"seeing little people" is such a hyper specific visual effect, it begs questions. Since I am well aware how my mind fills in gaps in the visual field with attempts to map what I would expect or want to see (try holding your head rigidly ahead and look with a steady gaze at a near field pattern like floor tiles to experience your brain filling in the missing pieces in the field) I ask: what could this actually be?
For instance, when I get (got: my blood pressure is treated) migraine visual effects, I would say "lightning bolt" but thats just a textual analogue/simile. What I actually saw was more complex than that: lightning is white. My effect was polychrome.
When I had posterior vitreous detachment (PVD), the visual effect was as if I was looking at TV "snow" from the analogue days, combined with a shape unquestionably like red blood cells. Was I seeing blood? I am told no: I was seeing small points inside the focal zone of my eye, below the minimum resolving size, and the optical path turns points into rings.
So is "little people" moving stimulation of the nerve endings interpreted as "walking" and a strong vertical alignment for some reason? Is the colour an aspect of rods and cones being involved, or the nerves going to rods and cones being differentially effected?
> For instance, when I get (got: my blood pressure is treated) migraine visual effects, I would say "lightning bolt" but thats just a textual analogue/simile. What I actually saw was more complex than that: lightning is white. My effect was polychrome.
I personally have my doubts whether it has to do with blood pressure (i had it while on medication and normal blood pressure), or that it's generated by the brain, but lack the time/motivation/skill to research this further.
It's really fascinating stuff (and pretty unnerving, speaking as someone who experiences migraines with aura).
On the blood pressure connection, propranolol (a beta blocker often used to treat high blood pressure and anxiety) is often prescribed as a prophylactic for migraines, but I'm unsure of the preventative mechanism(s) at play.
If anything I said implied this was a novel, new phenomena, I withdraw that implication completely. I was attempting to discuss how I subjectively experience and would describe it, and the effects on documentation of that description, not that I saw any perceptual effect nobody else saw.
One wonders how it would affect someone who has been blind from birth: would they hear little people? Would their optic system be activated by the unknown compounds? etc.
Yep, there might be two factors here. From what you describe in your experiences, these seem like real artifacts that occur due to physical changes happening on and around the eyeball? (Photopsia seems to be what you describe).
In my experience when hallucinating (from sleep deprivation), it is the brain failing to correctly interpret patterns seen through the eyes.
For e.g., I would think I see a cardboard box on the ground ahead of me, but then when I get closer I realise it is just dirt of different shades that was perceived as a 3d box.
Similar experience when hallucinating people. In my mind I imagine my friend with a certain colour shirt, then during a period of sleep deprivation, I think I see him on the trail ahead of me. But it was just a rock that was a similar colour.
Do hallucinogenics typically affect the brain and also the actual optics? Maybe it is some combination that is causing the perception of "little people".
Reconsider the blood cell visualization thing. I've had bilateral PVD. Each was accompanied by an initial few minutes of seeing a few dozen small dark spots that had lighter grey centers. Most visible when I looked at the sky. They all disappeared after a few minutes. I think these were RBCs from minimal retinal blood vessel tearing at the PVD events.
Human RBCs are ~6µm - 8µm diameter. Human retinal light sensing cells range from ~0.5µm - 10µm diameter, depending on type and position. They're close packed.
Given the geometry, RBCs leaking onto retinal cells should cast shadows that could be resolved as images. And that's right where leakage is most likely to occur during a PVD event.
Interesting. I told the specialist what I'd seen, they said "not blood cells" but I'm open to re-consideration. I got a pretty complete ocular examination both times, the iris dilation and "I must be a vampire I cannot handle sunlight" is a joy.
No, quite different. Floaters look like paramecium in my visual field, or hairs floating in fluid (that kind of corona around an object) Maybe there is a sub class of floater which is like PVD but .. to me at least this was qualitatively different.
I suppose the crap left over from a PVD incident would be a sub-class of "floater" but in quality, its nothing like the floaters I get "all the time" as normal life, before and after PVD.
The one upside of PVD is I am told your chances of a retinal tear are reduced, if you have a "clean" PVD.
Slightly off topic, but on a clear blue sky it's possible to directly visualize the white blood cells running around on your retina. I love watching them go about business, and I think I heard it can even be used diagnostically to do a manual WBC count in extremis for leukoproliferative disease.
They're pretty tiny though, I'm not sure if you'd actually see a center in the RBCs
The lighter centers could have been diffraction around the object and reconvergence. Or some kind of signal processing effect at the retinal level.
The retinal vessel network is a fun thing to inspect as you say. It works best for me when the sun is high in the sky. The bright, featureless blue brings out the branching network very well.
