A woman who saw people as dragons
Doctors in the Netherlands recently treated a 52-year-old woman who had been living since childhood with unusual and frightening hallucinations. Whenever she looked at people, their faces would change before her eyes, taking on the appearance of dragons — with long snouts, pointed ears, reptile-like skin, and glowing yellow, green, or red eyes. Sometimes, these dragon-like faces appeared even when no one else was present.
Her case was carefully investigated. Blood tests, neurological exams, and EEG brain scans were normal. However, an MRI revealed small old lesions in the white matter of her brain, near a region called the lentiform nucleus — an area connected with attention and memory. Doctors believed these lesions may have been caused long ago, possibly around birth.
The woman was eventually diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), a very rare condition that distorts how the brain processes faces. Some patients see faces that stretch or shrink; others see faces sag, slide out of place, or look demonic. In her unique case, the faces specifically looked reptilian, resembling dragons.
Treatment was challenging. At first, she was prescribed valproic acid, a medicine usually used for seizures and migraines. It reduced the dragon hallucinations, but she then began hearing banging sounds in her sleep. Doctors switched her to rivastigmine, a drug often used in Alzheimer’s disease, which made her hallucinations much less frequent. After three years of this therapy, she was able to stabilize her work and social life.
PMO is extremely rare — only about 80 cases have been described worldwide in the last 100 years. In most patients, the distortions last only a short time. In this case, the woman had lived with dragon-like visions for decades, making her story both medically important and deeply human.
