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What Is Matrixing?
By Scott Mannahan, CPI
The actual scientific term for this human characteristic is called Pareidolia. Simply put, it is the human brains way of making sence out of nothing, or making what is unfamiliar, familiar. Ever recall laying on your back as a child and looking up at the clouds? Remember the shapes you would see? I remember seeing all kinds of things like dragons, ships and eagles to mention only a few. This behavior is called Pareidolia, or Visual Matrixing. Without this human trait, we would have never known the faces of our parents growing up, and it's the first skill we ever learn as infants. This skill is so fundamental and programed that we still use it as adults. It's the way we determine what is familiar and what isn't. When we are presented with random sets of patterns, our brains will attempt to make sence of what we are seeing automatically. This is what we paranormal investigators call Visual Matrixing, and it plays a huge role when it comes to analyzing potential evidence.Twenty five years ago, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft circled the planet Mars, snapping photos of possible landing sites for its sister ship Viking 2, when it spotted the shadowy likeness of a human face. An enormous head nearly two miles from end to end seemed to be staring back at the cameras from a region of the Red Planet called Cydonia. The "Face on Mars" has since become a pop icon. It has starred in a Hollywood film, appeared in books, magazines, radio talk shows and even haunted grocery store checkout lines for 25 years! Some people think the Face is evidence of life on Mars -- evidence that NASA would rather hide, say conspiracy theorists. Although few scientists believed the Face was an alien artifact, photographing Cydonia became a priority for NASA when Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) arrived at the Red Planet in Sept. 1997, eighteen long years after the Viking missions ended. And so on April 5, 1998, when Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia for the first time, Michael Malin and his Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team snapped a picture ten times sharper than the original Viking photos. Thousands of anxious web surfers were waiting when the image first appeared on a JPL web site, revealing a natural landform. There was no alien monument after all!This was matrixing on a mass scale and not even the experts at NASA nor the public were able to filter out this human condition! I have seen it a thousand times. A picture inside some cluttered closet with so many items in the picture that a ghostly figure can be seen. A streak in a mirror which just happens to resemble a deformed face. A demon or shadow person popping out from around a headstone or hiding in a group of trees. The pixels of a computer screen jumbled together. Matrixing can occur in any situation, and the chances of an investigator, no matter what their skill level resides at, coming face to face with this problematic trait are extremely high. So, what can we do to overcome matrixing and make sure that the evidence we collect stays genuine? While there are no foolproof ways of simply turning off Pareidolia, we can still take certain steps to limit it's effect.~~~ Look at the style of photograph you are analyzing ~~~ Pictures of trees, shrubs, grassy backdrops, cluttered closets, dirty mirrors and glass are a few of the prime causes of matrixing. They all have a high potential for the mind to construct a face or body out of something that isn't there. Pay extra attention to older glass made in the 1800's. This type of glass often times was not completely flat giving it the ability to reflect not only light, but objects in the surrounding area at multiple angles. ~~~ Look at the composition of the photo ~~~ If it's truly paranormal then, the face or figure would be made up of its own material, not the items in the background. If the picture is of a forest, and your mind tells you that there is a face in it, look to see if the face is made up of the branches and leaves from the trees in the picture, or if the face is separated from them and a completely separate material from the trees.~~~ Look for human traits ~~~Once you have eliminated the top two issues, look at the face or figure as a real face or figure. Look at the proportions of the face. Are they realistic? We are afterall searching for spirits of real people that have passed on, and it makes sense to assume that their spirits would typically take on the same form after death. Look for eyes and ears in the normal places on the face. Is the head proportinate in size to the body? Are there two eyes? Two ears?~~~ Avoid Cross-Matrixing ~~~ Try to keep the potential evidence to yourself until you have come to a conclusion. Show your photo(s) to others for their opinions only after you have given yourself enough time to assertain what you think the anomalie might be. Don't tell anybody you show the picture to what you think it is until after they have made a decision for themselves. Matrixing can be contagious to others!~~~ Recreate the sceen ~~~ Try to duplicate the conditions and reshoot the same exact photograph. Often times you will find that the anomalie can be duplicated, resulting in the exact same picture! Also, when taking pictures during an investigation, always take 2 consecutive pictures back to back of the same image as quickly and accurately as possible. If the anomaly is there in one picture and gone the in the next, this will lend more credibility. Legitimate evidence is extremely hard to obtain in 2 consecutive photos.~~~ Use your head ~~~- Use common sense when looking at your potential evidence. If the sceptic in you is telling you it's just a streak in a mirror, then you might want to listen to that voice. Often times your "Gut" feeling will be the right one. Also, while the capturing of potentially genuine evidence is exciting, try to remain calm and look at your potential evidence disspassionately. Sometimes the hardest thing for any investigator to do, is to dismiss their own evidence when wanting it to be genuine.
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