Best Pareidolia in History: Dr. King, James Bevel, JFK, Lincoln, Goddess of Liberty in iconic photo

Aleister


Hi, yeah, and if you did spot some stuff, please keep going. This isn't a huge thread so far, so I'd recommend starting at the beginning and running up to some of the posts with pictures, where the thing began to heat up after having to endure the folks yucking it up. Were you serious about someone looking like George Washington? The more the merrier I suppose! I think I know where you might mean but please, play it out if you know how to use paint on pictures (I don't and am glad I don't for this thread).

edit on 7-12-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Well I only ever use ATS on portable devices so I have no paint, but yes, serious about George Washington.
He is the second cloud in from the left, next to big dark cloud.
He's facing right and his chin, nose, and hair are visible.
It's funny because googling him, all of his pictures are facing the opposite way to him in the cloud.

reply to post by Dumbass


Wow, nice flower skull. I once saw an anthill with a perfect smiley face, didn't get a picture though because my father wouldn't let me use his camera. Thanks, and although your name may be Dumbass, you will always be Wiseass to me!

stargatetravels

Aleister


Hi, yeah, and if you did spot some stuff, please keep going. This isn't a huge thread so far, so I'd recommend starting at the beginning and running up to some of the posts with pictures, where the thing began to heat up after having to endure the folks yucking it up. Were you serious about someone looking like George Washington? The more the merrier I suppose! I think I know where you might mean but please, play it out if you know how to use paint on pictures (I don't and am glad I don't for this thread).

edit on 7-12-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Well I only ever use ATS on portable devices so I have no paint, but yes, serious about George Washington.
He is the second cloud in from the left, next to big dark cloud.
He's facing right and his chin, nose, and hair are visible.
It's funny because googling him, all of his pictures are facing the opposite way to him in the cloud.

I think I can see what you mean but am not sure. Is the face looking down and along the line of marchers, that seems to be the "in thing" to do for the faces in this cloud. You may have to give a word description (i.e. what the nose is above in the line of march, the chin, etc.) No hurry, take your time with this, and if you can do a circle around it or if someone else sees it and can assist, nice. With the descriptions and pics provided have you been able to see any of the other faces people have found? Thanks again!

reply to post by Aleister


Thanks!

Well the skull is one of the best examples of pareidolia that I know. Beside that it is the dualism between lost beauty of a flower and death that intrigued me.

Dumbass
reply to post by Aleister

 

Thanks!

Well the skull is one of the best examples of pareidotlia that I know. Beside that it is the dualism between lost beauty of a flower and death that intrigued me.

Yes, a good one. I like how the petal on top the skull is all dried up and looks like real skin dried on the top of a skull. A skull either left outside for the elements or resting happily inside the Skull and Bones Society (imagine Poppy Bush, his wayward son, and John Kerry giving that one a kiss on the forehead).

Since this thread pertains to cloud faces, maybe its name "Best Pareidolia in History: Dr. King, James Bevel, JFK, Lincoln, Goddess of Liberty in iconic photo" should be "Best Cloud Pareidolia in History:" etc. But naw, it's the best.

I've been looking at other pareidolia and this one stands out - in terms of the number of "identifiable" faces, taking into account the iconic status of the photograph itself, the context of the faces to the iconic photo, the direction all of them are looking (down at the line of marchers), the circumstances of how the first one was found, and the cuteness and completeness of the Goddess of Liberty - like JFK's and RFK's soar thumbs in the cloud (pun intended).

Here is where the strange stuff comes in, if this can get any stranger. Here is how the first face, the one I'm calling "James Bevel", was found.

I knew James Bevel, mostly in the 1980s. He and his beautiful and strong wife, Myeka, used to hold classes in vegetarianism, and because I met them I was able to eventually go vegetarian, then vegan in later years. If I hadn't met them and attending those lessons I would have been dead long ago. I loved my meateating, and ate huge amounts of it - like six sloppy joes at a time. Stupid as a newborn puppy and fond of eating anything that moved. I ate the worse hot dogs, ravaged cows and pigs and chickens like they were sent to me from God to be torn apart and eaten. I loved the taste of all of them. So when I knew I had to give up meat, for health reasons if for nothing else, it was only because James and Myeka had drilled the data into us in those classes. I owe them my life.

