IGSS Logo

IGSS Logo

Friday, February 3, 2012

What is Pareidolia?

Have you ever seen a faceor apparition in a photograph? Is it a ghost in the woods? A face in a window? How about a ghostly figure in a cemetery?

99.9999999% of the time this is called PAREIDOLIA. It is not paranormal. The human mind is programmed to find faces, and sometimes human figures, in an abstract scene such as a picture of a cemetery, woods, windows, and more to make the brain process what it is seeing
in such pictures. If you saw a bunny in the clouds would you truly insist it is a real bunny? No. That's how the brain plays tricks on you. But clouds are much more explainable than a photo with a good story.

Before jumping in and saying WOW look at that ghost; stop and think first. People will try their hardest to get you to believe anything. We find that even many paranormal groups out there also over analyze their photos. Then they manipulate the photo more and more in a photo program trying to make sense of nothing. If you have to work that hard to find the ghost in your photo then it’s not real. Let it go and move on for more definitive proof!

Here is a Wikipedia definition of Pareidolia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia