Pareidolia

Dear Ghostvillagers,

Have you ever looked up at the clouds and seen a face? How about the man on the moon? Have you ever heard a series of sounds and thought maybe it was a voice? If so, you've experienced pareidolia. What does pareidolia have to do with paranormal research? Plenty.

The actual term "pareidolia" was first put forth in 1994, but the concept goes back much further. In 1921, psychologist Hermann Rorschach developed a series of ink blots on cards. He observed that when he showed the same series of ink blots to individual children, they noticed many shapes looked like animals or other figures found in nature. When Rorschach showed his now-famous cards to normal, cognitive adults, they mainly picked out human features: arms, legs, and often faces. Rorschach came to the conclusion that humans seek the familiar when faced with imagery and audio that is vague. Our brains force us to fit stimulus into something we can understand.

Ever heard the expression, "I never forget a face?" Most of us don't ever forget a face. We have an incredible human ability to remember faces. The same is true of sounds. When we hear human speech, the sound goes to the highest levels of our brain -- even if we don't understand the language being spoken. If we do understand the language, our brains process the speech. If we hear the words and recognize that it's a language foreign to us, our brains will lower the processing of the sound and turn it into background noise. We're hard-wired to do this because faces and speech are critical to our survival, our networking, and our well-being.

Pareidolia has come to be almost a derogatory term in paranormal research. It's come to mean we were mistaken when we saw a face in an anomalous photograph. But, if we can better understand the limits and abilities of our own perceptions, we can become better tuned to what's paranormal and what's pareidolia. Perception and pareidolia is the topic we'll be exploring more in-depth this month on Ghostvillage.com. You're all invited to join the discussion and contribute your own thoughts, ideas, and images on the subject.