And I knew Rev. Bevel enough to be given the okay to go see him as he was dying. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2008, free on appeal bond after being convicted of incest eight months earlier. He said he was innocent, he told me he was innocent, and he may well have been (only a jury has looked at the evidence, no historian or journalistic investigator has taken a full look at the case), but I wasn't there during the time he allegedly had sex once with his teen daughter in 1993, long after I'd met him and during a time I hadn't talked to him in years.

I wanted to say good by, and to thank him. When I went to the home he was using as a hospice, and had my meeting with him, I brought along two pages from a book, two pages which I'd wanted to him to sign in the 1980s but had never asked him. I like autographs, to me they are like works of art, which I guess is one appeal to those of us who like that hobby. It sounds like a stupid hobby from a distance, and is not one I'd engaged in much since I was a teenager. But I'd always wanted to ask Rev. Bevel to sign those two pages, which were a big copy of this photograph:



He said sure, what do you want me to write. At that moment I cussed out loud. For what had instantly come to me was something I hadn't thought of until just before the words left his lips.

"Sign it to President Obama," I said. This was December of 2008, and Obama had been elected but not yet sworn in, and Bevel knew he wasn't going to be alive to see that. So we got him prepared to sign it to President Obama, knowing the significance of that. He practiced signing his name, as well as the words he was going to write, on a separate piece of paper. When he was ready he took the left page, the one with the strutting marchers, and signed it "To President Barack Obama, James Bevel".

So my picture was gone, the one I had wanted him to sign since I met him. But then I realized 'Hey, the second half is still separate!' and I asked Rev. Bevel if I could have that one signed. "Sure". Then I talked to other people in the room as he was signing it, and eventually one of them looked at it and said something, and I looked, and Rev. Bevel had also signed that one the same way, "To President Barack Obama, James Bevel" because that's what he had been practicing, he was tired, and just kept signing the same thing. We all laughed over that, and I asked if I could still keep that page, and he said yes.

It turns out, according to his wife, that the copy of the right half of the picture that he'd signed for me was maybe the last thing he signed his name to.

Well, earlier, during that same meeting, I'd asked him "What do you want me to do, Jim?", both of us knowing that I meant after he had died. He said "Make sure people know that the Selma Movement was my most important movement." I didn't exactly know then how that would occur, and I thought he meant with my writing.

A couple of months later, after he died on December 19th, I was sitting in my dining room looking at that copy of the photo. Suddenly, clear as day, a face and full head was there in the clouds. It was "looking" down over the marchers, even though its eyes were closed. It was James Bevel, as I had known him in the 1980s. Full beard, facial structure, eyebrows, nose, a hint of a hat. I recognized him immediately. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see, and the random clouds formed a "face" that my brain read out as that of James Bevel. To my conscious mind it was him, no doubt of it. Here is that image circled in red (although the red misses some of his beard and could have been moved over a little to the left) by ATS member alienjuggalo, who found him independently in the photo:



Later in the year I took up writing for a satire website, uncyclopedia. I have no memory of how I found the site or why I started writing there. I used the name "Aleister in Chains" as a play on the band "Alice in Chains", thinking it was a play on Crowley's name. Later I just used "Aleister" (tossing away the chains, more or less). A couple of years later, still writing there, I wrote up a satire page on James Bevel in order to talk about his history which, in a strange way itself, has been vastly overlooked. Vastly. It still seems inexplicable how much his impact on history has been neglected.

