Brockenspectre - foreboding optical illusion in misty mountains

[jim mcnamara]

TL;DR Summary

The Brockenspectre (Dark Watcher) is somewhat scary optical illusion in misty mountains, originally noted in Germany and often seen in California

Brockenspectre - foreboding optical illusion in misty mountains.
Interesting account:
https://www.livescience.com/dark-watchers-california-optical-illusion.html

 

[fresh_42]

See also the Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocken_spectre
You can get many pictures from a Google search on "Brockengespenst".

I think it is not by chance, that it is named after the mountain which is said to be the place where all the witches gather in the Walpurgis night, the night from 04/30 to 05/01. The entire mountain range is associated with witches, the devil and spooky stories. It is notoriously misty at the peak in autumn and winter. It was also a hot spot during the cold war. East Germany used it to receive NATO radio communication. Now it's a tv sender.

At the summer solstice, the sun sets behind the Brocken from there, so that the Nebra Sky Disc found on the Mittelberg could be precisely aligned using the line of sight to the Brocken and the horizon arcs attached to the disc.

 

[Klystron]

Here is the Katie Dowd article from SFgate on 'dark watchers'. The conclusions of the articles seems to be:

1. Swirling fogs and mists in vision foreground generate visual illusions depending on lighting.
2. Humans tend to resolve anthropocentric patterns in these amorphous conditions.

Cultural conditioning and expectations play a large role in interpreting these illusions.

 

[PeroK]

Here is the Katie Dowd article from SFgate on 'dark watchers'. The conclusions of the articles seems to be:

1. Swirling fogs and mists in vision foreground generate visual illusions depending on lighting.
2. Humans tend to resolve anthropocentric patterns in these amorphous conditions.

Cultural conditioning seems to play a large part in interpreting these illusions.

It's your shadow cast by a low sun on cloud below you. The shadow's elongated arms move as you move yours. You can usually only see your own shadow but sometimes the arm of someone next to you.

The rainbow halo is rarer.

 

[Klystron]

Yes. A related phenomenon explains most Bigfoot, Sasquatch and Yeti sightings.

Under normal lighting conditions people sight a bear standing upright and think "bear". Under dappled shadowy forest conditions, or near dusk and after dawn, or in unusual weather the human assumes the same bear to be Sasquatch or Bigfoot depending on expectations, essentially anthropomorphizing the unusual animal posture.

Mountaineer and explorer Reinhold Messner discovered similar illusions detailed in his book about Yeti My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery (2000).

Under clear viewing conditions people see bears or other large mammals. In a swirling blizzard with light coming from different angles the same animals become the fabulous Yeti or 'snowmen'. Where Messner examined remains of bear and mountain goat, true believers saw Yeti remains.

The ability of people to fool themselves and others is truly amazing.

 

[jim mcnamara]

This is an example of people perceiving faces, humans, or other animals where there are none.
It is very adaptive and almost all modern humans do it. Like seeing faces or animals in the clouds, for example.

Seeing a face where there is none is called pareidolia, from Psychology --
From theory of testing hypotheses we find:
Type II error (false-negative) occurs when the investigator fails to reject a null hypothesis that is actually false in the population. Type I is a false positive.

[story]
100000ya you and your buddy are coming home from the hunt. On the trail ahead you think for see a bush with a tiger face in it. You go another way home, your buddy decides to go the shorter way home past the bush.
You may make a type I error, but your penalty is only time. Your buddy is tiger chow if he committed a type II error.
[/story]
[moral of the story]
Since the pareidolia trait appears in almost all modern normal humans, it appears that maybe a lot of tigers were well fed at one time in the distant past. Natural Selection favored not being eaten.
[/moral of the story]
https://www.livescience.com/25448-pareidolia.html

 

[PeroK]

On the subject of the Yeti:

I went to Nepal in 1998 and we flew from Kathmandu to Lukla on Yeti Airlines! Before the flight I was describing Brocken spectres to one of the other guys on the trip. Then, on the flight itself, we had a clear Brocken spectre of the plane itself on the clouds below, with elongated wings and the strange, almost rainbow-like penumbra.

 

[anorlunda]

Yeti Airlines!

Owned and operated by Yeti. But non-Yeti passengers are welcome.

 

[Keith_McClary]

rainbow halo

"Glory"