Simulacking

After many years of reading

Fortean Times I have come to realise that my limited imagination must be the reason why I find one regular feature consistently underwhelming. I refer to the simulacra or pareidolia submitted by readers. Every month there are photographs of trees or rocks, which look to me like photographs of trees or rocks. I have grown accustomed to squinting at the pages and trying to be suitably impressed by the supposed ‘spontaneous forms and figures’ but the ‘kindly light’ photo [ Ft353:76] set a new standard in impenetrability. According to the caption, this image of a small child and a blob of light was a small child “looking directly at a figure of light that appears to have a halo, like a guardian angel”.

Try as I might I failed to replicate this surprisingly specific interpretation. Is it possible that the original image was much clearer and the detail has been lost when printed in the magazine? Or could this interpretation only have been made by a doting parent who likes the idea of ‘guardian angels’? Perhaps you could hold a new picture competition along the lines of: “Can anyone guess what the person who sent this in thinks it looks like?” I’m pretty sure that I’d never win. Martin Stubbs London