People Keep Eating This Mushroom, Then They Start Seeing Tiny People

A mushroom that looks ordinary enough to end up on a dinner plate is responsible for one of the strangest recurring medical complaints in parts of China. During mushroom season, hospitals in Yunnan Province see hundreds of people who arrive feeling dizzy or disoriented, only to describe something far more unusual: tiny human-like figures apparently moving around their homes, crawling across furniture and appearing on everyday objects.

The bizarre visions have become so closely associated with one particular fungus that locals have a nickname for it: the “little people” mushroom. Lanmaoa asiatica is a popular edible mushroom found in Yunnan and is sold in markets, served in restaurants and cooked in homes during the peak season between June and August. But when it is eaten raw or undercooked, something changes. People can begin seeing miniature humans and animals, sometimes in groups, and researchers still have no definitive answer for exactly which chemical inside the mushroom causes the effect.

Hundreds Of Patients Keep Reporting The Same Strange Vision

Every year, doctors in Yunnan encounter people experiencing an unusual combination of symptoms after mushroom season gets underway. Patients can complain of dizziness and disorientation, while standard blood tests examining liver and kidney function often fail to reveal anything that would explain the bizarre experiences they describe.

Then the reports become difficult to ignore. Patients say they are seeing tiny figures moving around them, with some describing miniature people appearing on furniture, clothing and other familiar objects. The phenomenon has been documented repeatedly over the years, and the sheer consistency of the reports has made the mushroom responsible a particularly intriguing subject for researchers.

The mushroom is Lanmaoa asiatica, a species that forms a symbiotic relationship with pine trees and grows in parts of Asia. In Yunnan, it is not some obscure fungus hidden away from human contact. It is a valued seasonal food, known for its savory, umami-rich flavor and widely available during the months when wild mushrooms are harvested.

That creates an unusual situation. A mushroom associated with hallucinations is also a normal part of local cuisine, meaning people in the region have developed practical knowledge about how it should be prepared. Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, encountered that knowledge firsthand while visiting a mushroom hot pot restaurant.

Locals Already Know The Mushroom Comes With A Warning

At the restaurant, the preparation of the mushroom came with a very specific instruction. The server set a timer for 15 minutes and told the diners not to eat the mushrooms until the timer had finished.

“Don’t eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,” the server warned, according to Domnauer.

The comment might sound like something from a bizarre travel story, but Domnauer said the warning appears to be common knowledge in the local culture. People who regularly eat the mushroom know that proper preparation is important, even though science has yet to identify the exact compound responsible for the hallucinations.

The mushroom is commonly sold during peak mushroom season between June and August. It appears in markets and restaurants, and people prepare it at home. Its popularity means that the unusual effect is not based on a handful of isolated encounters with a rare wild specimen. Doctors have treated hundreds of people reporting similar experiences, while researchers have found medical literature documenting cases going back decades.

That history is part of what makes the fungus so unusual. Scientists are not starting with a mysterious mushroom that nobody has ever eaten. They are trying to explain an established phenomenon that local communities have recognized for generations.

Scientists Call The Visions Lilliputian Hallucinations

The medical literature has a name for seeing tiny people or animals: Lilliputian hallucinations. The term comes from Lilliput, the fictional island inhabited by miniature people in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and it describes a very specific type of altered perception.

A 1991 paper by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences documented cases in Yunnan involving people who had eaten a particular mushroom and subsequently experienced these strange visions. The accounts were remarkably detailed, with patients describing tiny beings moving through their surroundings rather than simply reporting vague distortions or flashes of light.

Researchers wrote that patients saw the figures “moving about everywhere.” Some reportedly saw tiny beings on their clothes while getting dressed and on their dishes while eating, turning completely ordinary activities into bizarre visual experiences.

The hallucinations could become even more vivid when patients closed their eyes. Some people reportedly saw more than 10 tiny beings at once, while the most severely affected patients described surrounding mountains or buildings as though they were pressing down upon them.

Those reports gave researchers an important clue. The mushroom did not appear to cause completely random hallucinations in every person. Instead, many patients were reporting a surprisingly recognizable pattern, raising the question of whether a particular compound in the fungus was producing a specific effect on the brain.

The Mystery Goes Back Much Further Than Scientists Realized

The Yunnan cases were not the first reports of a mushroom producing strange mental effects. Decades earlier, researchers investigating fungi in Papua New Guinea had encountered stories that now sound remarkably similar.

