Hoax Museum Blog: Pareidolia

Big Footprint Found — Harold Jackson, a resident of Cookeville, Tennessee, found an indentation on a rock on his property. It looks vaguely like a footprint... a very big footprint. 11 inches across and 15 inches long. The article says he took it home. (I assume he must have made a cast of it and taken that home.)

The surprising thing is that he doesn't think it's a Bigfoot print, though his friends do. He thinks it's a footprint of a Native American.

So how tall would this Native American have been if his feet were 15-inches long? According to WikiAnswers, a person's foot is usually 15% of the height of his body. Therefore, this Native American would have been approximately 100 inches tall, or 8.3 feet.

Pareidolia Roundup: August 2008 — It's time for the monthly pareidolia roundup:

Toronto Virgin Mary
Christopher Moreau was having a beer in his garden, when he realized that scarring on a tree limb in his yard looked kind of like the Virgin Mary. His neighbor is a bit skeptical, but doesn't really care as long as the religious sightseers stay out of her yard.

JC in Cell Phone
Pensacola resident Linda Square thinks an image stored on her cell phone shows her in silhouette with Jesus Christ beside her. She swears that no one sent her the photo, and she didn't take it herself. The phone created it! Congratulations to anyone who can see ANYTHING in this image.

Jesus Wood
Nadine Ostroff calls this round slab of sycamore her "Jesus Wood." She's had it for 12 years but only recently decided to go public with it. Back then people might have thought her a bit odd for having a Jesus Wood, but nowadays it's no big deal.

Rockwell Jesus
Members of Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Rockwell, North Carolina think there's an image of Jesus in a knot on an oak tree in front of their church.

Knotty Virgin Mary
Antonina Filipertis of Lockport, New York heard a voice in her head telling her to "Look in your tree." She did and, lo and behold, saw images of the Virgin Mary in the knotholes of the tree. She's still hearing the voices in her head. People tell her that she's blessed.

Basswood Jesus
At first David Reed of Birch Run, Michigan couldn't see the Jesus face in the tree in his front yard, though his girlfriend kept pointing it out to him. But now it's clear as day to him. He says, "If the price is right, I might be willing to part with it."

Pareidolia Roundup — Once again, it's time to play spot the blurry face resembling the iconic image of Jesus (or the Virgin Mary, or whatever).

Cat Fur Jesus
The Johnson family of Indiana recently adopted a kitten. To their surprise, they discovered that the fur on its side contains a pattern that looks like the face of Jesus. They admit that people who don't see it "might think we are weird crazy or something," but they're fine with that. I'd say they haven't quite reached the weird crazy stage yet. Maybe just a bit weird cuckoo.

Cheesus
Kelly Ramey of High Ridge, Missouri found Jesus in a bag of Cheetos. "I looked at that and I thought, 'Oh my that looks like Jesus on the cross.' It was just like wow," she says." Wow is right! Her friend, however, thinks it looks like a horse's head.

Virgin Mary in Sink
Found by a plumber working in a Salinas, California restaurant. "The new owner of the restaurant says the building has housed several different businesses and he sees the image as a blessing of hope for the new restaurant." I don't know about blessings, but they definitely need some bleach cleanser.

An Angelic Image
Recently an "angelic image" (left) was spotted in the window of a Color Tile store in Porterville, California. Huge crowds started turning out to see it, but within a few days the image was gone. Luckily, someone else spotted an image of Christ on the cross in a nearby palm tree (right). "To have two sightings in the same place — it confirms that the image on the window was not fake," said one onlooker. You can't argue with logic like that.

Allah Meat
A diner at a restaurant in northern Nigeria was about to sink his teeth into a piece of gristle, when he noticed the Arabic word for God in the meat. The restaurant then found three more pieces of gristle that also bore the name of Allah. The owner of the restaurant says, "When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind."

Joker Face in Toilet — Found on eBay: "Dark Knight Joker (Heath Ledger) - Face in My Toilet!" The seller writes:



Coincidentally, I'm in the process of remodeling the hallway bathroom in my house and am in the market for a new toilet. But I definitely won't be bidding on this thing.

But at least it's not a Jesus face in a toilet. (Thanks, Heidi)

A Whole Bunch of Pareidolia — I've been falling behind on my pareidolia updates. So I'm lumping all the recent sightings together in one post:

Spumoni Jesus
Some patrons of Hatch Family Chocolates in Salt Lake City claimed to be able to see the image of Jesus in a 3-gallon bucket of spumoni ice cream. Me: I can't see it at all. Spumoni Jesus started to melt, so they ate him. (Thanks, Bob!)

