DMT entity types explained: a field guide to the beings people report, and the theories behind them

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People who report meeting beings on DMT rarely describe the same one. Some meet a mother figure, some a god, some a crowd of jesters, insects or light-beings. This field guide sorts the reported DMT entities by type, gives the best figures for how often each turns up, explains why those figures depend on who is asked and how, and sets out the main explanations side by side. It builds on our overview of DMT entity encounters and our pillar, what is DMT.

What counts as a DMT entity?

Researchers use “entity” or “presence” for anything a person experiences as a separate someone with a mind of its own. That can be a fully seen figure who speaks, or a presence that is only felt. In a 2026 lab study in which 23 people were interviewed in fine detail after DMT given during brain scanning, presences featured in 17 interviews. Some were seen, heard or felt on the body; others were sensed through feeling alone, with no sight or sound, a category found in 26% of interviews (Sanders et al., 2026). Evidence: preliminary.

Across the coded online reports, the person almost always described the entity as making first contact (97.8% of encounters), and some communication occurred in 74.4%, most often one-way from entity to person (48.0%) (Lawrence et al., 2022). These are features of the accounts, not facts about who started anything. Evidence: preliminary (reports).

The field guide: the main reported types of DMT entities

The most detailed breakdown comes from a team led by David Lawrence of the University of Toronto, who coded all DMT experiences posted to one online forum from 2009 to 2018: 3,778 experiences, 1,719 of them with an entity (Lawrence et al., 2022). Percentages below are of those 1,719 encounters; one encounter can include several types. Evidence: preliminary, from self-selected public posts.

How those beings behave matters as much as what they look like. Interactions were coded as positive (benevolent, comforting, protecting or caring) in 34.9% of encounters, and as a guide, teacher or companion role in 32.4%. A negative or difficult interaction appeared in 11.4%, most often a menacing or threatening being (5.4%). A “medical” scene, an entity examining or scanning the person, appeared in 9.0% (Lawrence et al., 2022). Evidence: preliminary (reports).

The famous elves are a small slice. For the history of that label and why it may shape reports, see machine elves: where the phrase came from.

Why do studies give different figures for DMT entities?

Because they sample different people and ask in different ways. The share of experiences with any entity was 45.5% in the forum reports (Lawrence et al., 2022), 94% in a home field study of 36 experienced users interviewed immediately afterwards (Michael et al., 2021), 17 of 23 interviews in the lab (Sanders et al., 2026), and effectively 100% in a 2020 survey that recruited only people who had had an encounter (Davis et al., 2020). None of these is a population rate. Evidence: preliminary.

Labels move too. In the 2020 survey of 2,561 people, who chose from ready-made labels, the most common were guide (43%), alien (39%), spirit (39%) and helper (34%), then angel (16%), elf (14%), religious figure (11%), plant spirit (10%), faerie (8%), chemical spirit (8%), animal spirit (7%), clown (6%) and demon (6%), as summarised by the 2021 field study (Michael et al., 2021; Davis et al., 2020). Evidence: preliminary.

In the field study’s free-form interviews, helping roles were common (53%) and menacing beings rare (8%), while elf- or faerie-looking beings were only 3% and clown-like characters 11%. The authors stress that the survey used mostly fixed, pre-set answers while their participants used their own words (Michael et al., 2021). A ready-made list makes some labels easier to pick. Evidence: preliminary.

Does ritual and culture shape which entities appear?

The best evidence is ethnographic, and it comes from ayahuasca rather than pure DMT. The anthropologist David Dupuis spent 18 months between 2008 and 2013 at Takiwasi, a ceremonial centre in the Peruvian Amazon whose rituals draw on Catholic as well as Amazonian traditions. Foreign participants frequently reported “demons”, often fighting protective spirits of nature or Christian figures. Dupuis found that recognising a demon often rested less on any particular image than on the fear or disgust that came with it, and that the next day’s group discussions taught people how to name what they had seen. He argues that cultural background and social interaction shape not just how people interpret visions but what the visions contain (Dupuis, 2022). Evidence: preliminary, from one centre.

That was ayahuasca at one centre, with its own Catholic and Amazonian imagery. It shows how a setting can steer content; it does not tell us how often demons appear with DMT elsewhere.

A 2026 theory paper on entity encounters makes the same point across substances: depending on the cultural milieu, entities appear as spirits, elves, ancestors or fragments of the self. It cites a study in which almost half of white Westerners who took ibogaine reported television screens, a feature rare in traditional African accounts, which centre on ancestors (Mago et al., 2026). The forum study’s authors likewise suspect that earlier posts shape later reports (Lawrence et al., 2022). No controlled DMT study has yet varied what people are told beforehand and measured who they meet. Evidence: preliminary for culture shaping content; unresolved for DMT specifically.

