I wonder if these experiences of ego death are really some kind of malevolent visitation by a force or entity that takes over you or removes something from you.

If you think about it, you are at your most vulnerable when you are on a psychedelic substance. Anything can take advantage of you. You’re opening the door to higher dimensional reality and it exposes just as much of you to what’s out there. I just have a hunch about this because blacking out is not something you ever want to experience. That is when something is capable of possessing you. My worst fear is that everyone is taking these substances and somehow one by one getting picked apart by some alien force and then thinking they just had an ego death when in reality their consciousness was violated and they’re none the wiser about it because it’s become an idea ingrained in psychedelic culture. We still don’t know anything. Shamans would agree with me on the blacking out part, and they’re the most experienced with these kinds of things.