Someone There

Chanda Chaudhary

29 Mar 2026 — 1 min read

There is a face in my bathroom wall.

It has been there since we moved in. Slightly to the left of the tap. Two knots in the wood panel that became eyes sometime last year and have not stopped watching since.

I have never mentioned it to anyone.

The word is pareidolia. The tendency of the human brain to find faces — and patterns, and meaning — in random visual noise. Clouds. Burnt toast. The grille of a car. The surface of Mars.

It is not imagination. It is not superstition. It is the brain doing exactly what it was built to do, running its oldest errand on whatever surface is available.

Find the face. Assess. Friend or threat.

We have been doing this since before language. Since before fire. The ones who saw a face in the shadows and ran survived longer than the ones who stopped to verify.

Pareidolia is ancient. It is also, quietly, everywhere.

The Virgin Mary appears in a grilled cheese sandwich in Florida. Sells for $28,000.

Jesus appears in a water stain on an underpass in Chicago. People leave flowers.

A face appears in the bark of a tree outside a hospital in Kerala. Becomes a small shrine overnight.

We laugh at these stories. Then we go quiet.

What pareidolia reveals isn't gullibility. It's the brain's endless hunger for presence.

We are not looking for patterns. We are looking for someone there.

An empty surface is just a surface. A face is company.

Real enough. It stayed.

Almost

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