May 01 2008
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Illegible aliens
This is actually one of the best all-time examples of pareidolia I’ve ever seen: what appear to be two aliens have appeared on a wall in a Canada home.
I love it! It’s in the same ball park as Lenin, I’d wager. I look at that, and I see two cute little gopher (or prairie dog?) aliens with glowy eyes and pointy ears and spacesuit helmets! There’s no arguing it.
Of course, some folks in their neighborhood are taking it seriously, despite it clearly being a reflection of the Sun off a window: the images even disappear after a certain time. I mean, c’mon.
But they are cute.
Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to Digg.
They actually look quite creepy/disturbing to me. I see a cross between a gremlin and a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Wearing a space helmet. And they appear to be grinning maliciously.
If that was on my wall, I’d either keep the curtains closed all day, or replace the windows. With brick.
Who could take it seriously, though. So aliens cross the cosmos, visit a single random home in canada, and leave a sunlight powered, poorly defined glowing image on an inside wall? Makes perfect sense.
So does this mean the UFO crowd is going to start gathering at their house to light candles and try to telepathically communicate with the space brothers?
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”
“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
“Yeah”, said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really.” - HHGTTG - Douglas Adams.
I see metroids. Which are, technically, extraterrestrials, though probably not the ones those people are thinking of.
Wait, wait. It’s not images on a wall… they discovered a new species of termites!
Well, they are kind of creepy. But Calgary? Seriously? Unless Ralph Klien is back, nothing EVER happens in Calgary. Now if this was Toronto, there could be something to this alien thing. As all Canadians know, Toronto is the center of the Universe.
Is that… Yoda?
So… no one has simply gotten a ladder (presumably it’s slightly inaccessible) and made shadow puppets, or simply looked in the direction the light is coming from? How does something like this manage to remain mysterious for more than 30 seconds, much less make it onto the news?
And completely off-topic, I LOVE Dramatic Prairie Dog! Da-da-daaaaaaaah! (Don’t care about all the variations that have popped up since then, but the original rocks! Although I did see a clip of a Japanese educational show from which the prairie dog is sampled; that’s actually kind of cool, especially when the Japanese girl tries to mimick a prairie dog’s warning cry…)
It’s Gidney and Cloyd!
(5 points to the first to ID who I’m talking about)
J/P=?
Oh dear, this is my hometown…
I wonder as well why nobody bothers to follow these things back to their source. I guess that would be spoiling the fun.
Anyway, love the blog.
Meerkats! They’re meerkats!
Typical. . .
Simon and Theodore show up for the photo op.
But, where’s Alvin??
Watch the video. The kids are cuter than the aliens.
On second thought, they do look like Moon Men.
Are they releasing another Rocky and Bullwinkle movie?
Those aliens are taking jobs away from pareidolic (?) images of earth-bound, american beings and objects.
Earth for earthlings! USA! USA!
You’re all wrong. They’re Sontarans. Just don’t get in your cars until after Saturday.
(Non-Brits may have to wait for Ep4-5 of the latest Dr Who series to get that).
One of the best pareidolia I have seen was on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/22/ogc_logo/
Statler and Waldorf.
Oh AWWW! I want to believe! Aliens should be adorable!!
I also want these aliens to be bloody, merciless murderers. Then it’s really really ADORABLE!
I too see Yoda, or maybe the kodama as they were depicted in Princess Mononoke. …Or goblins…
@John Paradox
Sherman set the dial on the way back machine.
(And they weren’t that cute then).
Ooops Rick Hall beat me to it.
“But they are cute.”
Don’t be fooled! That was Sigourney Weaver’s mistake in uh, that space movie. Behind their backs they are each holding an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!
I’m surprised no one else has recognised them…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0YF_oNyQXE
Phil says “clearly being a reflection of the Sun off a window”
That’s just what the aliens WANT you to think…
What was the similar paredoelia a year or two ago? I’m sure I saw it here - a moving reflection off a window that looked like, probably, Jesus - i can’t remember. Somebody must. There was a similar video of crowds watching it. We’d better check - maybe it was aliens too.
Some of you people have very strange idea’s about cute.