> Since I am well aware how my mind fills in gaps in the visual field with attempts to map what I would expect or want to see
Your mind also creates the visual field. It is not real even though it is usually quite consistent. Brain fills the gaps after it has filled all the rest.
Just a handy visualization of a world that is likely to be a lot more chaotic.
I've heard of this before, including a first person account, and the effects are apparently that specific. Lots of people consistently report the same thing. It's not just moving patterns, it's actually a bunch of tiny people running around, climbing on the furniture, etc.
I'd be asking if the back record had hyper specific reports of people in clothing which was period appropriate for how "little people" are ideated, or if instead they were tiny angels and daemons (or skeletons) because how you culturally project what you see would inform how they describe it.
I very much doubt that in future times, people will be reporting seeing tiny people in North Face fleece tops and leggings, or with Asymmetrical haircuts and goth make-up but you never know..
Huh weird. When I have a high fever, usually from the flu, sometimes I start to hallucinate. The typical hallucination is lots of "little people", usually doing something I don't like. I wonder if it triggers a similar part of the brain?
Every time this topic comes up and the comments are full of discussions about the little people I think of it. I do wonder if Murakami was inspired in any way by similar discussions.
Tbf I would also want to know more: Like to what end are they moving around? And what do they look like exactly? Like people you know from your life? Wearing ordinary outfits? Do they communicate amongst themselves, like little groups
of people? Do they gesticulate? And when you see them, can you like, focus on a particular one and follow him around? Etc etc...
The hallmark symptom of these mushrooms are Lilliputian hallucinations. This is a clinically defined psychiatric condition characterized by the perception of numerous tiny human, animal, or fantasy-like figures in one’s environment. They’re often very realistic, three dimensional figures said to be colorfully dressed, very mobile, and interacting with the physical world—like climbing up chairs or tables, or clinging to surfaces.
I'd love it if someone went through all of the historic fairy tales and folklore and tried to validly link local psychoactive and hallucinogenic plants to them.
That would be the sociological equivalent of saying "Zoom in, enhance, zoom in, enhance" forty times in a row, until you can identify the shooter from a reflection off a raindrop.
"Where are mushrooms with these chemicals found?" "In ~50% of arable land on Earth." "When was the earliest known rendition of this fairytale?" "8-10 generations ago."
The wild part isn't just that the compound is unknown, it's how specific the hallucination is. 96% of people see tiny figures, and there's a third-century Chinese text describing the same mushroom letting you "see a little person." That kind of consistency across centuries feels less like a random trip and more like it's reliably tripping some existing brain circuit.
Worth noting micropsia ("Alice in Wonderland syndrome") shows up in migraines and epilepsy too, so maybe the mushroom just hits a failure mode that's already wired in. Still, "evolved its own psychoactive pathway, and it's closer to porcini than to anything in Psilocybe" is a great sentence.
When I was very young (around 3 or 4) I woke up in the middle of the night and went downstairs to climb into my parents' bed.
After some time, I could see a small-scale but very extensive science fiction space base on top of the bed covers, as if the bed covers were the surface of a moon or planet.
It was populated, and in motion - rockets launching from gantries as I watched, etc. I know it wasn't a dream, because my parents remember me describing it to them as it happened.
I've never experienced anything like that again, and never heard of anything like it until reading about these mushrooms last year.
It definitely seems like an odd quirk of the brain that it apparently has a ”1990s god video game" (e.g. Populous) visualization mode.
There's some neat sci fi novel potential there, though, like it being a remnant of some kind of distant ancestor with a hive mind that could synthesize the visual input of multiple members into a disembodied third-person camera point of view.
Same thing here. About 8, Mickey Mouse, 2D, 3-4" high, dancing on the back wall of a tent (in the middle of the forest). Have never had another hallucination--that I know of.
"seeing little people" is such a hyper specific visual effect, it begs questions. Since I am well aware how my mind fills in gaps in the visual field with attempts to map what I would expect or want to see (try holding your head rigidly ahead and look with a steady gaze at a near field pattern like floor tiles to experience your brain filling in the missing pieces in the field) I ask: what could this actually be?
For instance, when I get (got: my blood pressure is treated) migraine visual effects, I would say "lightning bolt" but thats just a textual analogue/simile. What I actually saw was more complex than that: lightning is white. My effect was polychrome.
When I had posterior vitreous detachment (PVD), the visual effect was as if I was looking at TV "snow" from the analogue days, combined with a shape unquestionably like red blood cells. Was I seeing blood? I am told no: I was seeing small points inside the focal zone of my eye, below the minimum resolving size, and the optical path turns points into rings.
So is "little people" moving stimulation of the nerve endings interpreted as "walking" and a strong vertical alignment for some reason? Is the colour an aspect of rods and cones being involved, or the nerves going to rods and cones being differentially effected?
