The term pareidolia (pronounced /pæraɪˈdoʊliə/) describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- —"beside", "with" or "alongside"- meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech)—and eidolon—"image" (the diminutive of eidos—"image", "form", "shape"). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.



Have you seen Jesus today? The photo above may be a good chance. Sent by Jessica Lundgren from Sweden to paranormal.about.com, you can see the clear profile of a giant bearded man with closed eyes. It does resemble common representations of a fellow named Jesus. Even though that enormous Jesus head doesn’t quite fit into the rest of the image. What’s going on there? Jessica writes that “the child died short after the photo was taken”.

what child?

ZombieKitten said:

Ooooooh!


Creepy!

Christ, that's creepy


I see those things all the time.
Even when I'm dreaming with my eyes half open, an object in my dream will dissolved into one of the REAL objects in the room. Fore example, I may be dreaming of an animal of some kind, and I slowly wake up to realize that I'm looking at plant in my room whose leaves are shaped in such a way that the resemble the shape of an animal in my dream.

But in waking, I see it all the time in patterns in walls, etc.etc.

creepy

I'm always seeing Elvis in my bathrobe and shit

ZombieKitten said:

Imago said:

Your avatar is making me

hokie said:

Ariel's avatar sucks!

Imago said:

yes, the subject of my avatar does suck.

I am always seeing things in everything it seems. And then once I see something in a pattern somewhere I can't help but stare at it every time I see it.

The stairs at work have this weird scratch mark on one step that I look at every single time I go up them. It looks exactly like a helicopter. In fact I always specifically think of this when I see it.

JustErin said:

I see a woman's face on the right.

hokie said:

Yer supposed to.

I love this thread.

july said:

JustErin said:

at my parent's old place they had a pine ceiling with knot holes all over it, I was forever seeing doggies faces in it

my old shower recess had ugly pattern tiles on it, but I saw naked ladies in them

HamsterHuey said:

july said:

I ain;t saying I'm sane, but you have officially entered your koo-koo period.

HamsterHuey said:

I'm seeing little circles, shaking their hands around

ZombieKitten said:

No more booz for you!