Definition looking for a word.

How does apophenia strike ya? Or pareidolia?

Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad,[1] who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random nature in general, as with gambling, paranormal phenomena, religion, and even attempts at scientific observation.

Pareidolia ( /pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- – "beside", "with", or "alongside"—meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech) and eidōlon – "image"; the diminutive of eidos – "image", "form", "shape". Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

(definitions courtesy of wikipedia).

Thank you CheddarMelt. Pareidolia works for me.
As a graphic designer and sometimes cartoonist, I often see odd faces in clouds, flaking paint, water stains, maps and virtually anything I observe. It is, often, a fun pastime when things are a little boring, especially with a sketchpad in hand.

Talk about synchronicity, I was looking for exactly that word myself. Thanks CheddarMelt!

My sister recently sent me a photo now posted at:

She said she went outside when she heard her dog barking loudly at something behind the garage. They live in a rural area, so it could have been any number of things scaring the animal. When she went to look, she saw a tree branch had broken, and was hanging down and catching the low sunlight just right. Sure looks like a "leaf man" to me, and that's what her dog was barking at. So apparently pareidolia is not limited to humans, but is a more general phenomenon experienced by all creatures with highly developed eye-brain systems.

Hey, any excuse to increase my post count! Hmmm...perhaps it's time I add a photo too.