> For instance, when I get (got: my blood pressure is treated) migraine visual effects, I would say "lightning bolt" but thats just a textual analogue/simile. What I actually saw was more complex than that: lightning is white. My effect was polychrome.
What you describe seems to refer to scintillating scotoma, which appears to be well known and documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma
I personally have my doubts whether it has to do with blood pressure (i had it while on medication and normal blood pressure), or that it's generated by the brain, but lack the time/motivation/skill to research this further.
>I personally have my doubts whether it has to do with blood pressure
If you're referring to scintillating scotoma/visual migraine aura, it's thought to be the result of what's called a cortical spreading depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_spreading_depression
It's really fascinating stuff (and pretty unnerving, speaking as someone who experiences migraines with aura).
On the blood pressure connection, propranolol (a beta blocker often used to treat high blood pressure and anxiety) is often prescribed as a prophylactic for migraines, but I'm unsure of the preventative mechanism(s) at play.
If anything I said implied this was a novel, new phenomena, I withdraw that implication completely. I was attempting to discuss how I subjectively experience and would describe it, and the effects on documentation of that description, not that I saw any perceptual effect nobody else saw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliputian_hallucination
One wonders how it would affect someone who has been blind from birth: would they hear little people? Would their optic system be activated by the unknown compounds? etc.
There ought to be funding for a study like this.
Similar phenomena consistently reported in high doses of Benadryl: little spiders.
Oh that sounds much less fun.
Yep, there might be two factors here. From what you describe in your experiences, these seem like real artifacts that occur due to physical changes happening on and around the eyeball? (Photopsia seems to be what you describe).
In my experience when hallucinating (from sleep deprivation), it is the brain failing to correctly interpret patterns seen through the eyes.
For e.g., I would think I see a cardboard box on the ground ahead of me, but then when I get closer I realise it is just dirt of different shades that was perceived as a 3d box. Similar experience when hallucinating people. In my mind I imagine my friend with a certain colour shirt, then during a period of sleep deprivation, I think I see him on the trail ahead of me. But it was just a rock that was a similar colour.
Do hallucinogenics typically affect the brain and also the actual optics? Maybe it is some combination that is causing the perception of "little people".
Reconsider the blood cell visualization thing. I've had bilateral PVD. Each was accompanied by an initial few minutes of seeing a few dozen small dark spots that had lighter grey centers. Most visible when I looked at the sky. They all disappeared after a few minutes. I think these were RBCs from minimal retinal blood vessel tearing at the PVD events.
Human RBCs are ~6µm - 8µm diameter. Human retinal light sensing cells range from ~0.5µm - 10µm diameter, depending on type and position. They're close packed.
Given the geometry, RBCs leaking onto retinal cells should cast shadows that could be resolved as images. And that's right where leakage is most likely to occur during a PVD event.
Interesting. I told the specialist what I'd seen, they said "not blood cells" but I'm open to re-consideration. I got a pretty complete ocular examination both times, the iris dilation and "I must be a vampire I cannot handle sunlight" is a joy.
Floaters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater
No, quite different. Floaters look like paramecium in my visual field, or hairs floating in fluid (that kind of corona around an object) Maybe there is a sub class of floater which is like PVD but .. to me at least this was qualitatively different.
I suppose the crap left over from a PVD incident would be a sub-class of "floater" but in quality, its nothing like the floaters I get "all the time" as normal life, before and after PVD.
The one upside of PVD is I am told your chances of a retinal tear are reduced, if you have a "clean" PVD.
Slightly off topic, but on a clear blue sky it's possible to directly visualize the white blood cells running around on your retina. I love watching them go about business, and I think I heard it can even be used diagnostically to do a manual WBC count in extremis for leukoproliferative disease.
They're pretty tiny though, I'm not sure if you'd actually see a center in the RBCs
The lighter centers could have been diffraction around the object and reconvergence. Or some kind of signal processing effect at the retinal level.
The retinal vessel network is a fun thing to inspect as you say. It works best for me when the sun is high in the sky. The bright, featureless blue brings out the branching network very well.
> Since I am well aware how my mind fills in gaps in the visual field with attempts to map what I would expect or want to see
Your mind also creates the visual field. It is not real even though it is usually quite consistent. Brain fills the gaps after it has filled all the rest.
Just a handy visualization of a world that is likely to be a lot more chaotic.
I've heard of this before, including a first person account, and the effects are apparently that specific. Lots of people consistently report the same thing. It's not just moving patterns, it's actually a bunch of tiny people running around, climbing on the furniture, etc.
