Entities including "elves" while under DMT

Why Do People See Elves And Other "Entities" When They Smoke DMT?

Could these entities have some sort of real existence? It turns out that no neural activation hypothesis can work very well with this phenomenon. As the researcher states,  "...it’s very difficult to (neurologically) account for certain highly common and typical experiences such as having one’s emotions harvested by a giant praying mantis. “Is there a specific region of the brain that for some reason is hardwired to produce those types of experiences?” he asks. “I don’t think so. It’s too specific to fit this generic brain activation model.”

By the way, apparently the general take-away impression of experiencers is positive (one Johns Hopkins study came up with 78%) regarding these entities, including the emotion-sucking-from-the-brain giant praying mantises.

Of the 2,561 DMT users surveyed by the Johns Hopkins team, 65 percent said their encounter filled them with “joy”, while 63 percent experienced a sense of “trust”, and 59 percent went as far as to describe their experience as “love”. Negative emotions like sadness, disgust, and anger, meanwhile, were reported by a small minority of respondents.

Many claimed to have received messages from these entities about the nature of reality, while others gained more banal insights – including one person who received instruction on the rules of the NFL. “On the whole people generally have meaningful encounters,” says Luke. “Even if there’s not a specific message there’s a sense of profundity.”

“DMT experiences can translate quite strongly into metaphysical and theological shifts,” the researcher continues. Indeed, more than half of respondents to the Johns Hopkins study who identified as atheist before their encounter no longer claimed to be so afterward. As unbelievable as all this may sound, 81 percent of respondents said their encounter felt “more real” than anything they had ever experienced previously, with two-thirds continuing to believe in the existence of these entities even after the effects of the drug had worn off.

Another article on DMT entities:

The Society for Scientific Exploration had a paper presented on this subject at one of its conferences, an interesting analysis of DMT entity reports by Jennifer A. Lyke of Stockton University (albeit with a much smaller sample size than the Johns Hopkins study):

"Entities were defined as elements of the experience that appeared to the DMT user to possess independent awareness. Seventy-five percent of reports included a description of at least one form of entity and 37% described more than one entity. There were a total of 180 experiences of entities reported. The general categories of entities that emerged were poorly defined or formless beings (29%); humanoid beings (22%); divine beings (10%); aliens (8%), elves and fairies (7%); animals (6%); geometric objects or machines (6%); voices (4%); faces (4%); and miscellaneous entities that did not fit into the other categories (3%).
.............................................
In 25% of cases, experiencers reported “showing/teaching/guidance”, 10% of the time the interaction was perceived as “hostile”, another 10% of the time there was “no interaction”. Other reported interactions were warmth or love (9%), welcome/excitement (9%), reassurance or encouragement (8%), neutrality or observation (7%), play or entertainment (4%), power or control (3%), sexuality (3%), unclear interactions (3%), questioning (3%), reminding (2%), and miscellaneous interactions that did not fit into the other categories (2%). ....These results indicate that the most commonly experienced, well-defined entities are humanoid.

It reminds me of Robert Anton Wilson's experience sometime after he had come down from a mescaline trip.  He was in his garden and he saw what looked like a little green man.  I can't remember details about whether or not the man was doing anything but he faded after a few seconds.  This happened before Wilson had ever heard of Mescalito.  Apparently the entity is quite a common experience.

A new article (at https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/new-stud...-dmt-62617 )
just came out on a recent study of DMT experiences in Frontiers in Science. The new study has additional data on the entity encounter experiences.

“The two broadest, most generic dimensions to the experience were already the most evident in prior studies (and indeed, to anyone personally acquainted with the experience); Entering Other Worlds, and Encountering Other Beings. In fact, 100% of our 36 interviews involved the former, and 94% (34) demonstrated the latter.”

“Focussing on the entity encounter, considering the frequencies with which each theme arose, the most typical type of otherworldly being would have looked somewhat like the following: Carrying the functions of teaching or presenting the experient with something, and while humanoid would have more stylized features such as being clown-like or even octopoid, with an often shifting, sometimes geometric form.”

“These meetings were also overwhelmingly positive, with over half of participants conveying the entities’ enchanting nature, often including their benevolence (compared to only 8% suggesting some menace to their demeanor),” Michael told PsyPost. “Almost half felt some, usually ‘telepathic,’ communication from the entity, mostly happening to be on the subject of cosmic insight (such as the game-like nature of reality) or love for others and oneself.”

“Importantly, these DMT experiences seemed only minorly comparable to near-death experiences – thus undermining the popular ‘myth’ that DMT is ‘released from the pineal gland’ at death – and seemed more akin to alien encounter or abduction-type experiences."

Unfortunately, it turns out that for ethical reasons one of the requirements for a person to be included in this experiment was that they had to have had considerable prior experience with DMT. As a result, the data may have been biased:

"...this meant that the subjects were more likely to belong to a certain subculture of DMT psychonauts. This may then have inflated the amount of positivity in the experiences, as well as the high number of the entities encountered, and even biased their nature. The often remarkable similarities at the level of niche content between our own subjects (as well as with other DMT studies), could also be accounted for by the similar cultural influences this subgroup of people might be exposed to.”

Unfortunately, it turns out that for ethical reasons one of the requirements for a person to be included in this experiment was that they had to have had considerable prior experience with DMT. As a result, the data may have been biased:

Yeah this is a problem even for Strassman's data in the 90s/00s. Did entities like the "Clown"/"Harlequin" witnessed by multiple people in some fashion occur because of some cultural exposure among the community of drug users or because this an entity or set of entities existing elsewhere?

IIRC not all (any?) of the subjects had used DMT, but it can't be ruled out they had heard a little bit about people seeing certain entities.

There's apparently a very old study, from the 50s, that talks about encounters with particular DMT entities but I've not found it. I wanna say I learned about it from Strassman's book but also possibly I read it in the wilderness of the 'Net which might mean it is just a bit of fiction that gained traction. 

I do think there's some commonality between Fairy encounters, UFOs, and DMT entities but not sure what any overlap means. I am curious to see if the plans for a "long DMT trip" planned by some researchers yields anything of interest re: the paranormal.