Pareidolia Mondays: Is Jesus in Your Five?

A story posted on the Pensacola News Journal website on August 8 tells of a local woman who has supposedly found a picture of Jesus on her cell phone. Linda Square, 47, was working a volunteer shift at a local laundromat when she decided to take some time for herself and scroll through the numerous pictures of family and friends on her cell phone.

She came across a photo that at first appeared blurry to her. However, a 90 degree shift revealed something she had never noticed before: the alleged image of Jesus Christ. From the article:

"She made out what appeared to be silhouette of her in the foreground on the right, next to an unknown figure. Taking a closer look, she soon was convinced who had made an appearance on her cell phone. It was Jesus Christ."
The above image is an extreme close-up of Square's picture. The article claims that "Shadows of a face and the highlights of what appears to be a beard clearly can be seen," but the only thing that is clear to me is the fact Square most likely attempted to take a picture with her finger in the way of the lens. Square apparently said she does not remember taking the photo or where she could have been at the time. She even took her phone to the store where she purchased it, to make sure everyone knows the photo is genuine. The employee at the phone store assured her that the image was created by her phone, and that no one had sent it to her.

Square claims "she isn't concerned about skeptics," not that the reporter who wrote the article went to the trouble to find any. All she cares about is what the photo means to her:

"'I feel that His message to me is that He is coming back, and He wants me to be ready when He comes. And He's letting me know that He's with me and that He's beside me and He wants me to follow Him. And I'm going to follow Him.'"

The funniest bit of this whole story, for me at least, is what Square decided to do with the photo after she realized its significance:

"Square says discovering the image already has had an impact on her life. So excited was she about this, in fact, that she had T-shirts made with the image and the words 'Jesus & Me.'"

She may be mistaken, just like every other case of pareidolia about which I've written, but at least she's proud of it. And, as far as the article says, Square is not trying to sell the shirt design she came up with; although I might be tempted to buy one were she inclined to do so. I would have loved to see the look on the person's face who made the shirt.

Employee at t-shirt shop:
"You want what written under this picture?"

Jeremy the Skeptic Presents: Pareidolia Mondays!

In order to get my readers (however few there may be) through the seemingly endless feeling Mondays at work can often produce, I present to you the first ever installment of Pareidolia Mondays. From now on, at least one post Monday will present a news story that features a case of pareidolia, since there is usually one per week (if you search news websites hard enough). So, without further gilding the lily and no more ado, I present this week's story.

A Fox News affiliate (most of the pareidolia stories I've come across are from Fox News, coincidence?) reported recently that a family in Houston, Texas is in possession of a pancake with the likeness(es) of Jesus and/or the Virgin Mary.

The mother of the family, who was not named, was making breakfast for her son when she flipped the pancake in question. Once it came to rest in the griddle, she and another family member "James" noticed the allegedly holy image. James claims to see the images of Jesus and Mary Magdalene with *gasp* their baby. Doesn't he know that's a sacrilege? An image of Jesus and his mother I could understand, but why would God choose to portray his son in such a non-traditional light?

James alerted his friend (or family member, the article is not clear) Joe about the miraculous occurrence, and Joe maintains that the image depicts Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Despite the disagreement between the two men, they can agree that the pancake is a good omen. The family's not quite sure what they're going to do with the pancake, except that they're going to hang onto it. James said he thought it wouldn't be right to profit from it.

The video to go along with the story is worth a watch, if you want to see a local news anchor talk to the family and perform her own "test" of the image's authenticity. In order to "make sure it wasn't a fluke," the reporter made two of her own fairly misshapen pancakes on the same exact pan. What was the outcome? Neither creation offered an image similar to that of the holy pancake! That's proof enough for me! Where do I sign up to become one of those Christians you hear so much about?

My first reaction to the pancake? I think it looks like Ronald McDonald holding a sack of hamburgers while comforting his big, purple friend Grimace. But, I'll leave the decision up to my readers. Here is the picture that went along with the article:

A Centaur Ghost?/ We All Scream For Jesus

Just a brief, light-hearted post before I'm off for a couple days to visit my girlfriend in Olympia, WA (her blog, incidentally, can be found here). I once again have Dr. Phil Plait's blog Bad Astronomy to thank for bringing these news items to my attention.

The first story from The Telegraph in Britain tells the tale of a group of "paranormal enthusiasts" who have supposedly captured the image of a soldier, dead for 363 years, still fighting the English Civil War. The picture below comes from the above "story" link.

"The Northampton Paranormal Group caught the figure on camera during a visit to the site of the Battle of Naseby, a field between the villages of Clipston and Naseby in Northamptonshire, last month."

The "figure" in question can be more accurately described as a multi-colored blob created by some digital image distortion. Whatever defect in the image that has produced the psychedelic color palette in the background has also gotten the members of the paranormal group mighty excited. Emma Whiteman, leader of the group, said:

“When we saw it, when we were looking back through the pictures, we were gobsmacked. We’re saying that it’s a soldier. Some people can see it sitting on a horse and some people just see it as a walking soldier.”

The group seems to be so "gobsmacked" by this image that they can't even come to a decision on what it actually depicts. A member of the cavalry? A soldier walking by himself (who appears to be carrying some sort of wand)? What the hell, why not go way out on the limb already threatening to snap under the wait of the entire Northhampton Paranormal Group and call it a centaur ghost. They had centaurs in the English Civil War, right?

The paper graciously offered the forces of skepticism and rationality (inhabitants of a little place I like to call "reality") four whole lines to explain that *gasp* the image might not actually depict a ghost.

"Sceptics said the effect was caused by the camera itself."

"Anne Haddon, of The Naseby Battlefield Project, said: 'I haven’t heard anything like this at the battlefield in all my association with it. It’s fair to say I’m a bit sceptical.'"

But of course, no one wants to read about what someone who works at the battlefield where the picture was taken has to say; let's push her statement all the way to end. That's the responsible way to write an article.

The second story tells of a classic case of perhaps my favorite psychological phenomenon: pareidolia. The picture below comes from the above link.

The article would have its readers believe that Jesus Christ (yes that Jesus Christ) found time in his busy schedule to appear in a bucket of ice cream in the Avenues Candy and Ice Cream Shop in Utah. The Anointed One himself can apparently be glimpsed in the left-hand side of the image below.


A patron of the ice cream shop seems to have no problem imagining the possibility of Jesus appearing in his next spoonful of Neapolitan.

"Scott Toxsic says why not? His image has shown up other places. 'Potato chips, and brickwork, and all kinds of things,' he said. 'But whoever thought ice cream? It's amazing!'"

Amazing, yes! Amazing that it always seems to be the alleged son of God that appears in inanimate objects. As Dr. Plait pointed out, that could just as easily be Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon.

As is the norm with these types of stories, a token skeptic is dragged in to ruin things for everyone, and given the smallest percentage of the article possible:

"There are still the skeptics, like Chase Pinkham. 'It just kind of looked like ice cream to me. I don't know,' he said."

Why don't stories reporting the appearance of a holy figure in someone's food ever mention pareidolia? It strains my mind to understand why news media don't take the opportunity to teach the public something about science. I know newspapers are often more concerned with the amount of readers than subject matter, but do the media actually think the public is so ignorant that they wouldn't appreciate a brief science lesson about the workings of the human mind?