DMT entity encounters: what researchers have recorded

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People who search for DMT entity encounters usually want two things: what others say they met, and what science makes of it. Researchers have surveyed thousands of people, coded thousands of online trip reports, interviewed people minutes after the experience and scanned volunteers’ brains. This page is the research overview: what the main studies recorded, how they measured changes in belief, how the reports compare with near-death experiences, and where the evidence runs out. For a type-by-type breakdown of the beings and the theories behind them, see our field guide to DMT entity types.

What do people see before an entity encounter?

The earliest systematic descriptions in modern research come from a study led by Rick Strassman, published in 1994. Twelve experienced volunteers were given DMT intravenously and interviewed after the effects ended. At the higher levels tested, the effects included “a rapidly moving, brightly colored visual display of images”. A brief, overwhelming rush and a sense of losing control led into a dissociated state, in which euphoria and anxiety alternated or existed together. Volunteers called the effects more vivid and compelling than dreams or waking awareness, and they had almost completely resolved within 30 minutes (Strassman et al., 1994). Evidence: established for this early lab description, from 12 people.

Later work put numbers on the imagery. A team led by David Lawrence of the University of Toronto, with researchers from Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins, coded every DMT experience posted to one online forum from 2009 to 2018: 3,778 experiences in 3,305 posts. The most common visuals were fractals, shapes and patterns (32.6% of experiences) and vivid colours (25.2%). Alternate or higher dimensions appeared in 25.2%, rooms in 15.4% (including a so-called “waiting room” in 2.8%), and a tunnel in 10.3% (Lawrence et al., 2022). Evidence: preliminary; self-selected posts.

So the research does not describe one image. It describes a family of reported experiences: geometry and colour first, then for some people a sense of being somewhere else, and for some of those, a sense of meeting someone. Our guide to the waiting room, the dome and the chrysanthemum covers the vocabulary people use for those places.

What did the main entity-encounter studies find?

Three studies are cited most often. They used very different methods, which is useful: where they agree, the pattern is less likely to be an artefact of one method. The table compares them.

The 2020 Johns Hopkins survey

Alan Davis and colleagues asked 2,561 people to describe their single most memorable entity encounter after inhaling DMT. The senses most involved were visual and “extrasensory”, such as a feeling of telepathy. The most common labels for the entity were being, guide, spirit, alien and helper. Although 41% reported fear during the encounter, the most prominent emotions, both their own and those they attributed to the entity, were love, kindness and joy (Davis et al., 2020). Evidence: preliminary; a self-selected, retrospective survey.

Most respondents said the entity was conscious, intelligent and benevolent, existed in some real but different dimension, and continued to exist afterwards. Sixty-nine percent said they received a message, and 19% a prediction about the future (Davis et al., 2020). Why those encounters felt so convincing is the subject of our article on why DMT feels more real than reality. Evidence: preliminary.

The 2022 analysis of online trip reports

In the Lawrence analysis, 1,719 of the 3,778 experiences (45.5%) included an entity encounter. The most common types were feminine figures (24.2% of encounters), deities (17.0%) and aliens (16.3%), followed by creature-like beings (9.2%), mythological beings including elves (8.4%), robots or machines (6.7%) and jesters (6.5%). Interactions were most often coded as positive (34.9%), about a third involved a guide, teacher or companion role (32.4%), and communication was recorded in 74.4% of encounters. Negative or difficult interactions were coded in 11.4% (Lawrence et al., 2022). Our field guide to DMT entity types breaks these categories down. Evidence: preliminary; self-selected posts.

The 2021 field study

Pascal Michael, David Luke and Oliver Robinson describe theirs as the first naturalistic field study of DMT use with qualitative analysis. They screened 64 people, included 39, and observed sessions in participants’ homes in south-east England; 36 interviews met the criteria for analysis. Interviews took place immediately afterwards, so the reports were fresh rather than recalled months later (Michael et al., 2021). Evidence: established for the design.

Thirty-four of 36 reports (94%) included an encounter with beings experienced as beyond the self, and every report described emerging into other “worlds”. The most common demeanours were charming and inviting, “benevolent” was a frequent description, and a smaller number described beings as mischievous or jester-like. Communication was mostly described as intuitive or telepathic (Michael et al., 2021). Evidence: preliminary; a small sample of experienced users.

How common are “machine elves” in DMT entity encounters?

Less common than their fame suggests. The phrase is usually credited to the American writer Terence McKenna, and the 2021 field study links its most often reported texture of beings, “self-transforming”, to his label (Michael et al., 2021). In the 2022 analysis, machine elves appeared in 50 experiences, 2.9% of those with an entity encounter. The authors also flagged a problem: forum users repeatedly applied ready-made labels such as “machine elves” to otherwise novel experiences, which suggests earlier reports may shape later ones (Lawrence et al., 2022). Our article on machine elves traces the phrase’s history. Evidence: preliminary.

What do brain scans show about the visuals?

Imaging studies cannot show what a person saw, but they can show what changed in the brain at the same time. In a placebo-controlled EEG study of 13 volunteers at Imperial College London, intravenous DMT markedly reduced alpha and beta brain rhythms and increased the diversity of brain signals. As the experience peaked, delta and theta rhythms emerged, and this correlated with the peak of the experience, particularly its eyes-closed visual component (Timmermann et al., 2019). Evidence: established for the alpha and beta drop; preliminary for the rest, from 13 people.

