Shadow man in the woods

My family and I are avid Polaris Rzr riders. I case you are not familiar with the Rzr, it is a side by side supped up ATV. This one particular occasion, my husband and seven year old son were riding in their Rzr and my eight year old daughter and I were riding in mine along the trails at The Cove in Gore, VA. It was a perfect day for riding, the sun was out and the grounds were fairly dry. I was following my husband up and down the trails when; at the same time, we both saw what appeared to be a man standing in the woods about a foot away from the trail. Through our headsets; which are connected inside our helmets, we both shouted “Look out for the guy on the left!” My first thought was that was extremely strange because we are out in the middle of nowhere and secondly we both saw him at the same time. Our children did not see anything. It took me a few seconds to process what I had just seen before coming to the conclusion that we had just seen a ghost/spirit.

As I was passing the spot where the man was just standing, I realized there was no one there. After reading chapter 3 in our book (Goldstein, Bruce E. 2011, 2008), I realize that we were experiencing the Gestalt Law/heuristics; the law of familiarity, in addition to the bottom-up and top-down processing. The broken tree branches that were sticking up out of the ground and shadows off the higher trees and braches created a shadow pattern that seemed familiar. Our bottom-up processing; the principle of componential recovery, associated the familiar shadow patterns and the geons helped identified the shadow with the structure of a male figure. Our top-down processing helped with our ability to recognize the shadowy male by our prior knowledge of what a male’s body shape looks like.

While we have had many other speculations about why we clearly saw a man in the woods, I have come to the conclusion that the heuristics and bottom-up and top-down processing best explain our reasoning for assuming that we had simultaneously seen a male figure. After much research about our experience, I can also positively state that we did not experience a simultaneous state of schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, psychosis or drug related delusions.

One thought on “Shadow man in the woods

  1. Mitchell E Knight

    All the points in this post good well together and I hope my comment just adds to this well explained post. In addition to the top-down processing that occurred when seeing the “shadow man” you can explain it with gestalt laws of perception. Due to pragnanz viewing the tree branches and shadows as a single figure is easier than seeing them each as separate things as well as connectedness. This could also be said for good continuation if the branches and shadows made the right lines perception of them as a whole object instead of a group is just easier. With these in place, heuristics, and top-down processing seeing a man instead of a number of objects and shadows makes sense since it is quicker to process and make any necessary actions.

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