Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.
He and his team are still trying to identify the chemical compound responsible for the hallucinations in L. asiatica. Current tests suggest it is not likely related to any other known psychedelic compound. For one, the trips it produces are unusually long, commonly lasting 12 to 24 hours, and in some cases even causing hospital stays of up to a week. Because of the extraordinarily long duration of these trips and the chance for prolonged side effects such as delirium and dizziness, Domanuer has yet to try the raw mushrooms himself.
These mega-trips might help to explain why people in China, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea do not seem to have a tradition of purposefully seeking out L. asiatica for its psychoactive effects, according to Domnauer's findings. "It was always just eaten for food," Domnauer says, with hallucinations being an unexpected side-effect.
There's another curious factor: other known psychedelic compounds also usually produce idiosyncratic trips that vary not only from person to person but also from one experience to the next within the same individual. With L. asiatica, though, "the perception of little people is very reliably and repeatedly reported", Domnauer says. "I don't know of anything else that produces such consistent hallucinations."
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Understanding this mushroom will be no easy feat, Domnaur says, but as with studies of other psychedelic compounds, the scientific research it produces could end up touching on the biggest questions of consciousness and the relationship between mind and reality.
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Comments
By theturtlemoves 2026-01-2216:561 reply > "It sounded so bizarre that there could be a mushroom out there causing fairytale-like visions reported across cultures and time," Domnauer says.
Now I'm kinda curious whether fairy tales are the result of these visions or the other way around. Probably both.
By Urahandystar 2026-01-2311:351 reply It's generally accepted that the stories of fairies tied to specific locations across the UK and Ireland is due to the presence of magic mushrooms growing relatively close by.
By vintermann 2026-01-2312:001 reply Generally accepted by who?
The British isles do not have old mushroom foraging traditions (in particular, what mushroom foraging traditions there are, are younger than fairy stories). Without some solid oral tradition, going around sampling mushrooms looking for a high is very risky.
Even if there was a tradition, why would they be limited to only where particular mushrooms grew? They would surely be picked and transported then. For that matter, don't hallucinogenic mushroom varieties grow all over the British isles? Many mushrooms aren't very picky about climate.
In short I don't believe this at all.
By partomniscient 2026-01-2319:411 reply FWIW, mushroom rings are real, at least in the UK. They seemed to be affected by EMF, because I wandered past one centered directly centered under street power lines, I have no idea whether that's where a ley-line intersect it or not. I don't think they were psychedelic mushrooms though, but it was pretty cool seeing them growing in a large circle about 3-4m in diameter.
The main point of the article is that they're psychedelic, but don't contain psilocybin as the active molecule.
In earlier centuries it doesn't seem unreasonable to allow the possibility of the mushroom ingester to describe their experience as visiting the fae realm, whether in the UK or otherwise - as an accidental occurence I don't know how else people from the past would be able to explain what they perceived to others?
By vintermann 2026-01-2515:40 Of course mushroom rings are real, you get them when the mycelium grows mushrooms at its edges to spread outwards. But it has nothing do to with EMF.
Eating mushrooms without knowledge will kill you. Cultures either don't eat mushrooms, or they develop knowledge of what mushrooms are safe to eat and which ones kill you - or make you see elves. There's no world where people see elves but don't connect it to the mushrooms they ate 15 minutes ago. It's also not very plausible that they as a culture stopped going on elf trips, but remembered the elves and forgot what made you see them. In short there's just so many ways this is a bad theory.
It would be interesting if it turned out that they are not hallucinations. The tiny people are real but for several hundred or maybe thousands of years have been slipping something into our food or water that makes it so we don't perceive them. The chemical in this mushroom temporarily neutralizes that.
By the_sleaze_ 2026-01-2315:401 reply Let's say something had technology so far advanced we could only perceive it as magic - our electronic brains could easily be hacked from a distance.
All the advanced race would need to do is to prevent short/long term memory creation of certain things. Just set a rule to prevent caching of certain patterns, bob's your uncle they could live amongst us in peace.
But of course a hallucinogenic could circumvent those hacks but fundamentally altering memory generation and perception. So in theory the aliens could be really tiny little humanoids living amongst us and we're constantly adjusting to not crush them, but we just don't remember.
By inimino 2026-01-2321:16 SCP anti-memetics division.
By Rodeoclash 2026-01-231:51 By gavmor 2026-01-235:07 By e40 2026-01-2310:35 They Live vibes from your comment.
By romperstomper 2026-01-236:27 +1 for this show )
By codyklimdev 2026-01-2218:20 Great show!
