Pareidolia (
/pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is 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 or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
The word comes from the Greek words para- ("παρά" = 'beside', 'alongside', 'instead') in this context meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of; and the noun eidōlon ("είδωλον" = 'image', 'form', 'shape') the diminutive of eidos. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia. (WIKIPEDIA)
In other words pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where the human brain tends to make sense out of something.
For example:
A lot of ghost photos of mist, orbs, patterns, etc. are pareidolia. However, I believe there are real pictures but sometimes I'm unsure of them. I'm not an expert or anything and I do not have psychic abilities to "feel" presence through a picture. All I do is to turn to my common sense and try to be skeptical without closing my mind.
How does one even trust his/her own mind from judging evidence when in the first place the mind itself tells you what to see?
Replies
I guess trusting your feelings when taking the picture would help you know if the picture is paranormal or not. :)
yes cubism.. love it.
In my opinion this is totally natural because the mind is suppose to make sense of what it perceives. For example, in art when viewing a pointillism drawing, the mind always make up shapes when the drawing was just a bunch of dots carefully placed to make shapes.
I think your body responds to what it perceives as threatening, by the fight or flight response.
I think we can distinguish real evidence we cease to assume or cease to expect that there is always something paranormal with a picture/sound. But yeah I agree it's pretty hard to trust you own perception sometimes.