Illusion Casting is the ability to induce illusions or hallucinations, tricking a person to sense (i.e. see, hear, smell, touch, or taste) things that are not there by manipulating their perception. This is a very rare power possessed by only a handful of supernatural and unnatural beings in the Teen Wolf series.
Beings with Illusion Casting[]
Dread Doctors[]
The Dread Doctors either possessed this power or created technology that allowed them to induce illusion-based hallucinations on others. They notably used this power when they were invading the "fortress" the McCall Pack created in Beacon Hills High School to protect the newly revealed Chimera Hayden Romero from their experimentation. ("Strange Frequencies")
During this invasion, they projected illusions on Scott McCall, Lydia Martin, Malia Tate, and Jordan Parrish, all of which were somehow involved with things they were secretly afraid of.
Scott had a vision of his then-girlfriend Kira Yukimura being overtaken by her inner Kitsune spirit and stabbing him in the back with a sword before strangling him with a dog leash, referring to herself as the "Messenger of Death." Lydia hallucinated that Tracy Stewart, a girl she tried to help prior to her murder by the Dread Doctors, ripped her tongue out of her throat and threw her down the stairs. Malia hallucinated that she had been caught in a number of coyote traps similar to the ones her adoptive father, Henry Tate, used to use in their property. ("Anchors"), ("More Bad Than Good") Finally, Parrish had a vision of himself making out with Lydia in his SUV, only for his pyrokinetic powers to severely burn her.
Gabriel Valack[]
Valack was an ordinary human who was able to bestow upon himself a number of powers (including illusion casting and Extrasensory Perception) by performing trephination on himself, a procedure that involves drilling a whole in the skull.
By doing so, Valack exposed his third eye and was able to see events in the past, present, and future regardless of whether or not he was there to witness the event itself. ("A Novel Approach") He was also able to share these visions with others after they made eye contact with his third eye, though a side-effect of this power was that the person receiving the vision was literally trapped in the illusion in their mind, entering a catatonic state in the "real world" that was very difficult to reverse. Because of how dangerous this power made him, he was eventually locked up in Eichen House's ward for supernatural creatures to protect the town at large from his influence. ("A Promise to the Dead")
According to Conrad Fenris, one of the last people to make eye contact with Gabriel Valack's third eye "left the room, but not the building," implying that they were forced to become Eichen House patients themselves. This was seen first-hand when Alan Deaton visited Valack at Eichen in order to gain information about Derek Hale's condition, as an Age Regression ritual performed on him by the Werejaguar Kate Argent had caused him to start to lose his Werewolf powers, and Deaton wanted to know if he was dying.
Valack informed him that he could only gain this information by looking into his third-eye, and though Deaton resisted at first, he eventually did as Valack suggested. This sent him physically into a catatonic state, but inside his mind, he experienced an illusion of the vision Valack saw, which involved Deaton being in the obsidian room in La Iglesia in Mexico, where he saw what would eventually be revealed to be the set-up for Kate's plan to turn Scott McCall into a Berserker. ("A Promise to the Dead")
Jennifer Blake[]
Jennifer was a Darach, a Druid who had "lost their way" and become dark (in the case of a Druid, this meant using their powers for personal gain rather than to help maintain the balance of nature) and who possessed a number of supernatural powers, including illusion casting, as a result of a number of sacrificial rituals she performed to gain such powers; however, it's not confirmed how she managed to receive the power of illusion casting, though it may be connected to her power of glamouring.
