December 28, 2025 • 43 mins
That viral claim about "The 12 Days of Christmas" being a secret Catholic catechism turns out to be the perfect example of how our brains can trick us into seeing faith where none was planted. From a $28,000 grilled cheese sandwich bearing the Virgin Mary's face to ghost hunters hearing spirit voices in radio static, we're wired to find meaningful patterns everywhere — even when those patterns don't exist. What does this mean for believers trying to discern genuine revelation from the stories we tell ourselves?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
There is a piece of Christmas trivia that gets passed
around every December like fruitcake, nobody actually ordered. It sounds profound,
it feels meaningful, and it's almost certainly not true. We're
going to dig into a beloved holiday song, a persistent
myth about hidden Christian meaning, and what it all reveals
about the human brain's desperate hunger to find patterns, even
(00:31):
when those patterns don't exist. Along the way, we'll discover
something uncomfortable about ourselves and our faith, and maybe learn
how to tell the difference between genuine divine revelation and
the stories we tell ourselves. We'll also talk about grilled
cheese sandwiches, ghost voices, and why someone paid twenty eight
(00:51):
thousand dollars for a decade old sandwich. Trust me, it
all connects. Hello, weirdos, I'm Pastor Darren. Welcome to the
Church of the un Dead. Here in the Church of
(01:12):
the UoN Dead, I step away from being the host
of weird darkness and step into the clothes of a reverend.
I still share things that are dark, strange, or macabre,
diving into the paranormal, true crime, monsters, and more, but
I try to find a biblical take on the subject matter.
I have to say it is a fun challenge. If
you're a weirdo, a family member from my Weird Darkness podcast,
(01:34):
or a weirdo in Christ from this one, welcome to
the Church of the Undead. And I use the word
undead because as Romans six, verse eleven says, in the
same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to
God in Christ Jesus and as Ephesians two states, even
when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us
(01:55):
alive together with Christ. If you were dead and now
are alive, that makes you on dead. If you want
to join this weirdo congregation, just click that subscribe or
follow button and visit us online at Weird Darkness dot
com slash church. In today's message, that viral claim about
the twelve Days of Christmas being a secret Catholic catechism
(02:18):
turns out to be the perfect example of how our
brains can trick us into seeing faith where none was
planted from a twenty eight thousand dollars grilled cheese sandwich
bearing the Virgin Mary's face to ghost hunters hearing spirit
voices in radio static we are wired to find meaningful
patterns everywhere, even when those patterns don't actually exist. What
(02:40):
does this mean for believers trying to discern genuine revelation
from the stories we tell ourselves Full disclosure. Before I
get into the message, I might use the term pastor
because I've branded this feature as a church and I
got a minister's license online. But I do not have
a theology degree, nor did I ever go to Bible College.
(03:00):
The guy who gave his life to Christ at the
age of twenty one and has tried to walk the
walk ever since and has stumbled a lot along the way,
because like everybody else, I am an imperfect, heavily flawed
human being. So please don't take what I say as gospel.
Dig into God's Word yourself for confirmation, inspiration, and revelation.
(03:21):
That being said, welcome to the Church of the Undead.
Po Let's start with the song itself, because honestly, Twelve
Days of Christmas is one of the strangest pieces of
(03:42):
holiday music ever written. If you actually sit down and
listen to the lyrics, really listen, sounds less like a
romantic gesture and more like someone having a manic episode
at a pet story. Out of the twelve gifts mentioned.
Seven of them are birds, a partridge pear tree, two
turtle doves, three French hens for calling birds, which were
(04:05):
originally called collie birds Old English for blackbirds. So someone
along the way apparently thought calling birds sounded less like
we were gifting someone a flock of crows, or would
that be a murder of crows anyway, six piece of laying,
seven swans of swimming. That's twenty three birds by day
seven alone. If we add them all up the traditional
(04:28):
cumulative way. Because the song keeps giving those same gifts
over and over day after day, we end up with
one hundred eighty four birds by the end of the song.
One hundred eighty four birds. That is not a Christmas gift.
That is an ecological disaster. Someone's home owners association would
(04:49):
to shut this down. By day three, no mammals show
up until day eight when those maids show up milking
some sort of animal apparently cows, pigs, and sheep. Took
one look at this song and said, yeah, we're sittiness
went out smart animals. So why all the birds? A
few reasons, none of them involving ornithological madness, probably in
(05:14):
medieval England, fancy birds meant wealth. Swans especially were bougie,
and I mean that literally. In England, the crown technically
owned all mute swans and you needed a special license
to keep them. Not mute as in not able to speak,
but the white swans, but the orange bills that are
most common in Britain and tend to be less noisy
(05:35):
than the other swans. Owning swans meant you were either
royalty or extremely annoying at dinner parties. Probably both. These
birds weren't pets, they were dinner. Christmas was feast season,
and birds were practical gifts. If someone gave you six
geese a laying you weren't putting them in a pond
(05:56):
and naming them. You were feeding your family for a
month with roast, goose and scrambled eggs. Also, birds already
carried strong Christian symbolism peace, the soul, purity, sacrifice, the
dove representing the Holy Spirit, the pelican as a symbol
of Christ piercing its own breast to feed its young.
(06:17):
Birds were metaphor ready before metaphors were cool. Oh and
that pelican thing, it has no basis in scientific fact,
but it was a great story to spread around for reasons.
But here's the thing about the song structure. It's a
memory game. The piling on chaos isn't accidental. It is
meant to be ridiculous, cumulative, and hard to remember. The
(06:40):
earliest printed version of this song appears in seventeen eighty
in a children's book called Mirth Without Mischief, not exactly
a title suggesting deep theological meaning. The song was listed
as a twelfth Night memory and forfeits game. The song
leader would recite a verse. Each player had to repeat
(07:00):
what came before, and if you messed up, you lost
a token or had to perform some silly task. Your
drunk uncle forgetting the ten Lords of leaping and having
to kiss the nearest spinster as a forfeit isn't exactly
how most of us picture clandestine religious education. Now there's
a claim that gets shared every Christmas season on social media,
(07:21):
in church bulletins, sometimes even from pulpits. It shows up
in email forwards from well meaning relatives. It gets posted
on Facebook with those little candle limojis. It sounds ancient
and wise and secretly profound. The claim goes like this,
and take notes, because you'll be quizzed on this sometime
at a future holiday party. I'm sure each gift in
(07:43):
the twelve Days of Christmas secretly represents a core Christian belief.
The partridge and the pear tree equals Jesus Christ because
the partridge will sacrifice itself to protect its young. The
two turtle doves represent the Old and New Testaments. The
three French hens are faith, Hope, and sh charity. The
four calling birds are the four Gospels. The five gold
(08:04):
rings are the first five books of the Old Testament,
the Pentechuk six geeks of laying represent the six days
of creation. Seven swans of swimming are the seven gifts
of the Holy Spirit. Eight maids of milking are the
eight Beatitudes. Nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of
the Spirit. Ten lords of leaping are the Ten Commandments.
(08:24):
Eleven pipers piping are the eleven faithful Apostles Judas excluded,
and twelve drummers drumming represents the twelve points of the
Apostles Creed. The story says this code was supposedly used
to teach Catholic doctrine during times when Catholicism was illegal
in England. English Catholics persecuted from fifteen fifty eight to
(08:45):
eighteen twenty nine supposedly created this song to teach their
children the faith without getting arrested, executed, or having their
lands confiscated. It sounds spooky, It sounds clever, sounds like
something out of a historical thriller. It sounds completely unsupported
by evidence. Here's what historians have actually been able to trace.
