Ghosts, Clouds, Meaning and Pareidolia

Appearance and Reality

Seeing faces in clouds, on the surface of other worlds and on pieces of toast is not unusual; we've probably all looked up and have been excited and surprised to clearly recognize a face or, perhaps, even horses and other creatures sketched in the skies. It's a psychological phenomenon called “pareidolia.” And we all share this ability because of our mind or brain's predilection to turn vague or random stimulus into something recognizable. Humans seem to be meaning making machines – we try and impose meaning even when presented with chaos.

Artists often recognize the impetus to find order; a number of novelists have even described their work as an attempt to create order out of chaos. The sonnet, with its meter, rhyme and stress defining the lines, and number of lines – the form, was seen by poets as one means of marshaling words into proper order to describe the world or their feelings.

Pattern Recognition and Meaning

As I've suggested, part of our raison d'être is to impose meaning on the world around us. Victor Frankyl and others too have argued that we are driven to find meaning or “logos” in our lives. Our desire to find this order and meaning is as old as our history and is readily seen whether it's in the ancient art of the Inca or the astounding paintings in the caves of Lascaux.

Quickly recognizing the state of the world around us was an important survival skill at one time, and filling in the missing pieces when presented with a flash of a partial image meant the difference between life and death. Certainly rapidly spotting a human face, particularly identifying it as friendly or not would have been crucial at times.

However, it seems that everything has a price and the one we pay for our ready ability to see patterns is that we sometimes see ones that aren't there. As children, we can look at the clouds and make a game of this ability but there are other situations where we might not be aware that it is our mind that is playing with us. And sometimes explanations of the paranormal are rooted in such explanations, argue some skeptics.

Seeing and Believing

Most of us have seen images of faces that are meant to resemble Jesus, Elvis or other well known persons on sides of buildings, potato chips or even sculpted into miraculously shaped vegetables. (Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that no one has yet claimed to have seen an image of Mohammed since any announced sighting might well bring about an international incident.)

If we recognize that the brain is designed to indulge in pattern recognition we have an explanation why we all see pictures in clouds but, troublingly, we have to recognize that we shouldn't always believe what we see.

Sometimes science seems to contradict our senses. There are many well known experiments that clearly demonstrate that we can be quite wrong when we place great certainty on the belief we have seen something or someone. Real life offers tragic examples when eye witnesses whose certainty and credible accounts have placed many accused in prison only to discover their mistake years later when DNA or other evidence exculpated those who were sent to their cells with such mistaken certainty.

It is important to recognize our limitations and perhaps even more important to know that we would be mistaken to always trust our senses – we really are capable of fooling ourselves. We can believe quite sincerely that we have seen or heard something and be quite mistaken. Armed with this insight, it is interesting to view some of the evidence that is offered as proof of the paranormal.

The Young Girl of Wem Hall

The ghostly image of the girl was printed from an undoctored negative; the girl seems very clear in this photo of the fiery Wem Town Hall.

The photograph was taken by local resident Tony O'Rahilly; he took the photo from across the road with a 200mm lens as Wem Town Hall burned to the ground. At the time, the fire was so hot that onlookers were stopped by the firefighters and police. No one saw the girl in the doorway and it would have been impossible for anyone to have survived a fire. O'Rahilly took a number of photos on 19th November,1995 but none of the others show the girl. Sadly, O'Rahilly, an amateur photographer, died ten years later and it was suggested that he had suffered great stress because of the controversy surrounding the photo. There have been a number of attempts to discredit the image but none have been successful.

The Brown Lady

There are other well-known photos such as the famous image known as The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall that purportedly captures a ghost descending the main staircase. In this instance Indre Shira assisting Captain Provand take the photographs, as well as others, claim to have seen the ghost. The photo has been widely used on the Internet and is probably the world's most famous ghost photograph!

Percentage who believe in ghosts

O'Rahilly's photo seems the most impressive of all the various images and a number of experts regard it as the most difficult to explain. Almost as eerie are the statistics; apparently there are many who belief in ghosts – and the number has been growing in recent years!

Pew research reports that in 2009, 29% of Americans reported that they had been in touch with someone who had died and the percent who had said that they had been in the presence of ghosts had doubled to 18% from just over a decade previously. By way of comparison, in 2005, a British poll is even scarier revealing that 68% believed in ghosts and spirits, while God came in second place with 55% believing! A plethora of popular British TV shows about the paranormal that were airing at that time is given as one explanation for the large number of UK believers.

The statistics suggest that if you feel you have been in touch with someone who has died or have been in the presence of a ghost, many others say they have shared similar experiences. I hope readers will be able to add some of their experiences and views as comments.