In the 1960s, American author Gordon Wasson and French botanist Roger Heim traveled to Papua New Guinea while investigating reports of a mushroom that supposedly caused people to become “insane.” The stories had originally been passed along by missionaries who had visited the region decades earlier, and an anthropologist later gave the phenomenon the name “mushroom madness.”

Wasson and Heim collected specimens from the region and sent them to Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, hoping that laboratory analysis might reveal the substance responsible for the reported effects. Hofmann did not find any molecules of interest in the samples he examined.

The researchers eventually concluded that the stories they had heard might have been cultural tales rather than evidence of a mushroom producing a distinct pharmacological effect. The investigation stopped, leaving the reports unresolved.

Years later, however, researchers in China were documenting their own cases of people seeing tiny figures after eating mushrooms. The similarities between the accounts have since become one of the most intriguing parts of the story, although researchers have not established that the historical Papua New Guinea reports involved exactly the same species or compound.

The Mushroom Was Hiding In Plain Sight

Despite years of reports, scientists did not formally describe Lanmaoa asiatica until 2015. The mushroom was already familiar to people in Yunnan, where it was collected, sold and eaten, but the scientific identity of the species had remained unclear.

Researchers eventually purchased a specimen from a street market in Yunnan and used DNA sequencing to investigate it. Their analysis showed that the mushroom represented a species new to science, giving researchers a confirmed identity for the fungus that had been linked to the unusual hallucinations.

The discovery also produced another surprise. L. asiatica turned out to be more closely related to the familiar porcini mushroom, Boletus edulis, than to the mushroom species commonly associated with psychedelic experiences.

That relationship made the mystery harder, not easier. Scientists now had a formally identified fungus with a documented history of strange hallucinations, yet it did not belong to the obvious group of mushrooms already famous for their psychoactive compounds.

Researchers could finally put a scientific name on the mushroom. They still could not explain what was happening inside the brains of the people who ate it.

One Researcher Became Obsessed With Finding The Answer

Colin Domnauer first heard about Lanmaoa asiatica while studying mycology as an undergraduate. The story immediately stood out because it combined an apparently ordinary food mushroom with hallucinations that sounded almost like something from a children’s fairy tale.

“It sounded so bizarre that there could be a mushroom out there causing fairytale-like visions reported across cultures and time,” Domnauer said. “I was perplexed and driven by curiosity to find out more.”

That curiosity has turned into a scientific investigation aimed at answering one of the biggest remaining questions surrounding the fungus: what compound causes the visions?

Researchers have carried out subsequent studies on mushroom extracts, including experiments involving mice. When rodents were given extracts of L. asiatica, they became hyperactive before eventually slumping into a dazed state.

The experiments showed that the mushroom can affect behavior in animals, but they could not answer the most bizarre part of the human reports. There was no way for researchers to determine whether the mice were experiencing anything remotely comparable to the tiny figures described by human patients.

The psychoactive ingredient remains unidentified. And that means the strangest part of the mushroom’s story is still waiting to be solved.

Why Are So Many People Seeing Tiny Figures?

The biggest mystery surrounding Lanmaoa asiatica is not simply that it can cause hallucinations. It is the unusually specific nature of those hallucinations. People who have never met each other can consume the mushroom and describe remarkably similar scenes, with miniature humans or animals appearing to move through familiar surroundings.

That pattern is difficult to explain through ordinary expectation alone. The reports documented in Yunnan describe people seeing tiny figures on their clothes, dishes and furniture, with some patients reporting more than 10 figures at once. The visions can become particularly vivid when the eyes are closed, which makes the phenomenon even stranger.

Researchers use the term Lilliputian hallucinations for this type of experience, but giving the phenomenon a name does not explain why it happens. The term describes what patients see. It does not reveal what is happening inside the brain to produce those miniature figures.

That is where the mushroom becomes scientifically fascinating. If researchers can identify the substance responsible, they may be able to investigate how that compound changes visual perception and why the brain can generate such specific images.

The Missing Chemical Is The Biggest Clue

Scientists have been looking for the active compound inside L. asiatica, but subsequent studies have so far failed to identify the substance responsible for the hallucinations.

That leaves researchers with an unusual problem. They know the mushroom’s identity, they have medical reports describing its effects and they have experimental evidence showing that extracts can alter animal behavior. Yet they still cannot point to one molecule and say, “That’s what makes people see the little people.”

The animal experiments provide another piece of the puzzle. When mice were given extracts of the mushroom, they became hyperactive before eventually entering a dazed state. The behavior suggests that something in the fungus is affecting the nervous system, but the experiment cannot establish whether the animals experience anything resembling the elaborate visual hallucinations reported by humans.