(09:07):
The secret Catholic Catechism theory doesn't appear anywhere in historical
records until the twentieth century. Not the sixteenth century, not
the seventeenth, not even the nineteenth the twentieth. The first
known appearance of this theory was in nineteen seventy nine,
when a Canadian teacher and hymnologist named Hugh D. Mckeller
(09:28):
published a short article called How to Decode the Twelve
Days of Christmas. Mckeller suggested suggested, mind you not proved
that the song's lyrics might have been used to teach
children about important parts of Christian thinking. Three years later,
in nineteen eighty two, a Catholic priest named Father hal
(09:48):
Stockert picked up mckeller's idea and ran with it. He
wrote an essay called Origin of the Twelve Days of
Christmas an underground Catechism, in which he went into great
detail at the persecution of Catholics in England, including vivid
descriptions of being hanged, drawn and quartered. The essay sat
relatively unnoticed for about a decade. Then in nineteen ninety two,
(10:11):
another priest named Father James Gilhooley published an article with
the absolutely delicious, conspiracy flavored title those wildly Jesuits. If
you think the Twelve Days of Christmas is just a song,
think again. It appeared in the Catholic magazine Our Sunday Visitor,
and then came the Internet. In nineteen ninety five, Father
Stockert posted his essay online, and in the early days
(10:34):
of email forwards, back when your aunt sent you chain
letters promising bad luck if you didn't forward to ten friends,
Stockart's article started showing up in in boxes everywhere. It
spread like wildfire through church email lists and Catholic bulletin
boards and eventually on Facebook and Instagram, manned everywhere else.
But there was a problem for the Pondre at least
(10:56):
when people started asking Father Stockart for his sources. He
claimed he had learned about the symbolism by reading old
letters from Irish priests, mostly Jesuits, writing back to their
mother house in France. These letters supposedly mentioned the song
as an aside while discussing other matters. When he was
asked to share these primary documents, Stockert said, oh, the
(11:18):
letters have been destroyed in a flood, and his original
research notes on a floppy disk so old that no
computer could read it anymore. A flood and an unreadable
floppy disc. That's the foundation upon which this entire theory rests.
Beyond the convenient destruction of all supporting evidence, there are
(11:38):
several serious problems with the secret Catechism theory. First, there
are no primary sources none zero, No manuscripts, no letters,
no sermons, no lesson plans from the sixteenth, seventeenth, or
eighteenth centuries mention anything about this song being used for
religious instruction. The theory does to peer until nineteen seventy nine,
(12:02):
over four hundred years after it supposedly began. Second, Catholic
teaching was never actually banned in a way that required
this kind of workaround. Yes, Catholics faced persecution in England,
Yes it was illegal to practice Catholicism openly during certain periods,
but Catholics already had catechisms. Books existed. They had the
(12:27):
due Reem's Bible translated specifically for English speaking Catholics. They
had the Penny Catechism. They had priests who taught in
secret smuggled in from continental Europe. This wasn't Fahrenheit four
fifty one with Swans. Catholics didn't need a pop song
to remember basic doctrine. Third, and this is the big one,
almost none of the supposed symbolic meanings would have distinguished
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Catholics from Anglicans. The National Catholic Register, a publication not
known for being hostile to Catholic tradition, has pointed out
this glaring problem. Both Catholics and Anglicans believed in the
Old and New Testaments. Both believed in faith, hope, and charity.
Both accepted the Four Gospels, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes,
and the Fruits of the Spirit. If English Catholics needed
(13:12):
a secret code to teach their children, why would they
encode beliefs that Protestants also held. It'd be like creating
a secret handshake to identify yourself as someone who believes
the sky is blue. Here's what a real underground catechism
would need to encode the authority of the Pope, the
seven sacraments, not just baptism and communion, which Anglicans also practiced,
(13:35):
but confirmation, confession, marriage, Holy Orders and last Rites, trans substantiation,
the belief that the bread and wine literally become the
body and blood of Christ. Purgatory, the intercession of saints,
the veneration of Mary. These were the beliefs that could
get you killed. These were the doctrines that distinguished Catholics
(13:56):
from Protestants, and not a single one of them appears
in the supposed code. As the National Catholic Register puts it,
interpreted as an underground catechism, the Twelve Days of Christmas
is a double failure. Not only does it pointlessly encode
beliefs that were entirely uncontroversial, it ignores virtually all the
beliefs that one would actually want to encode for covert catechisms. Fourth,
(14:20):
the symbolic connections don't actually make sense as memory aids.
How exactly do eight maids of milking remind you of
the Eight Beatitudes? What do nine ladies dancing have to
do with the nine fruits of the spirit. Is there
anything about lords of leaping that naturally brings the Ten
Commandments to mind. The whole point of a pneumonic device
is that the symbol helps you remember the concept. These
(14:43):
symbols are completely arbitrary. Fifth, as a Christmas song, the
Twelve Days of Christmas would only be sung for a
few weeks out of the year. If this were really
how Catholics taunt their children the faith, what did they
use for the other eleven months? Where are all the
the other catechism songs for Easter, Pentecost and ordinary time.
(15:05):
The bottom line is that the notion that the Twelve
Days of Christmas was written as an underground catechism, or
even interpreted and used as one during anti Catholic persecutions
in England just as implausible. The more persuasive explanation is
that the interpretations have been rather arbitrarily hung on these
song lyrics after the fact, much as medieval allegorists were
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able to find whatever meaning they sought in the imagery
of scripture. So why does this myth keep spreading among Christians?
Because we love hidden meaning, especially religious meaning, especially at Christmas.
It feels profound, it sounds clever, It makes us feel
like insiders who know the secret history that the rest
(15:47):
of the world is forgotten, and once someone hears it,
they repeat it like its ancient wisdom passed down by monks,
whispering and candlelight. In reality, someone in the nineteen seventies said, hey,
what if the birds meant Jesus? And everyone nodded politely.
But this tendency, this urge to see our faith reflected
(16:08):
in ordinary objects and ancient songs and celebrity quotes and
cloud formations and grilled cheese sandwiches. This is actually one
of those uncomfortable human truths we'd rather not look at
too closely, because the monster in this story might be
us holding a sharpie, drawing meaning onto things that never
had it. There was a scientific term for what we're
(16:29):
describing here, epophenia. It's the tendency to perceive meaningful connections
between unrelated things. The term was coined to nineteen fifty
eight by a German psychiatrist named Klaus Conrad. He was
studying the early stages of schizophrenia and noticed that his
patients were developing what he called unmotivated seeing of connections,
(16:49):
accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness. The word
comes from the Greek Apophenian meaning to show or to
make known. Conrad was describing some saying pathological, the way
a person developing psychosis might see threatening patterns everywhere, believing
that random events are secretly messages directed at them personally.
(17:10):
But scientists have since recognized that apophania isn't just a
symptom of mental illness. It's a normal feature of human cognition.
We all do it. Some of us just do it
more than others. Our brains are pattern making machines, and
they're actually a little too good at it. We spot
patterns fast, even when they aren't real. This tendency is
(17:31):
sometimes called patternicity, the brain's default setting defined structure and
organization in chaos and randomness. Here's why this matters from
an ancestral standpoint. If our ancestors saw a face in
the bushes and ran, they lived. If they stopped to say, eh,
probably nothing, and that face turned out to be a lion,
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they became lunch. Over hundreds or thousands of generations, natural
selection favored the brains that aired on the side of
seeing patterns, even false patterns, over brains that missed genuine threats.
So now we see Jesus in toast demons and dry
wall cracks, political opinions, and celebrity quotes taken wildly out
of context. The man in the moon faces on the
(18:15):
surface of Mars. Congratulations. Our survival software is running in
an era where it does no business being this paranoid.
The lions are gone, but our brains are still scanning
the bushes. Heredolia is a specific type of apophania that
involves visual perception. It's when we see faces, figures, or
meaningful images in random stimuli like clouds, wood grain, or
(18:39):
burnt toast. From birth, humans show a fascination with faces
that continues throughout our lives. Baby's blurry vision excludes distant objects,
while the faces of parents and caregivers are thrust into
constant view. We all become face experts, training our brains
to recognize and interpret facial features with incredible speed and accuracy.
