Forest Grump (photograph) copyrighted © by Phil Barnett

All rights reserved. Image posted to Facebook (30 August 2023),
and is reproduced here with photographer’s permission.

Bio: Phil Barnett

Publisher’s Note:

Forest Grump is a delightful example of pareidolia, a near-universal human tendency to perceive faces everywhere, or human and animal figures, even in random images and ambiguous patterns. Just a quintet of famous examples: the man in the moon; the face on Mars; the face of Jesus Christ on various food items; the Bongo Java Coffee Company’s Immaculate Confection (aka The NunBun); and a Cheeto shaped like Harambe the gorilla, which sold for $99,900 on eBay in 2016!

For a dozen more examples, plus tips for creative applications, see How Pareidolia Can Be Used For Creative Photography by Dahlia Ambrose (23 August 2023).

Pareidolia may also have therapeutic applications. “By improving our understanding of this phenomenon,” says Susan Magsamen, executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab) Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, “we can potentially use it as a skill for enhancing creativity, as a tool for mental health diagnoses, and even as a way of understanding how our brains construct our conscious experience” (Do You See What I See? IAM Lab Launches Investigation Into the Pareidolia Phenomenon, Johns Hopkins Medicine).

The four links in this note were retrieved on 10 September 2024.