A situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist, for example a face in a cloud, is an example of a phenomenon known as “pareidolia”. It is the human tendency to read significance into random or vague stimuli (both visual and auditory). The term comes from the Greek words “para” (παρά), meaning beside or beyond, and “eidolon” (εἴδωλον), meaning form or image. Though animals or plants can “appear” in clouds and human speech can do the same in static noise, the appearance of a face where there is none is perhaps the most common variant of pareidolia. Pareidolia was once thought of as… Read More
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