I stumbled across this last night. It's suverys hypotheses for dreams/experiences/hallucinations consistent across independent cultures and people.

Across cultures, centuries, and altered states, people have reported encountering strikingly similar figures: tricksters, guides, watchful presences, or shadowy beings. These often take familiar forms, from animals like coyotes and monkeys, to clowns, jesters, or mischievous humanlike figures that seem to interact with the person before them.

Among the hypothesis listed, I find myself believing that humans evolved some innate and finite entity classifiers/archetypes and when consciousness is altered/impaired we uses these entity classes like base ingredients to construct narratives - profound, helpful, and revealing as they may be.