(19:00):
Brain scans have shown that when we look at a face,
a specific part of the brain called the fusiform face
area lights up. Here's the remarkable finding. The fusiform face
area also lights up when we experience face paradolia. Our
brains literally process imagery faces in toast the same way
they process real human faces. As Developmental psychologist Kang Lee
(19:23):
from the University of Toronto explains face paradoia affects the
parts of our brain that are responsive to real faces.
If we experience this phenomenon, nothing's wrong with our brains.
It's actually proof that our visual processing system is working
exactly as designed. The problem is when we assign supernatural
significance to what is essentially a hardware feature. Let's talk
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about that grilled cheese sandwich. In nineteen ninety four, a
woman named Diana Deuser of Hollywood, Florida, was making herself
a grilled cheese sandwich. Nothing fancy, no butter, no oil,
just bread and cheese on a skillet. Took a bite,
looked down, and staring back at her from the toasting
pattern was what she perceived as the face of the
Virgin Mary. Deuser didn't eat the rest of the sandwich. Instead,
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she placed it in a clear plastic box, surrounded it
with cotton balls, and kept it enshrined on her nightstand
for ten years. In two thousand and four, she put
it up for auction on eBay. The online casino Gooldenpalace
dot com, known for publicity stunts, purchased the decade old
sandwich for twenty eight thousand dollars. It's roughly the average
(20:31):
annual salary of a medical receptionist in New Jersey paid
for a piece of old bread with char marks that
vaguely resembled a woman's face for the record. Skeptical investigator
Joe Nichol actually examined the sandwich under magnification. He observed
that the surface had a spotty, heat blistered appearance, and
the spots making up the eyes, nose, and mouth were
(20:52):
similar to spots elsewhere on the toasted bread. It was
random blistering that happened to a line in a facelike pattern.
Also worth noting, when other skeptics looked at the sandwich,
nobody thought it looked like the Virgin Mary. Some suggested
Greta Garbo, Others said Marlene Dietrick. One person thought it
looked like the actress from a nineteen twenties film. Here's
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the thing about Jesus and Mary appearances in Paradolia. Both
figures pre date photography by about eighteen hundred years. We
don't know what they actually looked like. We only know
their faces through religious iconography, paintings and sculptures made centuries
after they lived. So when our brains look for a match,
they're matching against artistic representations, not actual faces. The Virgin
(21:41):
Mary in the grilled cheese looks like artist depictions of
Mary because that's the template in our cultural memory. It's
a match to a match to a match. The grilled
cheese Madonna isn't even the most famous example. Religious images
have been spotted in a pretzel that sold for ten
six hundred dollars because it supposedly resembled the Virgin Mary.
(22:03):
A cinnamon done at a Nashville coffee shop that bore
what some perceived as the likeness of Mother Teresa. It
became known as the Nun on a bun and was
displayed in a glass case until it was stolen in
two thousand and five. A pattern of mold in a
bathroom shower that someone called shower Jesus and sold for
nineteen hundred and ninety nine dollars. The rear end of
(22:24):
a three year old terrier. Yeah, somebody saw Jesus and
a dog's backside. I'm not making this up. A frying
pan with bert bacon that revealed what the owner interpreted
as the face of Christ, discovered after he fell asleep
cooking and woke to a smoke filled room. A wooden
fence post near the cliffs in the Sydney suburb of Coogie,
Australia that became known as Our Lady of the Fence Post.
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A chocolate factory in Fountain Valley, California, a rock in Ghana,
an underpass in Chicago, a lump of firewood in Jamesville, Wisconsin,
a fizza pan in Houston, Texas. And during the twenty
nineteen fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, some observers
claimed to see Jesus in the flames, because apparently, even
infernos that destroy irreplaceable medieval architecture are just another canvas
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for paradolia. Visual paradolia gets most of the attention, but
our ears do the same thing. It's called auditory paradolia,
and it's the engine behind what are the most popular
tools in ghost hunting. Electronic voice phenomena or EVP. EVP
is the practice of recording audio, usually in supposedly haunted locations,
(23:31):
and then listening for voices that weren't audible to human
ears during the recording. Enthusiasts claim these voices are communications
from spirits of the dead. The phenomenon has a surprisingly
specific history. The first purported EVP recording was made in
nineteen fifty nine by a Swedish opera singer, painter and
film producer named Friedrich Jurgensen. He was recording the sounds
(23:52):
of birds singing in a forest. When he played the
tape back, he heard what he interpreted as a female
voice saying, Preedric, you are being launched. Friedel, my little Friedel,
Can you hear me? He believed it was the voice
of his dead mother. Jurgensen spent the next several years
recording more voices and published two books, Voices from the
(24:13):
Universe and Radio Contact with the Dead. His work attracted
the attention of a Lotfian psychologist named Konstantin's Rodiva, who
was initially skeptical but became a true believer after trying
the technique himself. Rodiva claimed to have recorded his own
deceased mother's voice. He went on to collect and analyze
over one hundred thousand EVP recordings and published his research
(24:37):
in a nineteen seventy one book called Breakthrough, An Amazing
Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. For a while
people called the phenomenon Rodeva voices. In two thousand and two,
an EVP enthusiast named Frank Sumption created a device he
called Frank's Box or the ghost Box. It's described as
a combination white noise generator and AM radio receiver modified
(25:00):
to sweep back and forth through the AM band, selecting
split second snippets of sound. Sumption claimed he received his
design instructions from the spirit world. Critics point out that
since the device relies on radio noise, any meaningful response
a user gets is purely coincidental or simply the result
of auditory paradolia. Paranormal researcher Ben Radford has called Frank's
(25:24):
Box a modern version of the Wisia board, also known
as the broken radio. Here's what scientists actually observe about
EVP recordings. They're almost always in the listener's native language.
If EVP were really communications from spirits, we'd expect to
occasionally hear messages and languages a researcher doesn't understand. Instead,
(25:45):
English speaking ghost hunters here, English, Spanish speaking investigators here Spanish.
This is exactly what we would predict if the brain
were imposing familiar patterns on random noise. The voices typically
only become audible U or someone tells you what to
listen for before the suggestion static after the suggestion, did
(26:06):
it just say? Get out? It's the same reason you
can't onhear song lyrics once you've read them. The sound
didn't change your perception did The messages are brief, garbled,
and almost never contain useful or complex information. Ghosts apparently
are terrible conversationalists. If spirits really could communicate through electronic devices,
(26:28):
you'd think they could manage a complete sentence now and then.
One writer aptly described EVP as an auditory inc block test,
a blank slate upon which the listener can project any interpretation.
Sound artist Joe Banks coined to the term rorshack audio
to describe this phenomenon, and the Rarshack Audio Project presents
EVP as a product of radio interference combined with auditory paradolia.
(26:54):
Research has shown that paranormal believers are more susceptible to
EVP than skeptics. Where participants listened to recordings of white noise,
those who believed in ghosts were significantly more likely to
report hearing voices. When researchers told participants that they were
studying purported ghost voices rather than voices in noisy environments.
(27:15):
The priming dramatically increased reports of hearing voices in meaningless
static The technological trappings of ghost hunting can lend a
gloss of objectivity. We assume that because a machine recorded something,
the evidence must be objective. But the machine just captures audio.
The critical step interpreting what the sounds mean is entirely subjective,
(27:38):
and subjective interpretation is exactly where a puffania thrives. This
same tendency shows up in religious visions and experiences. It's
a more sensitive topic because we're talking about deeply personal,
often profound experiences, but we need to be honest about
how the brain works. Religious visions often occurred during specific
(28:00):
states that loosen the brain's normal filters. Extreme stress or grief,
sleep deprivation, fasting, illness or fever, sensory deprivation, intense prayer
or meditation. These states don't cause people to hallucinate exactly,
but they do lower the threshold for perception. The brain
(28:20):
becomes more willing to interpret ambiguous stimuli as meaningful. The
raw experience might be very real. Light a voice, a
presence a feeling of overwhelming certainty, But the interpretation comes afterward,
and the interpretation is shaped by culture, by religious tradition,
by expectation. A Christian and crisis sees Christ, A Hindu
(28:44):
sees Vishnu or Shiva. A medieval European peasant sees the
Virgin Mary. A modern UFO experiencer sees a gray skin
to being with a clipboard and a butt probe, same brain,
different cultural software. This doesn't mean every religious experience is
just in your head. It means the brain is the
interface through which we experience everything, including potentially the divine.
