Pareidolia

Pareidolia
From the Greek para = wrong & eidolon = image

How
often do we look up at he sky and see faces and other recognisable
things in the clouds, or wonder why the front of your car looks like a
friendly face (or is that just me?)?


The answer is due to pareidolia which is the mistaken perception of a random pattern or sound as being recognisable.
The
brain has the ability to create a meaningful image from a random
pattern. This can either be a visual image or an auditory phenomenon.
Psychologists actually use this innate human ability during the
Rorshach Inkblot Test to gain insight into someone's state of mind .
Human
beings are programmed from birth to identify the human face. Only
minimal details are required for us to recognise a face. Just look at
our modern day smilies, for example

This
is bad news for us when trying to explain away an image caught on
camera or an EVP caught on tape. Sceptics will argue the case for
pareidolia almost every time.

http://skepdic.com/pareidol.html

Treen

Probably more often than not, images or sounds could be explained by pareidolia - I know we've had photos where we've thought we'd captured something exciting and it's turned out to be the background. But pareidolia doesn't explain everything - particularly some of the evps that we have captured, which, to me, are without doubt, human voices. And at the time of these voices occurring, no other sounds were heard, let alone anyone speaking.
But it makes sense to first rule out pareidolia before considering anything to be paranormal.

What I find very interesting with the paranormal against photography would have to be thoughtography; where someone can "imprint" a physical image onto the photograph used by sheer mental focus.

However in it's experimentations (cannot remember when exactly - sure it was in the ever fanatical period of Victorians but don't quote me lol) many of the subjects used for the experiments were needed to become particularly drunk or emotionally distressed in order to create a powerful enough focus to project the image.

Suprisingly these images that did succeed had portrayed that of similar ghost-snaps still seen today, however it would also indicate severe emotional distress and dysfunction. In that respect it would support the parapsychological theory of poltergeists; but also suggest that every single paranormal photograph need to be in the presence of a severe emotionally imbalanced focus.