The mind reads a familiar image into a random pattern. That is pareidolia, and in this archive it is the explanation sceptics reach for when the Virgin Mary appears in ordinary things. In Watsonville in 1992, Robert T. Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary cited it, alongside confirmation bias and wishful thinking, for the figure in the Pinto Lake oak. At Coogee in 2002, a white rail, late shadow and one sun angle formed a veiled woman. In Chicago in 2005, Joe Nickell called the Kennedy Expressway salt stain a simulacrum. In none of these cases did anyone allege a hoax.
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