Have you ever been laying on the grass looking up at the sky and seen a rabbit or a puppy in the clouds? According to scientists, you have just experienced Pareidolia in its most common form.

Often called "brain matrixing," Pareidolia is when a vague or random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant. Thus, a cloud can become a puppy, or -- in the case of paranormal investigation -- a camera strap or thumb that strayed in front of the lens can become the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. We have all experienced this in one form or another. The reason, researchers say, is that humans are hard-wired to want to find patterns in the world.

A good example of this is the work of Japanese researcher Chonosuke Okamura. Okamura self published a series of reports titled "Original Report of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory," in which he detailed his examination of small inclusions in limestone samples dating back to the Silurian period. He claimed that when he looked at those rocks under high magnification, he found the fossils of hundreds of tiny animals: humans, gorillas, dogs, dragons, dinosaurs, and others. The kicker here is that none of the fossils was bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. His theory was that the only evolution life on earth had experienced was a change in size -- that we are all much bigger then we were millions of years ago.
 
Now I'm not sure what kind of doctor Dr. Okamura was, but I'm not buying it, and neither did the scientific community. Instead, he had almost certainly experienced a case of Pareidolia. He had seen what he wanted to see -- in this case, tiny fossils in the random patterns of the rock.

How does this relate to the paranormal field you ask? Well, it's obvious. We spend our time looking for the faces of spirits, and listening for voices that wouldn't normally be there. Sometimes, we find them. But is it possible that some of the "evidence" we find is just the result of Pareidolia?

If I had a nickel every time I've had a photo shoved at me while the person said "don't ya see that face right there? He's winking at us" I could retire to Hawaii. Once a fellow investigator says that, however, it's hard not to see what they want you to. Of course I see it now, you say. You just made me want to see it, so my brain did!

Now before my fellow investigators decide to burn me at the stake for paranormal heresy, let me say this: There are real photos of spirits and real recordings of EVP. The point I'm stumbling around to make is that we want to see those faces and we want to hear those EVPs very badly. It's what we spend thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars looking for, so anytime we look at a photo or listen to a recording, our brains want to see or hear a ghost there. Therefore, we must be doubly cautious when examining our evidence -- not only cautious of seeing what we want to see and finding what we want to find due to Pareidolia, but also cautious of getting so stoked about a piece of evidence that we potentially spread our Pareidolia to others -- excitedly demonstrating how that white smudge is definitely Abraham Lincoln's ghost if you close one eye and tilt your head. Left alone to their own initial take on the evidence, that fellow investigator might have pointed out the blurry "Sony" logo stamped across "Lincoln's" chest..

Of course, we all want to take that positive photo or record that perfect EVP. But,if we "cry wolf" at even the slightest blur or orb, soon we will be just another bunch of crazies worshiping the image of The Virgin Mary burnt into a tortilla.

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