Pareidolia through the cookie jar. Fort Wayne woman finds estate sale cookie jar projects image of Jesus. #fortwayne

Frank Gray's column in this morning's Journal Gazette gives us a clear example of religious themed pareidolia in the wild :

So Brown got her camera and put the emptied jar on a pedestal in the sun and snapped a picture.

Well, let’s just say Brown got more than she expected. Yes, the mushroom pattern stood out, a little bit. But the sun shining through the jar projected an image on the wall next to the jar and it seemed to show something.

You guessed it. It was an image of Jesus.

Now we’ve all heard about images of Jesus showing up in rust stains on water towers, on grilled cheese sandwiches, on potato chips and so on. Usually, you have to look at these images and let your imagination run a bit. It always helps to have someone standing next to you saying, “See, the arms are there and there’s the head,” and after a couple of minutes you say, “Oh, yeah, I see it, sort of.”

The image in Brown’s photo, though, isn’t one of those. No one needs to point it out. No one needs to prod you and ask whether you see anything. It’s that obvious, and it’s even in color.

Well, I had trouble seeing it at first, but yeah, I guess I can sort of make out a traditional European Jesus in flowing white robes.