(29:09):
But it also means we need humility about our interpretations.
Even if something genuinely supernatural exists, a poffania guarantees will
misinterpret most of it. Skeptics say it's all in your head.
Believers say it's all supernatural. Reality probably says you're both
over confident. We expect something unusual, we experience something ambiguous,
(29:35):
we interpret it through our existing beliefs. That interpretation strengthens
the belief, and future ambiguity gets interpreted faster and harder.
That's how one shadow becomes activity, one edp becomes intelligent communication,
one vision becomes doctrine. One burn pattern on toast becomes
(29:55):
a twenty eight thousand dollars shrine. Belief sharpens perception and
blinds it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias, the tendency to
search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way
that confirms our pre existing beliefs. Once we believe something,
our brain becomes a pr firm for that belief. We
(30:17):
notice evidence that supports it and dismiss or rationalize evidence
that contradicts it. In an experimental study using a picture
of plain linen cloth, researchers tested how suggestion affected perception.
Participants who had been told there could possibly be visible
words in the cloth collectively saw two religious words. Those
told the cloth was of some religious importance saw twelve
(30:40):
religious words. Those who were told it was religious importance
and given suggestions of possible religious words to look for,
saw thirty seven religious words. This is exactly why so
many objects have supposedly been found on the shroud of
turin plant species, coins, insects, all manner of details. Once
(31:00):
the cloth was deemed to have the imprint of Jesus,
pattern seeking went into overdrive. Am I saying the shroud
of turin is not the burial cloth of Jesus. No,
but I am saying that believing that to be the
case will certainly infect your interpretations of what you find
from it. This is where we need to have an
honest conversation with ourselves as Christians. Apophania isn't just a
(31:22):
problem for ghost hunters seeing shadows and abandoned asylums. It's
a problem for us when we don't account for our
brains patterns, seeking tendencies. Every coincidence becomes confirmation, every feeling
becomes revelation, Every ambiguous situation becomes a sign from God.
And that's not investigation, that's not discernment, that's storytelling. The
(31:46):
Bible itself warns us about this tendency repeatedly and emphatically.
Jeremiah seventeen, verse nine tells us the heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Our own hearts can deceive us, Our own minds can
trick us into seeing what we want to see. Proverbs fourteen,
verse twelve says there is a way that seems right
(32:08):
to a man, but its end is a way of death.
We can be absolutely convinced we're on the right path
and be completely wrong. The road can feel right and
still lead to destruction. Proverbs fourteen, verse fifteen adds the
simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps.
Notice the contrast simplicity that accepts everything versus prudence that
(32:31):
thinks carefully. First John four, verse one instructs us beloved,
do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to
see whether they are from God, because many false prophets
have gone out into the world. Notice that John doesn't
say trust your feelings. He doesn't say if it feels
like God, it must be God. Now he says, test, examine, verify.
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Matthew seven, verse fifteen warns beware of false prophets who
come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are
ravenous wolves. False teaching doesn't announce itself with a warning label,
becomes disguised as something trustworthy. Two Timothy four, verses three
and four provides one of the most sobering warnings in scripture,
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for the time will come when people will not put
up with sound doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires.
They will gather around them a great number of teachers
to say what their itching ears want to hear. They
will turn their ears away from the truth and be
turned aside to fables babels, like say the fable that
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the twelve days of Christmas was a secret. Catholic Catechism
Acts twenty verses twenty nine thirty records Paul's warning to
the Ephesian elders. I know that after I leave, savage
wolves will come in among you, and will not spare
the flock, even from your own number. Men will arise
and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples
after them. Glasians two, verse eight cautions see to it
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that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy,
which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces
of this world, rather than on Christ. Hebrews five, verse
fourteen tells us that solid food is for the mature, who,
by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
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Notice that discernment is something we train. It's not automatic,
It requires practice, discipline, constant use. One Thessalonians five twenty
one commands us to test all things hold fast what
is good, all things, not just the things that seem
suspicious everything. Now here's the thing, and this is where
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we really need to be honest with ourselves. We can
appreciate symbolism without claiming intent. We can enjoy meaning without
insisting it was planted. We can hold our faith without
turning coincidence into confirmation. In other words, we can enjoy
the grill cheese without starting a church around it. And
let's be honest, if God were going to leave us
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a message, he'd probably picks something more durable than wonderbread,
something with a longer shelf life than a ham sandwich.
The danger zone isn't finding meaning. Humans are meaning making creatures.
That's part of what makes us creative, artistic, capable of
language and story and culture. The same mental machinery that
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sees Jesus in toast also lets us write poetry and
compose music and create beauty from chaos. Apophania is a
double edged sword, not a defect. The danger zone is
when we say this must mean what I believe it means,
and if you don't see it, you're blind. That's when
curiosity turns into ideology. That's when toast becomes doctrine. That's
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when confirmation bias becomes bulletproof, and no evidence to the
contrary can penetrate. So what's the alternative? How do we
hold genuine faith in a brain that's constantly trying to
manufacture false patterns. First, we ground ourselves in scripture, not
in feelings, not in signs, not in patterns we think
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we see in random events. Scripture is our foundation. Psalm
one hundred and nineteen, verse one oh five says your
word is a lamp to my feet and a light
to my path. We don't need to decode hidden messages
and medieval party songs when we have the actual revealed
word of God. John eight, verse thirty one records Jesus saying,
(36:32):
if you hold to my teaching, you are really in
my disciples. The test of discipleship isn't mystical experiences or
perceived signs. It's faithfulness to what has actually been revealed. Second,
we embrace humility. Verse Corinthians eight, verse two reminds us
if anyone thinks they know anything, they do not yet
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know as they ought to know. We hold our interpretations loosely.
We acknowledge that we might be wrong. We stay teachable.
James one, verse five promises if any of you lacks wisdom,
you should ask God, who gives generously to all without
finding fault, and it will be given to you. Asking
for wisdom implies we don't already have all the answers.
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Humility is a prerequisite. Third, we test everything first. Thessalonians five,
verse twenty one tells us to test all things and
hold fast to what is good. That means not accepting
every claim that sounds spiritual or meaningful. It means asking questions.
It means doing research. It means being willing to say,
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that's a nice story, but it's it's not actually true.
The Bareans in Acts seventeen verse eleven were commended because
they received the message with great eagerness and examined the
scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
They didn't just accept teaching because it came from an apostle.
(37:59):
They checked it against scripture. Fourth, we value truth over comfort.
John eight, verse thirty two says you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall set you free. Notice it doesn't
say comfortable stories will set us free. It doesn't say
patterns that confirm our beliefs will set us free. The
truth sets us free, even when that truth is inconvenient
(38:24):
or disappointing. Fifth, we cultivate genuine discernment. Philippians one Versus
nine and ten records Paul's prayer saying that your love
may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
so that you may be able to discern what is best.
Discernment comes from growing in knowledge and insight, not from
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following hunches. There is a beautiful irony in all of
this apophania. This same tendency that makes us see Jesus
in toast and hidden codes in Christmas carols is also
the engine behind art, behind storytelling, behind mythology, behind creativity itself.