So I did my part in using the satiric method to share some of that history with readers. As I wrote that page, I decided to add in a link to another page which I then wrote about James Bevel's face in a cloud. As I later polished that page, in 2013, just a few months ago, and was writing and looking at the picture, I saw other faces. They kept coming. Frederick Douglass, Abe Lincoln (who I've decided isn't Abe Lincoln, probably), John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, they all looked like those people to me, all of them looking along the line of marchers. Then, as I continued writing, there was a woman, holding a flaming staff, with a tiara or little bow in her hair, who I started to call the Goddess of Liberty. She, too, was looking down upon the line of marchers. By that time, I wasn't surprised.

That page got too long, and so I had to expand it to another page, a guidebook to the faces in the cloud. Not too long after that I started this thread, since ATS is another place where I write and socialize. This is where "Robert Kennedy" was found by ATS member Baddogma, who at first thought he'd found the JFK face I was describing. Turns out JFK and RFK are both giving the thumbs up sign with their left hands. And other people have started to see those faces, and other faces. Which brings me to this post, and this particular and peculiar trip down memory lane. Thanks for sticking with the page, and this post. Appreciated.

reply to post by Aleister


Glad I reread this a tad more attentively. To clarify, the one I called J.B./Skull was NOT the Bevel you id'd... you're circle clarified and brought Bevel (or some close approximation) out... there are also scads of other 'deias around him and all through this photo... eyes and mouths and heads and especially upper portions of humanoid bodies abound... my brain has been trained and now can't stop seeing them!

BTW, the skull-whatever I referred to is the large pareidolia in the far right portion of the photo that jumps out at first glance and that another poster thought was Bevel, before you id'd him to the left of it. The eyes are on either side of Liberty's flame... that one.

Odd... and not really... in that it IS how our baby brains work. That flower skull is great and heck, the simulacrum section of Fortean Times is a fav of mine.

Kudos and cheers!

Edit: and to the left of Bevel and before (almost against) my large RFK hand is a rather distinct eyes-nose-mouth configuration... is that the supposed Lincoln?

Baddogma
reply to post by Aleister

 

Glad I reread this a tad more attentively. To clarify, the one I called J.B./Skull was NOT the Bevel you id'd... you're circle clarified and brought Bevel (or some close approximation) out... there are also scads of other 'deias around him and all through this photo... eyes and mouths and heads and especially upper portions of humanoid bodies abound... my brain has been trained and now can't stop seeing them!

BTW, the skull-whatever I referred to is the large pareidolia in the far right portion of the photo that jumps out at first glance and that another poster thought was Bevel, before you id'd him to the left of it. The eyes are on either side of Liberty's flame... that one.

Odd... and not really... in that it IS how our baby brains work. That flower skull is great and heck, the simulacrum section of Fortean Times is a fav of mine.

Kudos and cheers!

Edit: and to the left of Bevel and before (almost against) my large RFK hand is a rather distinct eyes-nose-mouth configuration... is that the supposed Lincoln?

edit on 12/11/2013 by Baddogma because: clarity

edit on 12/11/2013 by Baddogma because: (no reason given)

edit on 12/11/2013 by Baddogma because: (no reason given)

Thank you, and cheers to you to. The one right to Bevel's left, as I was looking at it, was the one I was calling Frederick Douglass. He has a long sweeping white hair, and the face is somewhat similar to photos of him. He was the first one besides Bevel I saw, but has long since been surpassed in clarity by the "King", "Liberty", and the dynamic duo of "JFK" and "RFK" (quote me odds, Vegas, that they would both be giving the thumbs up sign with their arms extended. Dudes, I want odds on that one at Caesar's just to see the how high they would put the chance of that happening). So try Frederick Douglass and see if he comes close to what you're seeing.

I think we have different RFK thumbs up, I see what you might be seeing, and it's one I hadn't focused on before. We should maybe do posts describing where we see the thumbs up signs. I'm glad this is happening without using paint and things, but just by the old fashioned method of words alone. It's like primitive man, looking at the sky and seeing constellations, and somehow groups of people came to a consensus of what people could see in the stars. All I usually see is Orion, or the Big and Little Dipper, and I've never really tried to catch the images of the other ones.

