Culturally shared beliefs about mental illness formed the background against which attitudes to hallucinatory experiences were tested in nursing aides in Egypt's Behman Psychiatric Hospital. The aides had no prior didactic training or education in psychology or nursing. They had direct dealings with hallucinated inpatients. Their attitudes to patients' visual and auditory hallucinatory experiences were tested by two specially designed structured interviews based on two inventories. A significant proportion of nurse aides attributed hallucinations to psychiatric disorder and thought that hallucinated individuals were dominated by emotions more than reason and could not perform skilled jobs. Their treatment was thought to include psychological and psychiatric methods. Attribution of hallucinatory experiences to supernatural agents was more likely by male than female nurse aides. No significant differences could be elicited between attitudes to visual and auditory hallucinations.