It's how humans turn randomness into narrative. It's how we
(39:09):
see constellations in scattered stars. It's how we find meaning
in chaotic universe. Without it, we'd have no gods. But
we'd also have no stories to tell around the fire,
no parables, no metaphors, no poetry. The same mental tool
that sees God in a sandwich also lets Salvador Dolli
create paintings where faces emerge from groups of figures, where
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reality bends and meaning multiplies. Dolly deliberately played with paradolia.
His famous painting slave Market with a disappearing bust of
Voltaire shows a group of characters when viewed up close,
but Voltaire's face when viewed from a distance. The key
is learning to wield this sword wisely. Romans twelve verse
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two tells us, do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that
you may prove what is the good and acceptable and
perfect will of God. Notice Paul talks about the renewal
of our minds. Our brains need to be trained. Our
pattern seeking needs to be disciplined. We need to learn
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the difference between genuine divine revelation and the stories we
tell ourselves. So when someone shares that post about the
twelve days of Christmas being a secret code for Christian doctrine,
we can smile, kindly and gently correct them. We don't
need manufactured meaning. We have the real thing. We don't
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need hidden codes and silly songs about too many birds.
We have the Gospels, Matthew, bark Luke, and John telling
us plainly about a savior born in Bethlehem. We don't
need divine Jesus in toast or turtle doves. We have
his own words, his own promises, his own presence through
the Holy Spirit. Luke two verses ten and eleven gives
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us the Christmas message without any decoding required. The Angel
said to the shepherds, do not be afraid, for behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will
be to all people. For there is born to you
this day in the city of David as Savior. Who
is Christ the Lord. No hidden meaning, no secret symbolism,
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no code words, just the truth announced plainly to ordinary
working people in a field in the middle of the night.
That's the real miracle of Christmas. Not the God hid
himself in puzzles for us to decode, but that he
revealed himself clearly for all to see. Emmanuel God with us.
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The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that's
worth celebrating more than one hundred eighty four birds could
ever represent. Our brains will keep seeing patterns, That's what
they do. It's the hardware we're running. The fire will
always be more interesting when someone swears they saw something
move in the dark. But as believers, we're to something
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better than chasing shadows and decoding party songs. We're called
to truth, to discernment, to testing the spirits, to grounding
ourselves in the solid rock of God's word rather than
the shifting sands of our own pattern seeking minds. So
let's enjoy the twelve days of Christmas for what it is,
our ridiculous, cumulative, impossible to remember song about giving someone
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an absurd number of birds and a troop of dancing entertainers.
And let's say of our faith for the things that
actually deserve it. The real hidden treasure isn't in a
medieval carol. It's not in a grilled cheese sandwich, or
a water stain or a piece of burnt toast. It's
in a manger in Bethlehem, announced by angels, confirmed by scripture,
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and available to anyone who asks, no decoding required. If
you like what you heard, share this episode with others
whom you think might also like it. Maybe the person
(43:07):
you share it with I want to join this weird
o congregation too. To listen to previous messages, visit weird
Darkness dot com slash church. That's weird Darkness dot com
slash church. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me weirdos,
and until next time, Jesus loves you, and so do I. God,
bless and Merry Christmas. We're still in the twelve days
(43:29):
of Christmas, you know,
There is a piece of Christmas trivia that gets passed
around every December like fruitcake, nobody actually ordered. It sounds profound,
it feels meaningful, and it's almost certainly not true. We're
going to dig into a beloved holiday song, a persistent
myth about hidden Christian meaning, and what it all reveals
about the human brain's desperate hunger to find patterns, even
(00:31):
when those patterns don't exist. Along the way, we'll discover
something uncomfortable about ourselves and our faith, and maybe learn
how to tell the difference between genuine divine revelation and
the stories we tell ourselves. We'll also talk about grilled
cheese sandwiches, ghost voices, and why someone paid twenty eight
(00:51):
thousand dollars for a decade old sandwich. Trust me, it
all connects. Hello, weirdos, I'm Pastor Darren. Welcome to the
Church of the un Dead. Here in the Church of
(01:12):
the UoN Dead, I step away from being the host
of weird darkness and step into the clothes of a reverend.
I still share things that are dark, strange, or macabre,
diving into the paranormal, true crime, monsters, and more, but
I try to find a biblical take on the subject matter.
I have to say it is a fun challenge. If
you're a weirdo, a family member from my Weird Darkness podcast,
(01:34):
or a weirdo in Christ from this one, welcome to
the Church of the Undead. And I use the word
undead because as Romans six, verse eleven says, in the
same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to
God in Christ Jesus and as Ephesians two states, even
when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us
(01:55):
alive together with Christ. If you were dead and now
are alive, that makes you on dead. If you want
to join this weirdo congregation, just click that subscribe or
follow button and visit us online at Weird Darkness dot
com slash church. In today's message, that viral claim about
the twelve Days of Christmas being a secret Catholic catechism
(02:18):
turns out to be the perfect example of how our
brains can trick us into seeing faith where none was
planted from a twenty eight thousand dollars grilled cheese sandwich
bearing the Virgin Mary's face to ghost hunters hearing spirit
voices in radio static we are wired to find meaningful
patterns everywhere, even when those patterns don't actually exist. What
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does this mean for believers trying to discern genuine revelation
from the stories we tell ourselves Full disclosure. Before I
get into the message, I might use the term pastor
because I've branded this feature as a church and I
got a minister's license online. But I do not have
a theology degree, nor did I ever go to Bible College.
(03:00):
The guy who gave his life to Christ at the
age of twenty one and has tried to walk the
walk ever since and has stumbled a lot along the way,
because like everybody else, I am an imperfect, heavily flawed
human being. So please don't take what I say as gospel.
Dig into God's Word yourself for confirmation, inspiration, and revelation.
(03:21):
That being said, welcome to the Church of the Undead.
Po Let's start with the song itself, because honestly, Twelve
Days of Christmas is one of the strangest pieces of
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holiday music ever written. If you actually sit down and
listen to the lyrics, really listen, sounds less like a
romantic gesture and more like someone having a manic episode
at a pet story. Out of the twelve gifts mentioned.
Seven of them are birds, a partridge pear tree, two
turtle doves, three French hens for calling birds, which were
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originally called collie birds Old English for blackbirds. So someone
along the way apparently thought calling birds sounded less like
we were gifting someone a flock of crows, or would
that be a murder of crows anyway, six piece of laying,
seven swans of swimming. That's twenty three birds by day
seven alone. If we add them all up the traditional
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cumulative way. Because the song keeps giving those same gifts
over and over day after day, we end up with
one hundred eighty four birds by the end of the song.
One hundred eighty four birds. That is not a Christmas gift.
That is an ecological disaster. Someone's home owners association would
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to shut this down. By day three, no mammals show
up until day eight when those maids show up milking
some sort of animal apparently cows, pigs, and sheep. Took
one look at this song and said, yeah, we're sittiness
went out smart animals. So why all the birds? A
few reasons, none of them involving ornithological madness, probably in
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medieval England, fancy birds meant wealth. Swans especially were bougie,
and I mean that literally. In England, the crown technically
owned all mute swans and you needed a special license
to keep them. Not mute as in not able to speak,
but the white swans, but the orange bills that are
most common in Britain and tend to be less noisy
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than the other swans. Owning swans meant you were either
royalty or extremely annoying at dinner parties. Probably both. These
birds weren't pets, they were dinner. Christmas was feast season,
and birds were practical gifts. If someone gave you six
geese a laying you weren't putting them in a pond
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and naming them. You were feeding your family for a
month with roast, goose and scrambled eggs. Also, birds already
carried strong Christian symbolism peace, the soul, purity, sacrifice, the
dove representing the Holy Spirit, the pelican as a symbol
of Christ piercing its own breast to feed its young.
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Birds were metaphor ready before metaphors were cool. Oh and
that pelican thing, it has no basis in scientific fact,
but it was a great story to spread around for reasons.