Face in Log
This one has been getting a lot of attention. Ernest Ward, a groundskeeper at Magnolia Cemetery in Maryville, Tennessee, cut a tree limb, revealing a discoloration that looks like a human face. (What, not Jesus?) The Telegraph thinks it looks like the Queen.

Palm Tree Jesus
A family in Margate, Florida spotted Jesus on a palm tree outside their home. The guy gets around. To me that face doesn't even look vaguely like the traditional, iconic representation of Jesus.

Texas Virgin Mary
The Herrera family of Midland, Texas spotted the Virgin Mary on a tree trunk outside their home. Many locals gathered at their house on the fourth of July to see it for themselves.

Winter Park Jesus
Joe Lewis, a resident of Winter Park, Florida, claims that shadows created by street lights outside his home form an image on a tree that looks a lot like Jesus.

Virgin of Guadalupe Found on Rock
California-resident Jaime Garcia says he was down-on-his-luck until he found a rock that seems -- to him at least -- to show an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe appearing before Saint Juan Diego. In the thumbnail, Garcia's rock is on the right, and on the left is a representation of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Finding the rock inspired Garcia to quit drinking and smoking. He says: "People used to think I'm crazy. Now, they're thinking different." Cranky Media Guy says: "Yeah, now they think he's out of his f---ing mind!"

Holy Potato — Cranky Media Guy wants to know "Who in the press can we implore to PLEASE MAKE THIS NONSENSE STOP?"

He's referring to the most recent finding of a holy potato. From thelocal.de:


Of course, I assume Cranky knows the answer to his question. There is no one we can appeal to. The nonsense will never stop. Ever.

Related post: some other holy spuds

Bigfoot Potato Chip — Don't miss out on this gem on eBay. The seller says: "I have here for auction one ruffled potato chip that looks like Bigfoot. Just for fun, let's call him Chipfoot. 😊 The chip is in very good/stable condition and should ship quite nicely."

I'd make a bid, but at $3 it's already too pricey for me.

Jesus Baking Tin — Hudson Pace writes: "I was scraping out a baking tin when I discovered this Face of Jesus on the bottom! I thought of putting it on Ebay, but then I thought, I don't need the money, so why not cut out the middleman and send the picture straight to the Museum of Hoaxes? Hope you like it."

Very nice. Thanks, Hudson. And it's made me think that I really should create a Pareidolia Gallery to better categorize all these image-bearing baking tins, trees, pieces of toast, etc.

The Lady in the Tree — More tree pareidolia. But this time, it's not the Virgin Mary. It's a naked lady. In theory, it could be a naked Virgin Mary, but no one has made that claim.

The tree, which is over 100 years old, stood on a corner in West Chester, Pennsylvania. It was going to be cut down. After its branches were removed, local residents noticed the woman. It wasn't enough to save the tree. They chopped it down anyway, but the owners are planning on making a statue out of the wood.

Toast Appears on Jesus Christ — John Ordover sent this in. He was looking at a picture of Jesus (or rather, an artist's interpretation of what Jesus might have looked like) when he realized a piece of toast had miraculously appeared on it. I think this must be a message from John's toaster! But can we be sure that actually is a piece of toast? It kinda looks like a granola bar to me.

Cheesus and Mary — Two examples of religious pareidolia have made headlines recently. The first is "Cheesus" -- a Jesus-shaped Cheeto found by Steve Cragg, a youth director at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church in Houston. He actually found it a couple of years ago, but decided to unveil it recently in honor of Easter.


The second is the Virgin Mary on an Easter egg. KGBT reports: "Veronica Cervera said she was making "cascarones" by dyeing hollow eggshells on Good Friday when an image suddenly appeared. Cervera is convinced it's the Virgin Mary." I can't see the image at all. It looks like a white smudge to me.

Palm Leaf Mary — And now for your daily pareidolia. (Well, weekly pareidolia, at least.)

Manny Duenas of Sacramento was cutting down some old palm leaves in his yard -- on Palm Sunday, no less -- when he happened to look at one of the leaves in his hand and saw an image of the Virgin Mary cradling baby Jesus in her arms.

Duenas says: "God is out there and maybe these are one of the messages that they send."


Actually, I don't so much see the Virgin Mary figure, but I definitely see an outline of the state of Illinois. Maybe it's some kind of message being sent to us by the Illinois Cornflake.