And correct, eyes on each side of the GOLiberty's flame. That face was new to me at that exact angle, and I think it was because he tilted the picture a little bit, something I've never done. And oh yeah, there are many faces left in there, which is why I'm waiting to see if Lyndon Johnson and the suffragette ladies start coming in. I would really like to see Alice Paul join the scrum. Her history is so amazing. Have you seen "Iron Jawed Angels" with Hillary Swank? Since I learned about her I realize that Alice Paul was the James Bevel of the 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement in the U.S. and James Bevel was the Alice Paul of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

One of the EDITs: Here is the pic discussed by Baddogma, and Observer1 left a good image to find the Goddess of Liberty (or Lady Liberty, or the cute goddess, or, at a minimum, a random atmospheric event involving precipitation, air pressure, and condensation, signifying nothing). Just look between the guys eyes. That's the flame of her torch. Between his eyes. Follow the black line down to where she holds the staff in her right hand. She's looking, on this pic, straight ahead, but on the big picture itself she's looking down on the marchers. Etc - other posts more fully describe her appearance and how to find her.

reply to post by Aleister


Oh I see... and yup, my "rfk" is quite subjective so getting the "wrong" hand is okay!

Now, the MLK and Bevel images are spookily realistic, but lurking throughout are close to ten other images (one that I remember is the back view of someone in a business suit from the waist up pointing with outstretched arm to our left in the striations on the white clouds over/near MLK, for instance.

Anyhoo, cool curiosity and find.

And also this endeavor sharpened my communication skills ... and others, considering the amount of edits evident.

Baddogma
reply to post by Aleister

 

Oh I see... and yup, my "rfk" is quite subjective so getting the "wrong" hand is okay!

Now, the MLK and Bevel images are spookily realistic, but lurking throughout are close to ten other images (one that I remember is the back view of someone in a business suit from the waist up pointing with outstretched arm to our left in the striations on the white clouds over/near MLK, for instance.

Anyhoo, cool curiosity and find.

And also this endeavor sharpened my communication skills ... and others, considering the amount of edits evident.

Thanks. I'm very interested in the business suit guy, but don't see him at all. If you can, would you make that one real, it sounds like a fun one. What or who is he pointing at, or just randomly into the white cloud? Which arm is he pointing with? Would be fun to see him.

And man, you guys did good. alienjuggalo, you seconded my motion on what I'm calling King and Bevel, if not by name at least by seeing them and confirming that they're there. Observer1, nice find, never saw that one before. And Baddogma, my brother, you found them and, in your beautiful words, "the MLK and Bevel images are spookily realistic...". And Baddogma also seconded my motion on the image I'm calling either the Goddess Liberty or a vast collection of various sized droplets, most of them microscopingly small, caught on camera. Wearing a tiara and holding a flaming staff (written in a satirically tone while at the same time meaning exactly that). I see that image as spookingly realistic too, and it sounds like you do. Cool.

Then Baddogma, you went looking for the JFK with his hand raised in a thumbs up salute, because I had only described him in words. And you found him, and told me that you'd found him. Only it wasn't the Kennedy I was looking at. You found another image. You found what in my eyes is the image of Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, looking along the line of marchers who are marching a little ahead of this group, with his hand raised in a thumbs up salute. I see him, by the way, better in the smaller picture than I do in the very large version, but on that one - on the very large version - I just haven't looked at it enough to hardwire it into my brain. I'll put the time in. On the smaller version, he's very evident, looking almost, as you again perfectly described him, like a Monet painting, a Monet black and white sketch, holding his hand up in a thumbs up salute.

And please understand, when I say "Dr. King's face" or "Goddess of Liberty"", "James Bevel", etc., I'm not saying that they are the only persons or things that these shapes can be described as. I am saying that describing them as such as it least in the ballpark, and that the statement can be reasonably argued. In other words, "that one looks like Dr. King" would be in the first four answers on a game show. Would the space helmet of some kind which another poster sees be more often seen. I don't know, he never came back with a drawing or an exact word picture of where that object exactly is. Another guy said he found George Washington, but that needs more description.

