Pareidolia: Living With The Mind Playing Tricks On Your Eyes.
Is your mind on steroids or are you under spiritual attacks?
I was barely a teen when I started to lose my mind.
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to see patterns in a random stimulus. This often leads to people assigning human characteristics to objects. Usually, this is simplified to people seeing faces in objects where there isn’t one.
Back then, we used lamps in my middle-class African home.
One night, my younger sister had a nightmare. She woke me up with her screams. When my mother took her with her, I struggled with sleeping back. So I watched the shadow cast by the lamp, on the ceiling.
Suddenly, the dark shadow became a human head- a female with a full head of afro.
I was paralyzed with fear. When I recovered to move, I swiftly turned my eyes to face the wall.
Another shadow — another human head.
This time I screamed.
My poor Christian mother. She prayed madly. She thought her children were under attack by the devil.
For the longest time, I believed her too. Most parts of me were broken right from conception:
My arm bones can slip off at any time. From childhood, my knees creak when I walk too long. I was born with vulvodynia which also affects both of my ears (fun one. Will tell you about it tomorrow). My trip to India was to get rid of fibroids that were causing monthly excruciating period pains. I have calluses on my toes. For extra fun, I have to sleep with light shining directly on my face because I discovered it helps with sleep paralysis.
Wanna bet your record against mine?
So when I will be looking at say a flower design on the wall and it shapeshifts and becomes an African warrior queen, it used to be terrifying.
On social media, when a picture goes viral because there is a Jesus or Mary or a ghost on it, I often wonder- why are people disagreeing? Jesus is obviously on there!
I did not know it was a psychological condition or that there were people who suffered from it like me.
I hid my condition for the longest time until one night, it came out that I could be strange…
I live in a house with a balcony and at night, I love looking down the street to see cars go by.
Here in Africa, electricity is a luxury so when there is no light at night, the passing car headlights illuminate the roads as they drive past.
I have never been into cars but by watching the roads, I made a discovery:
Newer cars take on a jaguar or lion face when I look at their headlights. Older cars have their headlight farther apart so they never come together in the way it happens with newer cars.
By staring at just headlights at night, I can definitively tell you that a car is a newer model or older.
Let me be clear, I did not know this had anything to do with Pareidolia. I just thought I was observant and not many people will have paid attention to the phenomenon.
That fateful night, my friend, a car aficionado came over. I invited them to my balcony and said — if I can tell more newer car models than you, just by their headlights, you will cook or something.
They looked at the dark road and back at me, surprised.
“The car headlights will be in my eyes. How do I tell? No one can” They insisted.
“But I can” I jeered. “You aren’t observant,” I gloated.
Round and round we went until I told them about my jaguar or lion face trick.
Now they were convinced I had lost my marbles.
I was sure they were embarrassed they had not taken the time to observe this.
They ended up being right as I have since tested out my theory on other friends and sure enough, they never saw it.
I was very disturbed. Out of desperation, I went on Google and started typing: I see things where people claim not to see them…and on and on until I happened upon the word: Pareidolia.
From there, I found different communities of people who were like me- we were born with our minds shapeshifting whatever it pleased.
For the first time since that night that the shadow of my home lamp took on a human head shape… for the first time in forever, I had a different explanation —
I wasn’t under spiritual attacks. I had a psychological condition that causes my mind to play tricks on my eyes.
Years and years of why I was seeing things people weren’t, now made sense.
No more will I feel strange for asking- don’t those cloud clusters look like village elders holding court?
And have either a weird look or a ‘nope, just clouds’.
I felt relief.
And get this, as an introverted writer, I tell you that there is nothing cooler for the imagination than living with Pareidolia.
I mean, look at you- seeing nothing but simple flowers when we can be looking at flower images, and boom! My mind shapeshifts those same flowers to children playing in a flower field.
Tell me whose eyes see better?
Let me be clear- I see exactly what you see. The difference is, my mind can quickly warp that image into something else. I do not pick what my mind shifts that image to. It just becomes it. What it shapeshifts to can change multiple times as you blink:
The cloud can move and distort the elders holding court, for instance. The children’s faces can shift and become scary. The images are not always cool or beautiful.
There are times when I will come out from under the sun and all the objects my eyes will fall on will momentarily be something else. Until my eyes readjust.
As someone who grew up in a culture where witchcraft or evil people are the cause of every bad thing that happens, combined with the religious culture of demons, Pareidolia felt like a lot- until I found out what it was.
Without the internet, I would still be living in fear. I legit thought that one day, the condition will overtake me and I will run mad.
Imagine living with that fear in your mind. If you see patterns, read up on Pareidolia. If you know someone who is always seeing what isn’t there, tell them about Pareidolia.
When I learn something helpful, I love to share it with someone who needs it. Please be that help to a friend. You may be saving their sanity.
Thank you for reading. Buy me a coffee?
