Among the things I've always been fascinated with is the human predeliction to see simulacra -- apparent 'pictures' or 'images' in something where one doesn't expect them, like clouds or whatever. My interest caught on when I was a kid interested in paranormal stuff and read about Mackenzie King's (a former Canadian Prime Minister) habit of seeing 'things' in his shaving cream. In any event, in the past little while there has been an epidemic of simulacra sightings, most commonly of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in this or that; such sightings are, no doubt, spurred on by the fact that certain casinos have paid large amounts of money for such images and the publicity in general which seems to accompany such sightings.. Mark Goodacre was posting such things for a while at NT Gateway, but now I'll take up the gauntlet on this score since I get a pile of them in my mailbox each week. To justify their inclusion here at rc, I can say that these are the sorts of things which Julius Obsequens would have been interested in, although it's interesting that I can't find an example of an ancient divinity appearing in this manner (although I strongly suspect that the image of the Magna Mater was some sort of simulacrum).

So hic incipit what might be a semi-regular feature ... our first offering is an image of Jesus which appeared in the paint of a wall in Detroit ... another one that keeps popping up in my box is an image of Jesus in an ultrasound image ... fulfilling the scholastic rule of three, we have another image of Jesus in a Fort Worth window (I can't see this one myself) ... in a semi-related context, we might also note that Taco Bell has opened an online 'Food Sightings Museum' (which doesn't seem to work properly in Firefox, alas), although it is interesting that none of the images there are 'religious' in nature (unless you count Chewabacca).