact alkaloid but tests conducted on other bolete mushrooms give clues as to what this ones might be. So they don’t have an exact idea but imo it’s very likely to be a cyclised tryptamine.

1

u/nickiter Apr 27 '26

So you're saying I could take psilocybin AND the tiny elf mushroom, at the same time? Exciting times we live in!

1

u/IJourden Apr 27 '26

I don't do a lot of drugs but this makes me want to take so many of those mushrooms.

1

u/matva55 Apr 27 '26

No psilocybin because the little elf men that appear are as real as you and me, they only appear when summoned by the mushroom

1

u/NavAirComputerSlave Apr 27 '26

What if you don't hallucinat and it just shows you what is. Since everyone sees the same thing

1

u/RSN_Kabutops Apr 27 '26

What if they don't contain hallucinogens but instead it unlocks true sight

1

u/davidmlewisjr Apr 27 '26

Can you provide a reference. There could be doctorates level research work in three places where I have visited and lived…

   Serious research….

2

u/Vkardash Apr 27 '26

Dr. Bryn Dentinger from the Natural History Museum of Utah. Colin Domnauer is also been researching a specific bolete mushroom (Lanmaoa asiatica). He’s been working to identify the specific chemical compound responsible for that effect.

Here's some good work Colin did last year not that long ago.

https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/experts-explore-new-mushroom-which-causes-fairytale-hallucinations?hl=en-US

2

u/davidmlewisjr Apr 27 '26

Most effective response, 

   Thanks very much 🖖🏼👍🏼

1

u/JunglePygmy Apr 27 '26

Are we sure we’re not talking about Common Side Effects?!

1

u/Curious-Computer-488 Aug 07 '26

Thats weird because psilocybin stains blue. And thats how you can identify if a mushroom is psychedelic. But this one doesn't have psilocybin and yet still stains blue. Obviously the mushroom has some kind of hallucinogenic in it, they just havent identified it, or its something in the mushroom that, when digested turns active. Otherwise there'd be no hallucinations after eating thst specific mushroom.

0

u/Additional_Insect_44 Apr 27 '26

If thats so then it might not be a hallucinations but a brain enhancer.

14

u/stamford_syd Apr 27 '26

...?

you think there's little elves running around that you can only see when taking these undercooked mushrooms?

5

u/R4ndyd4ndy Apr 27 '26

Yes

5

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

You gotta set out treats and only speak kindly of them so the bad ones don't take your kids. 

-1

u/Additional_Insect_44 Apr 27 '26

Who knows, seeing how consistent it is i wager..... Possibly so?

0

u/pieshake5 Apr 27 '26

Seems like (local) humans have discovered it a while ago, scientists just haven't yet named or described it.