Cheese Friday: Revealing the man behind the curtain.

Expert explains grilled cheese 'miracle'

The Associated Press

November 18, 2004, 7:45 AM EST

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Brace yourself. There may be a less-than-miraculous explanation for that image of the Virgin Mary a Florida woman says appeared in her grilled cheese sandwich.

Professional skeptic Joe Nickell says it's the same phenomenon that lets people see ships in the clouds, butterflies in ink blots and the man on the moon.

Remember that elderly lady who showed Johnny Carson her collection of potato chips with celebrity faces? (And how Carson munched on a chip, letting her think for a moment it was one of hers?)

"It's just the human ability to make images out of randomness," said Nickell, investigative columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and senior research fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

"The images are called simulacra, from the root word meaning similar. And the mental habit that causes us to see such things is called pareidolia," he said.

Nickell has studied and written about such things for 30 years. He is among the thousands who have visited Maria Rubio's 1977 "holy tortilla" in New Mexico, the "Milton Madonna" on a Massachusetts hospital window pane, and the "Clearwater Virgin" on a building in Florida.

Diana Duyser of Miami put her grilled cheese sandwich up for sale on eBay last week. She said she took a bite after making it 10 years ago and saw a face staring back. Into a clear plastic box it went and has remained on her night stand, she said.

Nickell explained that pareidolia is the process by which the human brain interprets essentially random patterns into recognizable images.

"It doesn't take much to make a face. Three or four dots or marks and you've got something that looks like a face," he said.

Many simulacra are of religious images, he said, and "perhaps most often associated with Catholic or Orthodox tradition, wherein there is a special emphasis on icons or other holy images."

Most, he concluded, are the result of natural processes, such as weathering or the buildup of chemical residues.

"Theologians and clerics are usually quick to dismiss such images, one priest wisely attributing them to `pious imagination,"' Nickell said. "However, they remain intensely popular among the superstitious faithful."

Nickell added that the Easter Bunny exists in the wood grain of his office door.

I hate stuff.