But here's the thing about the song structure. It's a
memory game. The piling on chaos isn't accidental. It is
meant to be ridiculous, cumulative, and hard to remember. The
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earliest printed version of this song appears in seventeen eighty
in a children's book called Mirth Without Mischief, not exactly
a title suggesting deep theological meaning. The song was listed
as a twelfth Night memory and forfeits game. The song
leader would recite a verse. Each player had to repeat
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what came before, and if you messed up, you lost
a token or had to perform some silly task. Your
drunk uncle forgetting the ten Lords of leaping and having
to kiss the nearest spinster as a forfeit isn't exactly
how most of us picture clandestine religious education. Now there's
a claim that gets shared every Christmas season on social media,
(07:21):
in church bulletins, sometimes even from pulpits. It shows up
in email forwards from well meaning relatives. It gets posted
on Facebook with those little candle limojis. It sounds ancient
and wise and secretly profound. The claim goes like this,
and take notes, because you'll be quizzed on this sometime
at a future holiday party. I'm sure each gift in
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the twelve Days of Christmas secretly represents a core Christian belief.
The partridge and the pear tree equals Jesus Christ because
the partridge will sacrifice itself to protect its young. The
two turtle doves represent the Old and New Testaments. The
three French hens are faith, Hope, and sh charity. The
four calling birds are the four Gospels. The five gold
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rings are the first five books of the Old Testament,
the Pentechuk six geeks of laying represent the six days
of creation. Seven swans of swimming are the seven gifts
of the Holy Spirit. Eight maids of milking are the
eight Beatitudes. Nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of
the Spirit. Ten lords of leaping are the Ten Commandments.
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Eleven pipers piping are the eleven faithful Apostles Judas excluded,
and twelve drummers drumming represents the twelve points of the
Apostles Creed. The story says this code was supposedly used
to teach Catholic doctrine during times when Catholicism was illegal
in England. English Catholics persecuted from fifteen fifty eight to
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eighteen twenty nine supposedly created this song to teach their
children the faith without getting arrested, executed, or having their
lands confiscated. It sounds spooky, It sounds clever, sounds like
something out of a historical thriller. It sounds completely unsupported
by evidence. Here's what historians have actually been able to trace.
(09:07):
The secret Catholic Catechism theory doesn't appear anywhere in historical
records until the twentieth century. Not the sixteenth century, not
the seventeenth, not even the nineteenth the twentieth. The first
known appearance of this theory was in nineteen seventy nine,
when a Canadian teacher and hymnologist named Hugh D. Mckeller
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published a short article called How to Decode the Twelve
Days of Christmas. Mckeller suggested suggested, mind you not proved
that the song's lyrics might have been used to teach
children about important parts of Christian thinking. Three years later,
in nineteen eighty two, a Catholic priest named Father hal
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Stockert picked up mckeller's idea and ran with it. He
wrote an essay called Origin of the Twelve Days of
Christmas an underground Catechism, in which he went into great
detail at the persecution of Catholics in England, including vivid
descriptions of being hanged, drawn and quartered. The essay sat
relatively unnoticed for about a decade. Then in nineteen ninety two,
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another priest named Father James Gilhooley published an article with
the absolutely delicious, conspiracy flavored title those wildly Jesuits. If
you think the Twelve Days of Christmas is just a song,
think again. It appeared in the Catholic magazine Our Sunday Visitor,
and then came the Internet. In nineteen ninety five, Father
Stockert posted his essay online, and in the early days
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of email forwards, back when your aunt sent you chain
letters promising bad luck if you didn't forward to ten friends,
Stockart's article started showing up in in boxes everywhere. It
spread like wildfire through church email lists and Catholic bulletin
boards and eventually on Facebook and Instagram, manned everywhere else.
But there was a problem for the Pondre at least
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when people started asking Father Stockart for his sources. He
claimed he had learned about the symbolism by reading old
letters from Irish priests, mostly Jesuits, writing back to their
mother house in France. These letters supposedly mentioned the song
as an aside while discussing other matters. When he was
asked to share these primary documents, Stockert said, oh, the
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letters have been destroyed in a flood, and his original
research notes on a floppy disk so old that no
computer could read it anymore. A flood and an unreadable
floppy disc. That's the foundation upon which this entire theory rests.
Beyond the convenient destruction of all supporting evidence, there are
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several serious problems with the secret Catechism theory. First, there
are no primary sources none zero, No manuscripts, no letters,
no sermons, no lesson plans from the sixteenth, seventeenth, or
eighteenth centuries mention anything about this song being used for
religious instruction. The theory does to peer until nineteen seventy nine,
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over four hundred years after it supposedly began. Second, Catholic
teaching was never actually banned in a way that required
this kind of workaround. Yes, Catholics faced persecution in England,
Yes it was illegal to practice Catholicism openly during certain periods,
but Catholics already had catechisms. Books existed. They had the
(12:27):
due Reem's Bible translated specifically for English speaking Catholics. They
had the Penny Catechism. They had priests who taught in
secret smuggled in from continental Europe. This wasn't Fahrenheit four
fifty one with Swans. Catholics didn't need a pop song
to remember basic doctrine. Third, and this is the big one,
almost none of the supposed symbolic meanings would have distinguished
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Catholics from Anglicans. The National Catholic Register, a publication not
known for being hostile to Catholic tradition, has pointed out
this glaring problem. Both Catholics and Anglicans believed in the
Old and New Testaments. Both believed in faith, hope, and charity.
Both accepted the Four Gospels, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes,
and the Fruits of the Spirit. If English Catholics needed
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a secret code to teach their children, why would they
encode beliefs that Protestants also held. It'd be like creating
a secret handshake to identify yourself as someone who believes
the sky is blue. Here's what a real underground catechism
would need to encode the authority of the Pope, the
seven sacraments, not just baptism and communion, which Anglicans also practiced,
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but confirmation, confession, marriage, Holy Orders and last Rites, trans substantiation,
the belief that the bread and wine literally become the
body and blood of Christ. Purgatory, the intercession of saints,
the veneration of Mary. These were the beliefs that could
get you killed. These were the doctrines that distinguished Catholics
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from Protestants, and not a single one of them appears
in the supposed code. As the National Catholic Register puts it,
interpreted as an underground catechism, the Twelve Days of Christmas
is a double failure. Not only does it pointlessly encode
beliefs that were entirely uncontroversial, it ignores virtually all the
beliefs that one would actually want to encode for covert catechisms. Fourth,
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the symbolic connections don't actually make sense as memory aids.
How exactly do eight maids of milking remind you of
the Eight Beatitudes? What do nine ladies dancing have to
do with the nine fruits of the spirit. Is there
anything about lords of leaping that naturally brings the Ten
Commandments to mind. The whole point of a pneumonic device
is that the symbol helps you remember the concept. These
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symbols are completely arbitrary. Fifth, as a Christmas song, the
Twelve Days of Christmas would only be sung for a
few weeks out of the year. If this were really
how Catholics taunt their children the faith, what did they
use for the other eleven months? Where are all the
the other catechism songs for Easter, Pentecost and ordinary time.
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The bottom line is that the notion that the Twelve
Days of Christmas was written as an underground catechism, or
even interpreted and used as one during anti Catholic persecutions
in England just as implausible. The more persuasive explanation is
that the interpretations have been rather arbitrarily hung on these
song lyrics after the fact, much as medieval allegorists were
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able to find whatever meaning they sought in the imagery
of scripture. So why does this myth keep spreading among Christians?
Because we love hidden meaning, especially religious meaning, especially at Christmas.
It feels profound, it sounds clever, It makes us feel
like insiders who know the secret history that the rest
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of the world is forgotten, and once someone hears it,
they repeat it like its ancient wisdom passed down by monks,
whispering and candlelight. In reality, someone in the nineteen seventies said, hey,
what if the birds meant Jesus? And everyone nodded politely.