Finding the compound could therefore be a major step toward understanding the entire phenomenon. It could also help explain why the human reports have such a recognizable pattern instead of producing completely random visual experiences.

The Mushroom Does Not Belong To The Usual Psychedelic Group

One of the most surprising details is where Lanmaoa asiatica sits on the fungal family tree.

When researchers formally described the species in 2015, DNA analysis showed that it was more closely related to the common porcini mushroom than to known “magic” mushroom species. That makes its effects especially unusual because people often associate mushroom hallucinations with a very different group of fungi.

L. asiatica is also widely eaten in Yunnan. It is collected from local forests, sold at markets and used in restaurants during mushroom season. Its reputation as food exists alongside the well-known warning that it needs to be cooked properly.

That combination makes the fungus different from many mushrooms people associate with psychedelic effects. It is not primarily sought out for hallucinations, and the people experiencing them may have simply eaten a traditional seasonal ingredient that was not prepared sufficiently.

For scientists, that makes the mushroom an unexpected source of information about the brain. Something that looks and tastes like a familiar edible fungus may contain a compound capable of dramatically altering human perception.

Local Knowledge Has Kept The Mushroom On The Menu

The strange effects have not stopped people in Yunnan from eating Lanmaoa asiatica. Instead, generations of local experience have shaped how the mushroom is prepared and served.

During peak mushroom season, the fungus appears in markets and on restaurant menus. It is also cooked at home, meaning knowledge about preparation has become part of ordinary food culture.

Domnauer’s experience at the mushroom hot pot restaurant offered a glimpse into that knowledge. A server set a timer and warned diners not to eat the mushrooms until the cooking period was complete. The advice was simple: wait.

For visitors unfamiliar with the mushroom, however, the warning could sound almost unbelievable. A restaurant telling customers that an undercooked ingredient might make them see tiny people sounds like something invented for a strange internet story. In Yunnan, according to Domnauer, the warning is much more familiar.

The difference between an ordinary meal and an extremely bizarre hallucination can therefore come down to preparation.

Scientists Are Still Trying To Connect The Old Stories

The history of unusual mushroom hallucinations adds another layer to the mystery. Wasson and Heim’s investigation in Papua New Guinea took place decades before L. asiatica was formally described. Their specimens did not reveal a compound that explained the reports they had heard, and the researchers eventually moved away from the idea that the stories had a clear pharmacological basis.

The later Chinese reports are different because researchers documented the hallucinations in medical cases and eventually connected them to a scientifically identified mushroom.

The similarities are nevertheless difficult to ignore. Both sets of stories involve mushrooms associated with unusual mental experiences, and both involve reports that spread through local communities before scientists fully understood what was happening.

Researchers have not established that the Papua New Guinea mushroom and L. asiatica produce their effects through the same compound. The old accounts therefore remain part of the mystery rather than proof of a single worldwide phenomenon.

The Strange Mushroom Could Teach Scientists About Vision

The human brain does not simply record the world like a camera. What people see is the result of complex processes that interpret signals and construct a perception of the surrounding environment.

A substance that repeatedly produces a specific type of hallucination could give researchers an opportunity to examine those processes from another direction.

The L. asiatica reports are especially interesting because the hallucinations involve recognizable miniature beings moving through real environments. Patients are not merely describing flashes of color or an undefined sense that something is wrong. They are describing a populated visual scene.

If researchers eventually identify the compound responsible, they could investigate which parts of the brain are affected and why those changes produce such consistent imagery. The answer could help scientists understand more about perception, hallucination and the mechanisms that normally allow people to distinguish imagined images from the world around them.

That possibility is one reason Domnauer’s investigation goes beyond the simple question of why an undercooked mushroom makes people hallucinate.

The Little People Are Still The Biggest Mystery

For now, Lanmaoa asiatica remains an unusually well-documented mystery.

Scientists know the mushroom involved. They know that people in Yunnan have reported Lilliputian hallucinations after eating it, and they know that the problem has appeared repeatedly during mushroom season. Researchers have also begun testing mushroom extracts in animals. But the critical chemical remains unidentified.

That leaves one of nature’s strangest food-related mysteries sitting in plain sight. A mushroom sold in markets and served in restaurants can, when improperly prepared, apparently turn an ordinary room into a scene populated by tiny moving figures.

The people who live with the mushroom already know the practical rule: cook it properly. Scientists are still trying to discover the rule hidden inside the mushroom itself.