A 2023 study recorded EEG and functional MRI at the same time in 20 healthy volunteers, comparing DMT with placebo. It found large increases in connectivity across the brain and a breakdown of the usual separation between networks, with the strongest effects in high-level “transmodal association” regions, which carry many serotonin 2A receptors. Signal diversity was correlated with how rich participants rated their conscious experience (Timmermann et al., 2023). Evidence: preliminary; 20 people.

A 2026 paper from the same research programme interviewed 23 participants in detail after DMT during combined fMRI and EEG. Bodily effects usually came before visual and auditory ones, and perceived presences emerged only after the experience had become multisensory and three-dimensional. The presences varied widely in how they were sensed and how complex they seemed (Sanders et al., 2026). That ordering fits the trip reports: geometry first, then a world, then sometimes someone in it. Evidence: preliminary.

These are small samples of healthy volunteers in a scanner, and they show correlations, not explanations. The visuals track measurable brain changes. The studies do not explain why people see beings, or what those beings are.

How did researchers measure changes in belief?

Mostly by asking people afterwards. In the 2020 survey, respondents reported their religious identity before and after the encounter in the same questionnaire. More than half of those who identified as atheist before no longer did afterwards. Respondents rated the experience among the most meaningful, spiritual and psychologically insightful of their lives, and attributed lasting changes in life satisfaction, purpose and meaning to it (Davis et al., 2020). An earlier survey by the same group, of “God encounter” experiences, included 606 people whose encounter came with DMT. Across all groups, more than two-thirds of those who identified as atheist before no longer did afterwards (Griffiths et al., 2019). Evidence: preliminary.

Both designs share a weakness. The “before” answer is given after the event, from memory, by people who chose to answer a survey about a memorable experience. That can exaggerate change.

A stronger design asks people before and after. In 2021, Imperial College researchers built a 13-item Metaphysical Beliefs Questionnaire and used it in online surveys of people planning to attend a ceremony or guided session involving a psychedelic. Beliefs were measured a week before, then four weeks and six months after, with 866 respondents taking part at different time points. Beliefs shifted away from “physicalist” or materialist views and towards panpsychism and fatalism. Except for fatalism, the shifts lasted at least six months, and a separate psilocybin depression trial showed similar shifts (Timmermann et al., 2021). Evidence: preliminary.

That work covered psychedelics in general, not DMT entity encounters. It supports the idea that beliefs can shift, but it cannot say how much an entity encounter itself contributes.

How do these reports compare with near-death experiences?

Researchers have compared them directly. In a 2018 placebo-controlled study, 13 healthy volunteers given DMT scored significantly higher on a standard near-death experience scale than after placebo. Their scores overlapped with nearly all features reported by a matched group of people who had actually had a near-death experience (Timmermann et al., 2018). The 2020 survey authors likewise noted similarities with entity encounters described in religious, alien-abduction and near-death contexts (Davis et al., 2020). Evidence: preliminary; 13 people in the lab study.

The similarities are not the whole story. A 2025 analysis compared the 36 field-study interviews with 34 written near-death accounts. In 95% of the DMT reports, at least one classic near-death theme appeared, such as bright light, a tunnel-like structure, a sense of dying or deceased family members. But five classic near-death features never appeared with DMT, and the DMT accounts were more kaleidoscopic, “extraterrestrial” and overwhelming. The authors concluded that the two experiences diverge when compared in detail (Michael et al., 2025). Evidence: preliminary.

A 2024 survey of 31 people who had experienced both found overlap in mystical-like features, but the near-death experiences involved more sense of leaving the body and the psychedelic experiences more visual imagery (Martial et al., 2024). Evidence: preliminary.

Whether the brain releases DMT at death is a separate question, and the comparisons above do not answer it. Our articles on DMT and near-death experiences and whether the brain releases DMT when you die cover that debate.

What the research cannot tell us

• What the entities are. Studies record what people report and believe. None tests whether the beings exist independently, and the papers do not claim to.
• How common encounters are overall. The 2020 survey only included people who had an encounter, and the 2022 forum data overrepresents striking experiences, so neither gives a true rate.
• How much culture shapes the content. Shared vocabulary, such as “machine elves” or the “waiting room”, may spread through online communities and colour later reports.
• Whether belief changes last, and why. The DMT-specific evidence is retrospective self-report. The one prospective study covered psychedelics in general.
• How the findings apply to anyone outside the studies. Lab and field participants were screened and supervised, and most survey respondents were experienced users who chose to take part.

Difficult experiences are part of the record too. In the 2020 survey, 41% reported fear during the encounter (Davis et al., 2020). In the 2022 analysis, about one in nine encounters (11.4%) involved a negative or difficult interaction (Lawrence et al., 2022). Positive accounts dominate the data, but they are not the only kind.

The honest summary: DMT entity encounters are broadly consistent across surveys, forums and field interviews, and the visuals that come first line up with measurable brain changes. What the encounters mean is still open. For the competing explanations, read our field guide to DMT entity types; for how setting and expectation shape psychedelic experiences, see our explainer on set and setting.

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