What could explain DMT entities? The main hypotheses

Several lines of research explain parts of the picture. None explains all of it, and none has been tested with DMT. They are set out here as hypotheses, with what each can and cannot account for.

1. The felt presence: the brain misplacing its own body

In 2006, doctors stimulating one spot of the brain, the left temporoparietal junction, in a patient being assessed for epilepsy surgery repeatedly produced the feeling of a person close behind her, a “shadow” that copied her posture (Arzy et al., 2006). In 2014, a team mapped brain lesions in patients who felt such presences and then built a robot that delayed the touch of a person’s own movement on their back; the mismatch made healthy volunteers feel someone nearby. The authors concluded the illusion comes from misattributing signals from one’s own body (Blanke et al., 2014). Evidence: preliminary.

Pooling 25 of the same lab’s experiments with 561 people, the robot effect was reliable and medium-sized, and stronger in people with schizotypal traits, a personality style marked by unusual perceptions and beliefs (Dhanis et al., 2026). Evidence: established within this one research group.

Felt presences are also common in illness. In 216 people with Parkinson’s disease, “minor” hallucinations, including a sense of a presence, affected 25.5% (Fénelon et al., 2000). In a sample of 40 people with first-episode psychosis, 21 reported a felt presence (Alderson-Day et al., 2025). What this explains: a vivid sense of someone there, from a disturbance of self-processing. What it does not: the seen, speaking, teaching beings in rich worlds that DMT reports describe.

2. Charles Bonnet figures: a visual brain making people

In Charles Bonnet syndrome, people with failing eyesight but no mental illness see complex hallucinations. Of 505 visually impaired patients screened in a 1996 study, 60 met the criteria. All 60 knew their hallucinations were not real, and for 77% the hallucinations had no personal meaning (Teunisse et al., 1996). Brain scans of such patients found that hallucinated colours, faces, textures and objects matched activity in the specialised visual areas that normally process those features (ffytche et al., 1998). Evidence: established that a deprived visual brain can generate figures. What it does not explain: DMT reports usually describe beings as meaningful, communicative and real, the opposite of these patients’ experience.

3. Expectation and culture

Expectation can bias perception. In a preregistered study, people led to expect more voices in noise reported more voices, especially when the sound was unclear (Szymanek et al., 2024). Culture affects even involuntary experiences: in general-population samples, 25% of people in Denmark and 44% in Egypt reported at least one episode of sleep paralysis, an experience often accompanied by a sense of an intruder, and Egyptian experiencers had episodes more often and feared them more (Jalal and Hinton, 2013). Evidence: preliminary as an explanation of DMT entities, which no one has tested this way.

4. “Computational spirits”: losing the I-made-this stamp

A 2026 paper by researchers including Christopher Timmermann and David Dupuis proposes that psychedelics make the brain’s own sensations less predictable, which inclines it to infer that they come from someone else, a non-self agent. The model aims to explain both how varied entities are across cultures and why they are similar (Mago et al., 2026). Its authors acknowledge a puzzle: 5-MeO-DMT, a close chemical relative, more often produces non-dual or ego-dissolving states than autonomous entities. Evidence: unresolved; a theory with testable predictions, not yet tested. See also 5-MeO-DMT vs DMT and DMT and ego death.

5. The realist proposal

Some researchers take seriously the possibility that the beings are more than hallucinations. A 2026 preprint by Andrew Gallimore and colleagues, built on a philosophical framework in which reality consists of interacting conscious agents, says it does not assert that DMT entities are real but derives testable predictions and proposes experiments that could distinguish internally generated hallucinations from contact with something else (Gallimore et al., 2026, preprint). It is not peer reviewed, and we found no published result from such a test. Evidence: unresolved.

What we still don’t know about DMT entities

• What the entities are. No study has tested whether they exist outside the experience (unresolved).
• How common each type is among everyone who uses DMT, rather than among self-selected posters, survey takers or experienced volunteers (unresolved).
• Whether being told about entities beforehand changes who appears. No controlled DMT study has tested it (unresolved).
• Whether felt-presence mechanisms, visual-cortex mechanisms or agency attribution are actually engaged during DMT entity encounters. None has been measured together with DMT (unresolved).
• Why the order in which a DMT world assembles is so consistent while its inhabitants vary so much (preliminary observation, unexplained).

Difficult encounters are part of the record: about one in nine coded encounters involved a negative interaction, and fear was reported by 41% of the 2020 survey. If an experience has left someone distressed, our guide to how to help someone having a bad trip explains what supporters can do. For why these encounters feel so convincing, read why DMT feels more real than reality.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about published research on the beings people report during DMT experiences. It is not medical, legal or purchasing advice, and it does not recommend any product.