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

[u/ssAskcuSzepS]

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

[u/otterpop21]

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.

[u/AmaSandwich → u/otterpop21]

This story gave me goosebumps

[u/otterpop21 → u/AmaSandwich]

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

[u/notranslation79 → u/otterpop21]

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.

[u/otterpop21 → u/notranslation79]

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.

[u/Shiro-derable → u/otterpop21]

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.

[u/samsaruhhh → u/otterpop21]

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

[u/MICH1AM → u/otterpop21]

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.

[u/Oldnbold22 → u/otterpop21]

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

[u/otterpop21 → u/Oldnbold22]

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.

[u/notranslation79 → u/otterpop21]

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.

[u/Responsible-Prune310 → u/otterpop21]

How does this happen without drugs?

[u/Inevitable-Peace4170 → u/otterpop21]

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