200811201112

Forgetomori came across this neat example of pareidolia.

Have you seen Jesus today? The photo above may be a good chance. Sent by Jessica Lundgren from Sweden to paranormal.about.com, you can see the clear profile of a giant bearded man with closed eyes. It does resemble common representations of a fellow named Jesus. Even though that enormous Jesus head doesn’t quite fit into the rest of the image. What’s going on there? Jessica writes that “the child died short after the photo was taken”.
The link also has another photo that is either pareidolia or a hoax. Good example of pareidolia

  • Karen M

    I had to close my eyes, open them again and re-focus to see the girl in the middle.

    That does look like Rasputin.

  • Doug Nelson

    I wonder if a Hindu or Buddhist would still see Jesus?

  • Aloisius

    Why would Jesus be clean shaven? He was Jewish. There are parts of your beard you aren’t supposed to shave, so a lot of Jews through the ages would grow large beards just in case.

  • Sethum

    I love these things!

    I found an anvil, a desk bell, a schooner, a boar, a stag beetle, and a polar bear cub.

    What else have you all found?

  • ornith

    That’s one hard kid to see.

    As for face recognition, it’s so hardwired in that even newborns will stare longer at a pattern with a few lines arranged like eyes and mouth than at one with a random arrangement. Monkeys have been found to have neurons that specifically recognize the shapes of monkey heads in various orientations. (While I have no direct citations, these are both things tought to me in my college classes; I majored in Cognitive Science.)

  • john_zorn

    @23

    [@ #22

    Turkish, huh? Interesting... "So, Tommy, have you ever been to a Turkish bath house?"]

    “Captain Oveur: Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?”

    Sorry, pedantic but true. If you’re going to take the time, why not get it right?

  • Sethum

    Here’s a cheat sheet for those who are having a hard time keeping up.

    http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/246/markedupsw2.jpg

  • technogeek

    Good illustration of positive vs. negative space…

  • beekone

    Is it just me or are accounts like this portraying Jesus as shockingly caucasian? It looks like he used Treseme volumizing conditioner.

  • Takuan
  • The Unusual Suspect

    Wow, it took at least five seconds of concentration before I could see the baby in that first photo. And that was wile knowing what to look for.

    As for the second one, perhaps a double exposure? Yet I can clearly see a flare of refracted light between the girl’s head and the edge of the door, indicating that those two elements do belong in the same shot.

    What sayeth the Boingdom?

  • nyar

    God is in the proverbial “eye of the beholder”. And it is not Treseme, Jesus go to a trendy NYC salon.

    Yes, I am going to hell for that one. w00t!

  • Neon Tooth

    Funny I first saw the baby, then after reading saw “the hippie” and after that it was hard to see the baby again.

  • The Unusual Suspect
  • Paul Coleman

    At first I thought that print was on a Manila envelope…you know…the kind that a Macbook Air comes in…so maybe that’s a bearded/permed Steve Jobs.

    I apologize for that train of thought.

    Derail.

  • beekone

    oooooohhhhh, it’s a baby on his lap, that’s crazy. I was like what baby are you guys talking about. Good stuff, good stuff.

  • Daemon

    It does look surprisingly like hippie-jesus. I’m still surprised at the number of christians who actually think that’s what the guy looked like. At the very least he’d almost certainly have short hair, and probably be clean-shaven.

  • dbarak

    Wow, I didn’t even see the kid until I visited the other site. I think it’s a fake – I spotted some areas that look like they were retouched, some repeating patterns in the plants, etc.

  • anthony

    That is one cool photo.

  • beekone

    “some repeating patterns in the plants, etc.”

    ditto

  • serpent

    It’s not Jesus, it’s me. No really, I look like this.

  • dbarak

    “Amazing face, how fake thou art…”

    I did some lightening in Photoshop, and here are some details pointed out…

    Face:
    http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2367/jeebus3dz8.gif

    Kid:
    http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4868/jeebus1vc6.gif

    Retouching marks:
    http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4351/jeebus2eb2.gif

  • cherry shiva

    i see a toothbrush, a horse, a hammer, and a hoax.

  • Anonymous

    Based on my understanding of family photography of the time, it is also possible that “the child died short BEFORE the photo was taken”.

  • slywy

    I can’t see the baby. I tried. I really did.

  • desiredusername

    What rule makes all phantoms with beards automatically Jesus?

  • doug117

    Why’s everyone think that is Jesus?

    Looks a lot like my brother-in-law Jerry.

  • Antinous

    When you say Jesus, do mean Rasputin?

  • desiredusername

    And omg Chonosuke Okamura on the wikipedia link!

  • dbarak

    @ #13

    You’re absolutely right. I’ve seen post-mortem portraits of kids and adults from the olden days.

    I think it’s Ian Anderson…

    http://home.cogeco.ca/~mansion/anderson1.jpg

  • devophill

    “#9 posted by Daemon – At the very least he’d almost certainly have short hair, and probably be clean-shaven.”

    [citation needed]

  • kababok

    He has set curls, like in a wig. Looks like a regular double exposure to me…

  • Antinous

    The answers to your Christ-ly Coiffure Questions lie here.

  • dbarak

    @ #22

    Turkish, huh? Interesting… “So, Tommy, have you ever been to a Turkish bath house?”

  • IWood

    I see a bagel.

  • Bobdotcom

    Of course the child died short. Based on the adult heights in the picture, the child is definitely shorter than… ooooohhhh, you mean SHORTLY. My mistake.

  • The Unusual Suspect

    I can’t see the baby. I tried. I really did.

    The baby is in the father’s lap, facing the camera, and wearing a white gown and sun bonnet.

    The baby’s face, shadowed under the brim of the bonnet, is what appears to be the eye of Jesus/Ian Anderson.

  • palindromic

    This is total fakery.. but kind of good. The delineation of the hat at the top is oversmooth, indicating sprayed in or smoothed pixels. Same with the child’s mouth region, those pixels looks like typical photoshop spray distribution. Someone -kind of saw- a bearded man in the photo and decided to touch it up a bit to make it really stand out. Still, pretty neat.

    I would actually like to see the original. If you zoom in close and then zoom away and rezoom other locations, you can see that the ‘smoothness’ of several features around the child are too perfect.

    To hide the smoothing a filter has been applied to the compression that mimics smoothing of pixels. Old photographs are grainy and look like pointillist paintings when you zoom, not all smoothed out like this.

  • Gill Avila

    Why is it always Jesus? Why not John the Baptist? For my money the shape looks like Rasputin.

  • dbarak

    This picture might make it a bit easier to spot the baby (whose name, incidentally, was Waldo).

    http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/9956/jeebus4io3.gif

  • Takuan

    I still prefer the girl riding the winged Assyrian lion.

  • Cool Products

    Dammit, after I found Jesus, I wasn’t able to look at the picture in the normal light again. I hate when this happens.

  • dbarak

    @ #29 posted by Takuan

    I still prefer the girl riding the Sybian.

  • Anonymous

    Ian Anderson is our Lord and Saviour.

  • avraamov

    vangelis.

  • Xopher

    I couldn’t see the baby until I read the article. It looks like the severed head of Rasputin to me.

  • clueless in brooklyn

    For every person

    who thinks they just saw

    Jesus

    in their sandwich,

    I say, look again,

    it’s

    Osama Bin Laden.

  • Lea Hernandez

    @ #2 Takuan: I can’t see a girl there.

  • JoshuaZ

    Pareidolia: what you call it when people see patterns and pictures that correspond to someone else’s religion.