POSSIBLE TIARA WITH NINE SIMILAR SEGMENTS ON GODDESS OF LIBERTY'S HEAD...

...said the crazy man to the thief, but on this thread, and consider this a new thread interwoven with the first thread (I tried to open a thread on Dr. King's face alone and that was redirected here)...

Those who can see the Goddess of Liberty, have a look at this. When I zoomed in on her tiara - those two little spikes in the middle of her hair - I saw a semi circle that goes almost in a compete circle which consists of nine very similar looking segments - but the segments are smaller at the ends and get bigger towards the middle, just like segments on what I assume to be some kind of tiara design maybe associated with the Goddess of Liberty. Just sayin' (lol, literally - I only say lol if I'm laughing out loud. This sounds so crazy if you haven't done the grunt work and seen them all). But check it out, and can someone do a zoom and a cut and paste of that section of her hair at 300 percent? Thanks.

And for those who want to give it a try (like the one guy who savaged me like a dog, then promised he was going to stick with this thread until Christmas, then he finally says he took a look at the picture for 10 minutes and gave up. Jeez, I hope he devotes more time to the 12-minute Eric Andre Show than to this thread -- no, no, I do. The Eric Andre Show is beautiful, in a satiric way, and well worth the 12 minutes. You owe me two minutes, man) let me try to show you the Goddess of Liberty.

Here is a pic made by Observer1 looking at a Bevel face he found. Doesn't look like Bevel to me, doesn't have his eyes. (Did Lincoln have eyes like that? I seriously don't know if there is an accepted description of how Lincoln's eyes looked when he was in a room staring at you).



But look right between the eyes of the guy. 'That's the flame of the Goddess of Liberty's flaming staff. She always has either a flaming staff or a sword - or at least it seemed so from my few minute read of the Wikipedia page (so I owe it eight more minutes), and when you see the cloud evaporation mixed with cooler air aloft floating there, looking so cute and a mix of Disney princess and fairy, but holding a flaming torch and wearing a tiara, which is what this thread within a thread is all about, as we get into minutia (when you see her, read the opening of the thread and do a 300 percent zoom in on her tiara).

Observer1 drew that great toast shaped thing around most of her. She's totally in the white part of the picture, and mostly in the toast. Toast and paelidphias (I have no idea how to spell it and won't even try) go together like jam and peanuts, so it's apropo - itself a word I've never used in a sentence before.

The point of the toast - at least the point where it swoops in over the top and then pokes in the middle, pokes in right above her left eye. It's a tiny left eye in comparison with the point of the toast. It just kind of bumps up right over it.

Then the rest of that swoop (the only part of her face not in the white part in the swoop was just a little left of her left eye. The rest of her lies almost directly along that little swoop of the toast, and includes the left side of her left eye, and then the toast-line goes down her left cheekbone, chin, and neck.

Her hair. First look again at the flame atop her staff, it's the white light part in between the eyes of the pictured gentleman. The go down to the next white light part, which runs right along the edge of the dark clouds. That's her hair, the hair along the right side of her face (going up from there is the top of her hair). Going down a bit, the third white light section, also running right up against the dark clouds, is her shoulder, where you can see she's dressed in a fluffy dress.

Then when you can see those things and look how cute this image is, check out her tiara, and please do a tight zoom in to see if you can see the nine-sectioned design of the tiara I'm talking about. Thanks.

Baddogma
reply to post by Aleister

 

And also this endeavor sharpened my communication skills ... and others, considering the amount of edits evident.

I've done lots of editing, to try to get the wording right. And make it as accurate as possible. If I make a claim that this one is the best of its kind in history, I better make some edits. Right now it's likely that only you and I suspect that the claim may be accurate, emphasis on the suspect and may. I don't know. I'll stake a flag on it in any case, which only means it might be.