Jennifer used this power a number of times, usually in order to distract and/or frighten her targets for sacrifices so that they were too overwhelmed to fight back. The first time she was seen using this power, she made Heather, a target for her virgin trio of sacrifices, believe that bottles of wine from the shelves in her wine cellar were shooting out at her, shattering as they hit the ground and causing her to cut her feet on the broken glass; this was helpful because it caused her to walk backwards toward the wall where a window was located that allowed Jennifer to pull her through it and outside the house, and when Stiles Stilinski came looking for Heather, the wine cellar was completely clean, revealing that it was all an illusion. ("Chaos Rising")
She used this power a second time while trying to capture Emily, her second target for her trio of virgin sacrifices, who was in a tent in the Beacon Hills Preserve with her girlfriend, Caitlin, who had organized a romantic camping trip. Jennifer used her illusion casting ability to make Emily think that bugs were crawling all over her, causing Emily to run scared away from the tent so that she was alone in the woods when Jennifer captured her. ("Fireflies")
Illusion casting was also used to capture Kyle, her first warrior trio target, by tricking him into thinking that his dog, Bullet, was under a dumpster, when really, the dog was behind him, giving Jennifer the opportunity to grab him while he was distracted. ("Unleashed")
Jennifer used her power to make one moth look like a flurry of them inside Dr. Hilyard's car, distracting and unnerving her enough that she lost control of her car, allowing her to easily be captured. When Scott and Ethan Steiner came upon the car, they only found the single moth laying in the driver's seat, but all of the others vanished when Jennifer did. ("Currents")
Finally, she used her illusion casting power one last time when preparing to capture her first target in her philosopher trio of sacrifices, Tara Graeme, who had been called out to Beacon Hills High School as a result of "suspicious activity." The illusion caused her to see that someone with green pants and brown boots was being dragged into the showers in the boy's locker room, and when she finally made her way into the showers, she found that it was her own body, laying dead, half-leaned up against the wall as water poured down on her, distracting her enough so that Jennifer could easily sneak behind her and strangle her with a garrote in the first step to killing her via the three-fold death (strangulation, slit throat, and blunt force trauma to the head). ("The Girl Who Knew Too Much")
Lenore[]
Lenore is a Banshee who witnessed an extremely traumatizing event in 1987 in which the Ghost Riders of the Wild Hunt came and captured all of the townspeople from a party in her hometown of Canaan before erasing them from reality, leaving Lenore as the only "survivor" due to the fact that the Wild Hunt didn't mess with Banshees. Her horror at the scene unfolding around her caused her to scream so loudly and powerfully that she created a sort of aura around the entire town, giving her an unprecedented amount of control over it through other powers such as telekinesis, and even creating a phantom version of her late son, Caleb.
Among these powers over the town was illusion casting, which she when Scott McCall, Lydia Martin, and Malia Tate came to Canaan to investigate after being given instructions to do so by their friend Stiles Stilinski, who had also been captured by the Ghost Riders and managed to send them a message. Though Lydia, as a fellow Banshee, was immune to Lenore's power of illusion casting, Scott and Malia, as a Werewolf and a Werecoyote, were not, and each saw terrifying visions in the illusions induced by Lenore. ("Ghosted")
Scott saw his mother, Melissa McCall, wandering around the city, her head looking as though someone had taken a huge bite out of her skull (a hint to the fact that there was another creature in Beacon Hills, the Alpha Löwenmensch Garrett Douglas, who was biting into the skulls of other people and eating their pineal glands to heal. ("Sundowning")
Meanwhile, Malia saw the dead bodies of her adoptive mother and sister, Evelyn and Kylie laying in a yard, along with her sister's doll, which she had left at the car crash site where they died as a token even while she was living as a coyote. Theo Raeken then appeared and suggested Malia wished she were dead with them before shooting her, causing her to fall backward between the two bodies, which then enveloped her in an embrace and pulled her down into a "grave" with them. ("Ghosted")
Nogitsune[]
The Nogitsune was a powerful Void Kitsune spirit that specialized in trickery and deception. Though the Nogitsune was very physically powerful, he preferred to use his illusion abilities and skill for manipulation in general to cause chaos, strife, and pain with which it could then "eat" to gain more power.
The Nogitsune caused a number of visions within Stiles Stilinski's mind while he was possessing him, many of which involved him either being caught in a coyote trap or being locked in a locker, all in an effort to goad Stiles into allowing the Nogitsune to fully control his body. ("Anchors"), ("Riddled")
His most impressive illusion was created during the final battle against the McCall Pack, in which he caused Scott McCall, Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin, and Kira Yukimura to believe they were in the Japanese garden owned by the former Yakuza akumicho and currently owned by the akumicho's son, Ikeda, when they were actually in Beacon Hills High School. The illusion was so vivid that they could actually feel the snow as it fell from the sky and interact with the objects in the garden; it wasn't until they started to question the reality of the scene around them that they started to "see through the cracks," so to speak, allowing them to see school books and desks that alerted them to where they really were. ("The Divine Move")