I read something interesting on, um, Damn Interesting. Apparently there's a condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, in which gradual loss of vision (eg. from macular degeneration) prompts the brain to "fill in the blanks" - to guess, if you will, at what the eye is no longer quite seeing. This causes people to have wild, fanciful hallucinations. Faces will peer out of lampshades, gargoyles lurk in hat racks. It seems we are so hardwired to recognize faces that when we stop seeing them, the brain lowers its standards to allow for anything remotely face-like to be interpreted as "face." The result? An ever present entourage of "phantom people." I quote:
"These phantom people normally wear pleasant expressions on their faces as they loiter in eerie silence, and they make frequent eye contact with the viewer. Curiously, a great number of these imaginary characters are described as wearing hats, sometimes along with elaborate costumes."
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