But this tendency, this urge to see our faith reflected
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in ordinary objects and ancient songs and celebrity quotes and
cloud formations and grilled cheese sandwiches. This is actually one
of those uncomfortable human truths we'd rather not look at
too closely, because the monster in this story might be
us holding a sharpie, drawing meaning onto things that never
had it. There was a scientific term for what we're
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describing here, epophenia. It's the tendency to perceive meaningful connections
between unrelated things. The term was coined to nineteen fifty
eight by a German psychiatrist named Klaus Conrad. He was
studying the early stages of schizophrenia and noticed that his
patients were developing what he called unmotivated seeing of connections,
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accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness. The word
comes from the Greek Apophenian meaning to show or to
make known. Conrad was describing some saying pathological, the way
a person developing psychosis might see threatening patterns everywhere, believing
that random events are secretly messages directed at them personally.
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But scientists have since recognized that apophania isn't just a
symptom of mental illness. It's a normal feature of human cognition.
We all do it. Some of us just do it
more than others. Our brains are pattern making machines, and
they're actually a little too good at it. We spot
patterns fast, even when they aren't real. This tendency is
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sometimes called patternicity, the brain's default setting defined structure and
organization in chaos and randomness. Here's why this matters from
an ancestral standpoint. If our ancestors saw a face in
the bushes and ran, they lived. If they stopped to say, eh,
probably nothing, and that face turned out to be a lion,
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they became lunch. Over hundreds or thousands of generations, natural
selection favored the brains that aired on the side of
seeing patterns, even false patterns, over brains that missed genuine threats.
So now we see Jesus in toast demons and dry
wall cracks, political opinions, and celebrity quotes taken wildly out
of context. The man in the moon faces on the
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surface of Mars. Congratulations. Our survival software is running in
an era where it does no business being this paranoid.
The lions are gone, but our brains are still scanning
the bushes. Heredolia is a specific type of apophania that
involves visual perception. It's when we see faces, figures, or
meaningful images in random stimuli like clouds, wood grain, or
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burnt toast. From birth, humans show a fascination with faces
that continues throughout our lives. Baby's blurry vision excludes distant objects,
while the faces of parents and caregivers are thrust into
constant view. We all become face experts, training our brains
to recognize and interpret facial features with incredible speed and accuracy.
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Brain scans have shown that when we look at a face,
a specific part of the brain called the fusiform face
area lights up. Here's the remarkable finding. The fusiform face
area also lights up when we experience face paradolia. Our
brains literally process imagery faces in toast the same way
they process real human faces. As Developmental psychologist Kang Lee
(19:23):
from the University of Toronto explains face paradoia affects the
parts of our brain that are responsive to real faces.
If we experience this phenomenon, nothing's wrong with our brains.
It's actually proof that our visual processing system is working
exactly as designed. The problem is when we assign supernatural
significance to what is essentially a hardware feature. Let's talk
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about that grilled cheese sandwich. In nineteen ninety four, a
woman named Diana Deuser of Hollywood, Florida, was making herself
a grilled cheese sandwich. Nothing fancy, no butter, no oil,
just bread and cheese on a skillet. Took a bite,
looked down, and staring back at her from the toasting
pattern was what she perceived as the face of the
Virgin Mary. Deuser didn't eat the rest of the sandwich. Instead,
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she placed it in a clear plastic box, surrounded it
with cotton balls, and kept it enshrined on her nightstand
for ten years. In two thousand and four, she put
it up for auction on eBay. The online casino Gooldenpalace
dot com, known for publicity stunts, purchased the decade old
sandwich for twenty eight thousand dollars. It's roughly the average
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annual salary of a medical receptionist in New Jersey paid
for a piece of old bread with char marks that
vaguely resembled a woman's face for the record. Skeptical investigator
Joe Nichol actually examined the sandwich under magnification. He observed
that the surface had a spotty, heat blistered appearance, and
the spots making up the eyes, nose, and mouth were
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similar to spots elsewhere on the toasted bread. It was
random blistering that happened to a line in a facelike pattern.
Also worth noting, when other skeptics looked at the sandwich,
nobody thought it looked like the Virgin Mary. Some suggested
Greta Garbo, Others said Marlene Dietrick. One person thought it
looked like the actress from a nineteen twenties film. Here's
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the thing about Jesus and Mary appearances in Paradolia. Both
figures pre date photography by about eighteen hundred years. We
don't know what they actually looked like. We only know
their faces through religious iconography, paintings and sculptures made centuries
after they lived. So when our brains look for a match,
they're matching against artistic representations, not actual faces. The Virgin
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Mary in the grilled cheese looks like artist depictions of
Mary because that's the template in our cultural memory. It's
a match to a match to a match. The grilled
cheese Madonna isn't even the most famous example. Religious images
have been spotted in a pretzel that sold for ten
six hundred dollars because it supposedly resembled the Virgin Mary.
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A cinnamon done at a Nashville coffee shop that bore
what some perceived as the likeness of Mother Teresa. It
became known as the Nun on a bun and was
displayed in a glass case until it was stolen in
two thousand and five. A pattern of mold in a
bathroom shower that someone called shower Jesus and sold for
nineteen hundred and ninety nine dollars. The rear end of
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a three year old terrier. Yeah, somebody saw Jesus and
a dog's backside. I'm not making this up. A frying
pan with bert bacon that revealed what the owner interpreted
as the face of Christ, discovered after he fell asleep
cooking and woke to a smoke filled room. A wooden
fence post near the cliffs in the Sydney suburb of Coogie,
Australia that became known as Our Lady of the Fence Post.
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A chocolate factory in Fountain Valley, California, a rock in Ghana,
an underpass in Chicago, a lump of firewood in Jamesville, Wisconsin,
a fizza pan in Houston, Texas. And during the twenty
nineteen fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, some observers
claimed to see Jesus in the flames, because apparently, even
infernos that destroy irreplaceable medieval architecture are just another canvas
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for paradolia. Visual paradolia gets most of the attention, but
our ears do the same thing. It's called auditory paradolia,
and it's the engine behind what are the most popular
tools in ghost hunting. Electronic voice phenomena or EVP. EVP
is the practice of recording audio, usually in supposedly haunted locations,
(23:31):
and then listening for voices that weren't audible to human
ears during the recording. Enthusiasts claim these voices are communications
from spirits of the dead. The phenomenon has a surprisingly
specific history. The first purported EVP recording was made in
nineteen fifty nine by a Swedish opera singer, painter and
film producer named Friedrich Jurgensen. He was recording the sounds
(23:52):
of birds singing in a forest. When he played the
tape back, he heard what he interpreted as a female
voice saying, Preedric, you are being launched. Friedel, my little Friedel,
Can you hear me? He believed it was the voice
of his dead mother. Jurgensen spent the next several years
recording more voices and published two books, Voices from the
(24:13):
Universe and Radio Contact with the Dead. His work attracted
the attention of a Lotfian psychologist named Konstantin's Rodiva, who
was initially skeptical but became a true believer after trying
the technique himself. Rodiva claimed to have recorded his own
deceased mother's voice. He went on to collect and analyze
over one hundred thousand EVP recordings and published his research
(24:37):
in a nineteen seventy one book called Breakthrough, An Amazing
Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. For a while
people called the phenomenon Rodeva voices. In two thousand and two,
an EVP enthusiast named Frank Sumption created a device he
called Frank's Box or the ghost Box. It's described as
a combination white noise generator and AM radio receiver modified
(25:00):
to sweep back and forth through the AM band, selecting
split second snippets of sound. Sumption claimed he received his
design instructions from the spirit world. Critics point out that
since the device relies on radio noise, any meaningful response
a user gets is purely coincidental or simply the result
of auditory paradolia. Paranormal researcher Ben Radford has called Frank's
(25:24):
Box a modern version of the Wisia board, also known
as the broken radio. Here's what scientists actually observe about
EVP recordings. They're almost always in the listener's native language.
If EVP were really communications from spirits, we'd expect to
occasionally hear messages and languages a researcher doesn't understand. Instead,
(25:45):
English speaking ghost hunters here, English, Spanish speaking investigators here Spanish.
