I had a pretty good time watching one of the many paranormal TV shows the other night. The format consists of a panel of paranormal experts who comment on interesting videos from people who think they’ve got the latest footage of ghosts and goblins.
One of the segments was supposed to be a video of a critter sometimes called a “hide-behind.” It’s a jet-black humanoid form without any specific identifying features that peeks out at you, often from around building corners or from behind trees. It always looks anatomically impossible because you only see a vague head and shoulder shot and never see the back side of it from the other side of a skinny tree which couldn’t possibly hide a full-body person.
I had a good laugh at this video because this guy’s black hood didn’t fit exactly right and I could see one of his hands poking out of the sleeve of his Halloween costume. Yet, the panel of experts didn’t seem to notice the fraud and talked ad nauseam about this fantastic authentic piece of evidence of the paranormal. Whatever.
The comical TV segment occurred hours after I had taken a snapshot of what looked like a huge face in the trees outside our window and up the street from our house in the outlot off a neighbor’s back yard property line.
The image looked like the head of a giant made of tree leaves. I outlined the eyes, nose, and mouth using the Microsoft Paint feature on my computer. Of course I could only barely detect it in the photo, but I couldn’t unsee it whenever I looked at the area from my window.
Here’s the kicker. Right after I took the snapshot, a guy who lives up the street carrying a small child walked out to his back yard, turned towards the area where the trees were and pointed to it. He was saying something to the child. Of course, he could have been pointing out anything (like a small bird although I couldn’t see one), but so help me, I got the impression that he saw the old man’s face too.
Of course, there’s nothing paranormal about this. It’s called pareidolia, a psychological tendency to see faces or shapes of animals and people in inanimate objects like trees, clouds, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It’s fascinating and completely normal.
There’s also an auditory version of pareidolia, which is hearing odd things like mumbled speech and music in white noise, like when your portable electric fan is running. I would hear newscasts which always sounded like mumbling. Don’t ask me why I interpreted white noise as newscasts.
Anyway, I think pareidolia is a lot more interesting than most paranormal TV shows.
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