Bow down before your creepy goblin overlords!
It would be fun to have someone tap on the glass of the window while the “aliens” are visible to see how the shapes change as the glass vibrates.
I frequently see windows reflecting an interesting pattern onto neighboring houses and it is kind of amusing to try to figure out what the shape of the glass has to be to distort the reflection into the given shape. Adaptive optics is fun!
Scott
Jellyfish. That was my immediate impression.
Slightly OT, but in the comments to the linked story is a link here:
http://churchofcriticalthinking.org
More burning stupid.
cabbage patch kids in jedi robes?
they look like metroids to me, which is far more frightening
Quite adorable. But the NBC article is clearly biased towards “wooo look at the aliens and only silly child-hating jerks think it’s a reflection”… *vomit*
Way too cute to be Sontarans!
(You don’t have to be British to keep up with the Doctor, thanks to the intarwebs.)
Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
[…] Uno de los mejores ejemplos de pareidolia jamás vistos: En Canadá han aparecido dos extraterrestres sobre la pared de una casa: […] Se ven dos extraterrestres con rasgos faciales reconocibles y cierto parecido a las tortugas ninjas: ojos redondos y brillantes, una boca amplia y orejas puntiagudas; además un casco espacial rodea y protege sus cabezas. También se distinguen dos brazos y una chaqueta sobre el torso. […] Visto en Bad Astronomy.
I have to thrid the motion for metroids. But only if you stare for more than a few seconds.
At least metroids are less creepy than two gopher-aliens phasing through your wall.
This reminds me of a article I read about “ghost hunters”. They were giving examples of false alarms (you know, ALL their alarms) and mentioned an old woman who always saw strange lights travel across her room every night at the same time.
She needed the super-powered professional spectre sleuths to figure out it was the neighbor’s headlights as he pulled into his garage.
I’ve saw lights like that every night for as far as I can rememebr to when my neighbor retired. I never thought, “Oh my! Must be ghosts!”. After all, the sound of an engine and an opening garage door were dead give-aways.
They are actually SMILING! What a bunch of cute little NICE aliens!
So, some people are claiming that they are aliens, and others that it’s a reflection — so perhaps, they are both right? It’s a reflection of aliens! Maybe these aliens even took the picture, too?
They are cute little smiley pareidolia aliens. Therefore I think they are from Stephen’s Quintet. Happy aliens from happy galaxies. (-;
JohnP: Of course, someone beat me to it, but my youngest sees a Dr on Gidney Ave here, and I need to get a print of the two aliens to them the next time I am there!
Scrootch him, Cloyd.
JC
oh they are very cute and can come to my home and take my eggs anytime!
How could these be metroids? This story is from Canada.
You do know what a metroid’s main weakness is, right?
I for one welcome our adorable new alien overlords. Just wook at those wittle faces, how could you not bow down and offer yourself to toil in their underground lairs building the weapons used to kill the unbelievers, they’re just so cute!
It looks like an out of focus praying mantis. But, aren’t they actually invading aliens?
They look like the cute little critters from Galaxy Quest to me…(spoiler ahead) you know, the vicious ones with all the teeth.
I wouldn’t sleep in that room.
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=57716
Found the one I was thinking of. Mother of Jesus.
The original story on the local news was run as one of those human interest/slow news night pieces at the end of the news. There was no woo. It was just ‘hey look at this cool reflection, how weird’ and then they showed some kids comments.
They are cute though. Mr and Mrs Yoda.
JackC says: “Scrootch him, Cloyd.”
G: How long did you scrooch him for?
C: I don’t know. The scrooch gun is set to “10,” but I don’t know if it’s 10 minutes or 10 years!
- Jack
PS - I always though it was “Floyd.” Another childhood memory shot to hell.
Congrats to:
Dave Hall
Mang (are you merciless?)
JackC
Jack Hagerty - and I had to look up, ’cause *I* though it was Floyd, too.
Y’all get an official Jay Ward too-much-time-watching-TV award.
J/P=?
When I was a kid, my parents always said I watched too many cartoons. But I persisted, knowing someday the knowlege I gained in front of the TV would prove useful.
It finally paid off! Woo-Hoo!