{"id":1900,"date":"2015-04-15T00:43:44","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T22:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/?p=1900"},"modified":"2015-04-15T23:15:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T21:15:55","slug":"going-ghost-hunting-beware-of-pareidolia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/?p=1900","title":{"rendered":"Going Ghost Hunting? Beware of Pareidolia!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a cold December night, and Bill and I are trudging along a country road just outside of Prospect looking for an abandoned barn. We have flashlights with us, but we\u2019re not using them because we don\u2019t want to attract unwanted attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d I say. \u201cIt should be up here in this stand of trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

We push our way through the brush, and in a few minutes we\u2019re in a clearing with the outline of the barn and\u00a0a few other buildings just barely visible in front of us. For the moment the road we\u2019ve just left is free of traffic, and the only sound is the winter wind blowing through the bare branches of the trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, um, what do we do now?\u201d Bill says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I tell him. \u201cMaybe look inside? Take a few photos?\u201d<\/p>\n

We poke around. It turns out there\u2019s nothing even remotely interesting inside the barn or the other buildings.<\/p>\n

Bill says, \u201cSo is this place supposed to be haunted or what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, not that I\u2019ve heard. It\u2019s just some\u00a0old abandoned buildings someone told me\u00a0about. I thought it might be cool to come out here and check it out.\u201d If Bill could see me in the dark, he\u2019d see me shrugging.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, take some photos and let\u2019s get out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, are you scared?\u201d I say, teasing.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, but it\u2019s cold, man!\u201d<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

A half an hour later we\u2019re warming up and eating burritos at the Taco Bell on Delaware Avenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what,\u201d Bill says. \u201cWhen you look at those pics later, I’ll bet you\u2019ll see something spooky.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time I was skeptical, but Bill ending up being right. When I got home and opened the photos in Photoshop, I saw\u00a0what appeared to be a spectral face peering out from between the slats of one of the smaller buildings:<\/p>\n

\"pareidolia\"
The image in question. It’s only when the section is blown up that the ‘face’ is plainly visible.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is it a ghost? Maybe. But there\u2019s another explanation for this image that\u2019s worth discussing: pareidolia. Put simply, pareidolia\u00a0is the natural tendency to see or hear something we recognize as human (e.g. a face or a voice) in what is essentially random or vague stimuli.<\/p>\n

\"man
Seeing the man in the moon is a\u00a0well-known example of pareidolia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ghost hunters often take copious photos and record hours of audio while in the field with the intention of analyzing this data later. They make the assumption \u2013 arguably a false assumption \u2013 that their equipment will pick up images and sounds they themselves may not detect. As a result, when they go over their data later, they\u2019re already primed to see and hear patterns that are perhaps just not there. This isn\u2019t to say that unexplained images or sounds can always be explained away with pareidolia, but it\u2019s certainly something ghost hunters should keep in mind.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t think that the image I photographed that night in December is a ghost. Still, I have to admit that I did get a little chill when I spotted that otherworldy \u2018face\u2019 staring at me from between the slats of that building. Bill was right; ghost or no ghost, the image was definitely spooky.<\/p>\n

– Josh Simpkins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a cold December night, and Bill and I are trudging along a country road just outside of Prospect looking for an abandoned barn. We have flashlights with us, but we\u2019re not using them because we don\u2019t want to attract unwanted attention. \u201cOkay,\u201d I say. \u201cIt should be up here in this stand of trees.\u201d […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-little-less-serious","category-all","category-ghosts-and-hauntings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1975,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions\/1975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}