By Sarah Streamer
PATTERNS IN THE PARANORMAL AND HOW TO AVOID THEM…..
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atterns are all around us, they find us in daily life, and our brains are programmed to recognize and interpret them. Apophenia or patternicity is a part of the psychological software that every human is equipped with. We evolved this pattern recognition to interpret danger cues to help us survive as a species. In the past, this was an effective way to identify which foods were safe or when a dangerous situation could cause harm, like when a predator was hiding and waiting to attack.
In our modern world, although there are times we need to recognize danger, there aren’t as many life and death situations that we need to worry about. This doesn’t stop our brains from seeing patterns in the randomness of life and this is a very common phenomenon among the paranormal community. A common form of patternicity in the paranormal world is pareidolia. This is a visual form patternicity that tells our brains to recognize faces where there
A cheetah using its camouflage as disruptive coloration.
Photo credit: https://www.africa-wildlife-detective.com/cheetahs.html
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aren’t any. We see this all the time in our daily lives, finding a face in the foam in our cup of coffee or when we look at wall outlets. This is how babies instinctively learn to recognize people as they are growing and has its place in our lives. There are times that our brains kick it into overdrive and cause self-deception, especially when we are in high stress situations, like being in the middle of a paranormal investigation in a haunted and creepy location.
A
uditory apophenia is also a common phenomenon in the paranormal world. This is hearing something that is not really there. This happens often in review of electronic voice phenomena or EVP evidence. While there are often words that you can hear in these evidence reviews, there are also sounds that your brain picks out and assigns word meanings to. This is why the audio challenge of “Laurel or Yanny” went viral. Different brains interpret different things from the same sound. It’s especially easy to do with short, one-syllable words. Was that “you,” “new,” “two,” or “blue?” It gets even more difficult when the sounds are very faint and there is background noise.