Jesus in the Door — Ten years ago Wendy Divock felt a touch on her cheek. She thought it was her husband touching her, but when she turned around, he wasn't there. What she saw instead was an image of a face in her closet door.

Initially Wendy and her husband called the image the "guy in the door," but after doing some research on the internet they decided that it was Jesus. The pastor across the street assures them that the image is "very significant and that it's authentic."

The Dovicks have created a site, jesusinthedoor.com, to publicize their door. They're selling 8x10 glossy photos of it for $13.50. Whenever you click any link on their site, a pop-up screen alerts you of this. They've also got a creepy animated figure that introduces people to the site.

They don't say if Jesus-in-the-door still "touches" Wendy when her back is turned. (Thanks, Bob)

Solar Mary — According to the website dnaindia.com, 50 people in the Kottayam district of India have lost their vision after gazing into the sun for hours trying to see an image of the Virgin Mary:

If people feel compelled to see an image of the Virgin Mary in something, it seems much safer to stick with things like grilled cheese sandwiches or tree stumps.

Jesus or Mary in a tree — Donna and Frank Pascariello have a tree on their property that has a light patch on its bark. Of course, the patch MUST represent a religious figure of some kind. This is the rule whenever trees display any kind of discoloration. However, in the case of the Pascariello's tree, no one is sure exactly which religious figure it is. Jesus? Mary? A saint?

I think it looks like a generic ghost.

Jesus (or a lobster) in a tree — Here's another "Jesus Image in a Tree" for my collection. This one was found by Pennsylvania resident Craig O'Connor. MyFoxColorado.com reports:

This image is a lot easier to see than many of the Jesus-in-a-tree images. But it looks like Jesus has lobster claws.

Martian Pareidolia — With the Martian Bigfoot recently making headlines, Dr. Charles Lintott wrote an article for the BBC that traces the long history of Martian pareidolia.

Something about Mars makes us see things that aren't really there. It began with early astronomers believing that the surface of Mars was covered with canals. During the 1960s, some astronomers reported seeing signs of vegetation on the planet's surface.

The image below shows (on the top row) the Martian canals. The bottow row (from left to right) is the "face on Mars" taken by NASA's Viking spacecraft in the 1970s; the fossils that NASA researchers claimed to have found in a Martian meteorite in 1996; the recent Martian bigfoot; and the Martian smiley face (also recently photographed).

Petrified Foot — Bob (aka Cranky Media Guy) sent me a link to an article about "Scientific Hoaxes" scanned from the Dec. 1931 issue of Modern Mechanix magazine. I love old popular-science magazines like this. They're a great source of strange information.

Unfortunately whoever scanned this article missed two pages, so you skip from a discussion of the Central Park Zoo Escape straight into a discussion of the Cardiff Giant. Nevertheless, the image of a "petrified foot" on the front page caught my curiosity. The caption reads: "A water-worn stone was once offered to the Smithsonian Institute as a petrified foot. Note the striking resemblance."

The article offers no more information about this unusual gift to the Smithsonian. So I did some research in the Google News Archive and was able to find a reference to the petrified foot in a July 18, 1908 Washington Post article titled "Nature as a Faker":


Nineteenth-century newspapers were full of reports of animals and body parts found petrified in their entirety, perfectly preserved, which reflected a popular misunderstanding about the process of petrifaction. Soft tissue is almost never petrified, because it decays long before the petrifaction process can occur.

Ghostly face floats near floor — 17-year-old Matthew Summers used his mobile phone to take a picture of his sister and some friends as they were preparing to go out. Closer inspection of the photo revealed a ghostly face floating near the floor.





Thisislondon.co.uk writes:


Sure, it's pareidolia. But it also looks like something was either superimposed on the original picture or smudged the pixels. I'd guess it's an artifact created by the software used to compress the size of the image. (via spluch)

Jesus Hides in Potatoes — Renee Brewster of Florida found Jesus while preparing potato salad. His image was clearly visible in the moldy rot that had formed in the center of the first potato she split open. She put aside the holy potato and finished making the potato salad, which reportedly tasted excellent.

According to MyFoxOrlando, Renee and her husband feel that "the site of their savior in a potato has reinvigorated their faith."

But Cranky Media Guy wonders if this is manufactured pareidolia, noting that, "For the first time in memory, I can actually make out the figure they think they see."

If one Jesus-in-a-potato isn't enough for you, then you're in luck, because the MyFoxOrlando article links to a second story, from just a few weeks ago, about a Houston woman who also discovered Jesus inside a potato. But I think the Florida Jesus-Potato is better.