I'd be asking if the back record had hyper specific reports of people in clothing which was period appropriate for how "little people" are ideated, or if instead they were tiny angels and daemons (or skeletons) because how you culturally project what you see would inform how they describe it.
I very much doubt that in future times, people will be reporting seeing tiny people in North Face fleece tops and leggings, or with Asymmetrical haircuts and goth make-up but you never know..
This sounds like the HBO Common Side Effects almost to a tee
You’re thinking perception
When it’s not perceived from a visual cue
Huh weird. When I have a high fever, usually from the flu, sometimes I start to hallucinate. The typical hallucination is lots of "little people", usually doing something I don't like. I wonder if it triggers a similar part of the brain?
I don't get that I just end up with random 1 minute long looping nightmares
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom...) points to a Hamilton Morris podcast (https://www.patreon.com/HamiltonMorris/posts/64560770?utm_ca... paywalled) where Hamilton and Dennis McKenna discuss the mushroom.
How can I buy some? For science
It sounds like it’s almost impossible to differentiate them from other blue bruising boletes, so by chance in an asian market only.
visit China
surely there is somebody already there who can mail me these currently legal mushrooms
if there is they should be stopped
Every time I read about this I find myself asking what the little people are doing, and articles never answer it.
Obviously they're making an air chrysalis.
A 1Q86 reference, on HN? I never thought I'd see the day.
Every time this topic comes up and the comments are full of discussions about the little people I think of it. I do wonder if Murakami was inspired in any way by similar discussions.
(for anyone else wondering, it's a book, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, from 2009-2010)
I've read:
> marching in formation
> frolicking
> being merry
It does?
“ Patients describe colourful figures only a few centimetres tall, marching, dancing and climbing over the furniture.”
Tbf I would also want to know more: Like to what end are they moving around? And what do they look like exactly? Like people you know from your life? Wearing ordinary outfits? Do they communicate amongst themselves, like little groups of people? Do they gesticulate? And when you see them, can you like, focus on a particular one and follow him around? Etc etc...
The hallmark symptom of these mushrooms are Lilliputian hallucinations. This is a clinically defined psychiatric condition characterized by the perception of numerous tiny human, animal, or fantasy-like figures in one’s environment. They’re often very realistic, three dimensional figures said to be colorfully dressed, very mobile, and interacting with the physical world—like climbing up chairs or tables, or clinging to surfaces.
Probably DMT clockwork elves.
nah these just seem like normal wood elves, perhaps of the keebler variety
I'd love it if someone went through all of the historic fairy tales and folklore and tried to validly link local psychoactive and hallucinogenic plants to them.
That would be the sociological equivalent of saying "Zoom in, enhance, zoom in, enhance" forty times in a row, until you can identify the shooter from a reflection off a raindrop.
"Where are mushrooms with these chemicals found?" "In ~50% of arable land on Earth." "When was the earliest known rendition of this fairytale?" "8-10 generations ago."
The wild part isn't just that the compound is unknown, it's how specific the hallucination is. 96% of people see tiny figures, and there's a third-century Chinese text describing the same mushroom letting you "see a little person." That kind of consistency across centuries feels less like a random trip and more like it's reliably tripping some existing brain circuit.
Worth noting micropsia ("Alice in Wonderland syndrome") shows up in migraines and epilepsy too, so maybe the mushroom just hits a failure mode that's already wired in. Still, "evolved its own psychoactive pathway, and it's closer to porcini than to anything in Psilocybe" is a great sentence.
When I was very young (around 3 or 4) I woke up in the middle of the night and went downstairs to climb into my parents' bed.
After some time, I could see a small-scale but very extensive science fiction space base on top of the bed covers, as if the bed covers were the surface of a moon or planet.
It was populated, and in motion - rockets launching from gantries as I watched, etc. I know it wasn't a dream, because my parents remember me describing it to them as it happened.
I've never experienced anything like that again, and never heard of anything like it until reading about these mushrooms last year.
It definitely seems like an odd quirk of the brain that it apparently has a ”1990s god video game" (e.g. Populous) visualization mode.
There's some neat sci fi novel potential there, though, like it being a remnant of some kind of distant ancestor with a hive mind that could synthesize the visual input of multiple members into a disembodied third-person camera point of view.
Same thing here. About 8, Mickey Mouse, 2D, 3-4" high, dancing on the back wall of a tent (in the middle of the forest). Have never had another hallucination--that I know of.
Smurfs?
That's because the little people are clearly real and are mad someone stole their house
maybe it's not a hallucination; maybe the minish have simply made it their mission to troll people who eat their favorite mushroom
Maybe they're all over the place and have a technology that prevents us from seeing them, and the mushroom just interferes with that tech.
There is no Antimemetics Division…
Saying you’ll trip off it is a surefire way to drive up its use.