You get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and gasp at the sight of an intruder in the living room. Except it's not a person at all, just a shadow cast by light from outside.
Our brains fill in gaps in our knowledge or confirm what we think we know. In short, we see patterns.
Jeremy Lent takes a thorough look at the human capacity for seeing and creating patterns in his book The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning.
You'll be surprised at how DIFFERENT the patterns can be from culture to culture. We revisit our 2018 interview here.