China's Mysterious Mushroom Triggers Days-Long Hallucinations of Tiny Figures

You're sitting down to eat a perfectly normal mushroom dish when suddenly you realize your dining companions are now tiny dancing people.

If that sounds like a bad trip, that's because it is-albeit, a weirdly specific one that lots of people in China regularly experience. It's the hook behind Pop Mech's latest story, "A Mushroom Is Sending Hundreds of People to the Hospital. They're All Sharing the Same Bizarre Hallucination" and we can't get enough of it.

In parts of China, a mushroom called Lanmaoa asiatica is widely sold, widely eaten, and usually harmless, unless it's undercooked. Then things get weird, fast. Patients have reported seeing armies of miniature people, elves, and other tiny figures marching around their homes, sometimes for days.

Watch Pop Mech editors John Gilpatrick and Andrew Daniels talk about one of the oddest mysteries we've covered in a while. They break down how this isn't a typical psychedelic mushroom story, why these hallucinations seem so bizarrely consistent from person to person, and what makes this phenomenon so fascinating to researchers trying to isolate the chemical trigger.

The wildest part is that scientists still don't know exactly what compound is causing it, making this a medical and biological mystery that has puzzled us for decades.

Watch the full episode above now, and find more installments of "The Astounding Pop Mech Show" on PopularMechanics.com.