An example of an equivalent cloud phenomena would be if in the picture of the American flag raising at Io Jima a few people start to find the cloud faces of what could arguably be Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, and maybe another person or two most responsible for the event (I'm leaving a spot open in the voting rights movement picture for Lyndon Johnson, who has yet to show up. Search parties are out. Maybe Vietnam sunk him beneath the clouds) and all of them are looking at the flag raising. Two of them raise their hands in a thumbs up sign. And over on the right, in the Io Jima picture, you would find the god of victory, complete with symbols and detailed paraphernalia equivalent to the accepted description of said legendary deity.

Or, if in the picture of the first moon walk, you find clear images of faces which could arguably be Werner von Braun, John Kennedy, Jack Parsons (would't put it past him), and one or two other people most responsible for the trip to the moon, all looking at the moon walk itself (and von Braun and JFK can't help themselves and are seen giving a thumbs up sign) and then, as everyone is hanging around, they are joined by the moon goddess herself, who takes a glance over at Armstrong to see what he's going to say.

Stuff like that.

OMG I think I see the elephant man!!!!

Its the cloud to the left thats all bumpy

IkNOwSTuff
OMG I think I see the elephant man!!!!

Its the cloud to the left thats all bumpy

Thank you for spotting the elephant man, and where the elephant man goes, the elephant man's man servant follows with a shovel and a bucket. Please take the time and read the posts to find all the other things. You'll thank me later.

reply to post by Aleister


LOL

I have looked hard, harder than Im willing to admit and I see nothing.

Maybe I just have a crappy imagination.
That said I usually can see what they are talking about in Mars rocks threads.

You seem genuine and sincere so Ill concede they may be there but I dont see a thing

IkNOwSTuff
reply to post by Aleister

 

LOL

I have looked hard, harder than Im willing to admit and I see nothing.

Maybe I just have a crappy imagination.
That said I usually can see what they are talking about in Mars rocks threads.

You seem genuine and sincere so Ill concede they may be there but I dont see a thing

Thanks for trying. You have a great imagination and you will see these someday, maybe now:

A black guy, looking out from between the white clouds, in the right half of the picture. Take the white space from the top of the Share tab to the "e" in share, move that over to the center of the dark spot to its right, and that's where the black guy's left eye is. If you can see the eye you'll probably see the guy. This one is almost photogenic, just think of it as a photo of a black guy. I call him Dr. King, and he kind of looks like him, to me at least (knots cat tails together in arts and crafts class at the institution, sips from a sippy cup so as not to disturb the other patients):

The tiara has six (maybe seven) individual sections. I had said nine, but looking at it again at 300 percent and 400 percent I must have misremembered when I typed one of the posts above. The goddess image, by the way, holds up well at 300 and 400 percent in the picture above (with the toast outline).

And apparently the goddess of freedom, as she is often called, was worshipped in Italy by emancipated slaves, a precursor to America's black population in the Southern United States obtaining the right to vote in 1965, much of it as a consequence of the two marches from Selma to Montgomery (the first one was stopped at Selma's border, right across the bridge over a river, which then became known as "Bloody Sunday").

Aleister

IkNOwSTuff
reply to post by Aleister

 

LOL

I have looked hard, harder than Im willing to admit and I see nothing.

Maybe I just have a crappy imagination.
That said I usually can see what they are talking about in Mars rocks threads.

You seem genuine and sincere so Ill concede they may be there but I dont see a thing

Thanks for trying. You have a great imagination and you will see these someday, maybe now:

A black guy, looking out from between the white clouds, in the right half of the picture. Take the white space from the top of the Share tab to the "e" in share, move that over to the center of the dark spot to its right, and that's where the black guy's left eye is. If you can see the eye you'll probably see the guy. This one is almost photogenic, just think of it as a photo of a black guy. I call him Dr. King, and he kind of looks like him, to me at least (knots cat tails together in arts and crafts class at the institution, sips from a sippy cup so as not to disturb the other patients):

edit on 14-12-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

edit on 14-12-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

"move that over to the center of the dark spot to its right", well, its other right. Its left.