Astral projection

Astral Projection is a glitch which causes Mario's movement to detach from his visible body. The glitch occurs when Mario is being held by a Chuckya and manages to also grab onto the Chuckya holding him. Every enemy that can grab Mario (King Bob-Omb, Chuckya) has two objects associated with it, the object how it looks normally and an anchor object. when Mario isn't being grabbed, the anchor is invisible and only the normal object is visible. but when Mario gets grabbed, the anchor becomes visible, Mario becomes invisible and stands exactly where he was when he was grabbed, and the normal object becomes invisible. The anchor has it's own model which is shown always holding Mario. When Mario gets grabbed in water however, the invisible Mario is still able to swim so if Mario were to re-grab Chuckya during this time, the astral projection glitch occurs.

Using Lava

The Astral Projection glitch can also be done with lava instead of water. This was first noticed due to ROMhacks where Chuckya is placed near lava. In the vanilla game, however, this is much trickier. The only stage to contain lava and a Chuckya is Rainbow Ride, and the lava there is only found in the fireplace of the big house far from the Chuckya. However, by using the light Chuckya glitch and the Hands free glitch, the Chuckya can be brought to the fireplace with some precise jumping and movement. The glitch can then be performed using the fireplace lava.

Videos

Demonstration in TTM

Astral Projection used to trigger a failsafe mechanism

Astral Projection Via Lava by Ethan White