Have you ever heard a word for the first time, and then it seems to come up over and over in the next few days? This seems to happen to me with some regularity. A few weeks ago, that word was pareidolia.
Pareidolia sounds like a cross between paranoia and indolence: laying around and worrying that someone is watching you. But that’s not what it is. Pareidolia is defined as seeing significant patterns or recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines: seeing significant images in insignificant things.
Pareidolia sounds like a cross between paranoia and indolence: laying around and worrying that someone is watching you. But that’s not what it is. Pareidolia is defined as seeing significant patterns or recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines: seeing significant images in insignificant things.
Pareidolia seems to be central to the human psyche. We’ve been doing it a long, long time. Take, for instance, the constellations: humans look at stars, randomly spaced throughout the sky, often millions of light years apart, and see pictures. Connect the dots and a group of stars becomes a mighty hunter facing off against a raging bull, twin brothers with their arms about each other’s shoulders, a queen sitting on her throne, a long-tailed bear.
Another common form of pareidolia is cloud watching. I have one friend who frequently posts pictures of clouds on Facebook. A whole lot of her friends see things in those clouds.
Another common form of pareidolia is cloud watching. I have one friend who frequently posts pictures of clouds on Facebook. A whole lot of her friends see things in those clouds.
Photo Credit: NPS Photo, Sarah Sherwood Her friends are not the only people on Facebook who practice Pareidolia. Recently, White Sands National Park, in the southern part of New Mexico recently admitted that in the park they frequently play "what do you see in that pedestal?" Pedestals are raised places that form when the moisture in a plant’s root system cements together a clump of the gypsum sand, creating a column that the wind then sculps into interesting shapes. Ranger Sarah thought this pedestal looked like a great white shark emerging from the sands.
A meme on Facebook showed a line of happy tires. One reader commented that they’d had a good year. Another meme showed a terrified couch.
My hiking group hikes up to Old Man Rock nearly every February.
When I built my house, I told the person selling me tile that I wanted something that would hide dog hair and coffee spills. I ended up with a mottled tan tile that is very conducive to my own pareidolic musings. Some images seem to come and go, like mirages. Others, like this one, stayed so vivid that I felt compelled to sketch it. What do you think? Do you see the vulture leaning over the hippo's shoulder, or something else?
Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer who lives his in the mountains of central New Mexico. When she isn't staring out the window at clouds or finding pictures in the tile, she's writing historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. You can read more about her and her books on her website.