This is exactly what we would predict if the brain
were imposing familiar patterns on random noise. The voices typically
only become audible U or someone tells you what to
listen for before the suggestion static after the suggestion, did
(26:06):
it just say? Get out? It's the same reason you
can't onhear song lyrics once you've read them. The sound
didn't change your perception did The messages are brief, garbled,
and almost never contain useful or complex information. Ghosts apparently
are terrible conversationalists. If spirits really could communicate through electronic devices,
(26:28):
you'd think they could manage a complete sentence now and then.
One writer aptly described EVP as an auditory inc block test,
a blank slate upon which the listener can project any interpretation.
Sound artist Joe Banks coined to the term rorshack audio
to describe this phenomenon, and the Rarshack Audio Project presents
EVP as a product of radio interference combined with auditory paradolia.
(26:54):
Research has shown that paranormal believers are more susceptible to
EVP than skeptics. Where participants listened to recordings of white noise,
those who believed in ghosts were significantly more likely to
report hearing voices. When researchers told participants that they were
studying purported ghost voices rather than voices in noisy environments.
(27:15):
The priming dramatically increased reports of hearing voices in meaningless
static The technological trappings of ghost hunting can lend a
gloss of objectivity. We assume that because a machine recorded something,
the evidence must be objective. But the machine just captures audio.
The critical step interpreting what the sounds mean is entirely subjective,
(27:38):
and subjective interpretation is exactly where a puffania thrives. This
same tendency shows up in religious visions and experiences. It's
a more sensitive topic because we're talking about deeply personal,
often profound experiences, but we need to be honest about
how the brain works. Religious visions often occurred during specific
(28:00):
states that loosen the brain's normal filters. Extreme stress or grief,
sleep deprivation, fasting, illness or fever, sensory deprivation, intense prayer
or meditation. These states don't cause people to hallucinate exactly,
but they do lower the threshold for perception. The brain
(28:20):
becomes more willing to interpret ambiguous stimuli as meaningful. The
raw experience might be very real. Light a voice, a
presence a feeling of overwhelming certainty, But the interpretation comes afterward,
and the interpretation is shaped by culture, by religious tradition,
by expectation. A Christian and crisis sees Christ, A Hindu
(28:44):
sees Vishnu or Shiva. A medieval European peasant sees the
Virgin Mary. A modern UFO experiencer sees a gray skin
to being with a clipboard and a butt probe, same brain,
different cultural software. This doesn't mean every religious experience is
just in your head. It means the brain is the
interface through which we experience everything, including potentially the divine.
(29:09):
But it also means we need humility about our interpretations.
Even if something genuinely supernatural exists, a poffania guarantees will
misinterpret most of it. Skeptics say it's all in your head.
Believers say it's all supernatural. Reality probably says you're both
over confident. We expect something unusual, we experience something ambiguous,
(29:35):
we interpret it through our existing beliefs. That interpretation strengthens
the belief, and future ambiguity gets interpreted faster and harder.
That's how one shadow becomes activity, one edp becomes intelligent communication,
one vision becomes doctrine. One burn pattern on toast becomes
(29:55):
a twenty eight thousand dollars shrine. Belief sharpens perception and
blinds it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias, the tendency to
search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way
that confirms our pre existing beliefs. Once we believe something,
our brain becomes a pr firm for that belief. We
(30:17):
notice evidence that supports it and dismiss or rationalize evidence
that contradicts it. In an experimental study using a picture
of plain linen cloth, researchers tested how suggestion affected perception.
Participants who had been told there could possibly be visible
words in the cloth collectively saw two religious words. Those
told the cloth was of some religious importance saw twelve
(30:40):
religious words. Those who were told it was religious importance
and given suggestions of possible religious words to look for,
saw thirty seven religious words. This is exactly why so
many objects have supposedly been found on the shroud of
turin plant species, coins, insects, all manner of details. Once
(31:00):
the cloth was deemed to have the imprint of Jesus,
pattern seeking went into overdrive. Am I saying the shroud
of turin is not the burial cloth of Jesus. No,
but I am saying that believing that to be the
case will certainly infect your interpretations of what you find
from it. This is where we need to have an
honest conversation with ourselves as Christians. Apophania isn't just a
(31:22):
problem for ghost hunters seeing shadows and abandoned asylums. It's
a problem for us when we don't account for our
brains patterns, seeking tendencies. Every coincidence becomes confirmation, every feeling
becomes revelation, Every ambiguous situation becomes a sign from God.
And that's not investigation, that's not discernment, that's storytelling. The
(31:46):
Bible itself warns us about this tendency repeatedly and emphatically.
Jeremiah seventeen, verse nine tells us the heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Our own hearts can deceive us, Our own minds can
trick us into seeing what we want to see. Proverbs fourteen,
verse twelve says there is a way that seems right
(32:08):
to a man, but its end is a way of death.
We can be absolutely convinced we're on the right path
and be completely wrong. The road can feel right and
still lead to destruction. Proverbs fourteen, verse fifteen adds the
simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps.
Notice the contrast simplicity that accepts everything versus prudence that
(32:31):
thinks carefully. First John four, verse one instructs us beloved,
do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to
see whether they are from God, because many false prophets
have gone out into the world. Notice that John doesn't
say trust your feelings. He doesn't say if it feels
like God, it must be God. Now he says, test, examine, verify.
(32:56):
Matthew seven, verse fifteen warns beware of false prophets who
come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are
ravenous wolves. False teaching doesn't announce itself with a warning label,
becomes disguised as something trustworthy. Two Timothy four, verses three
and four provides one of the most sobering warnings in scripture,
(33:17):
for the time will come when people will not put
up with sound doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires.
They will gather around them a great number of teachers
to say what their itching ears want to hear. They
will turn their ears away from the truth and be
turned aside to fables babels, like say the fable that
(33:37):
the twelve days of Christmas was a secret. Catholic Catechism
Acts twenty verses twenty nine thirty records Paul's warning to
the Ephesian elders. I know that after I leave, savage
wolves will come in among you, and will not spare
the flock, even from your own number. Men will arise
and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples
after them. Glasians two, verse eight cautions see to it
(34:00):
that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy,
which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces
of this world, rather than on Christ. Hebrews five, verse
fourteen tells us that solid food is for the mature, who,
by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
(34:21):
Notice that discernment is something we train. It's not automatic,
It requires practice, discipline, constant use. One Thessalonians five twenty
one commands us to test all things hold fast what
is good, all things, not just the things that seem
suspicious everything. Now here's the thing, and this is where
(34:43):
we really need to be honest with ourselves. We can
appreciate symbolism without claiming intent. We can enjoy meaning without
insisting it was planted. We can hold our faith without
turning coincidence into confirmation. In other words, we can enjoy
the grill cheese without starting a church around it. And
let's be honest, if God were going to leave us
(35:05):
a message, he'd probably picks something more durable than wonderbread,
something with a longer shelf life than a ham sandwich.
The danger zone isn't finding meaning. Humans are meaning making creatures.
That's part of what makes us creative, artistic, capable of
language and story and culture. The same mental machinery that
(35:25):
sees Jesus in toast also lets us write poetry and
compose music and create beauty from chaos. Apophania is a
double edged sword, not a defect. The danger zone is
when we say this must mean what I believe it means,
and if you don't see it, you're blind. That's when
curiosity turns into ideology. That's when toast becomes doctrine. That's
(35:49):
when confirmation bias becomes bulletproof, and no evidence to the
contrary can penetrate. So what's the alternative? How do we
hold genuine faith in a brain that's constantly trying to
manufacture false patterns. First, we ground ourselves in scripture, not
in feelings, not in signs, not in patterns we think
(36:10):
we see in random events. Scripture is our foundation. Psalm
one hundred and nineteen, verse one oh five says your
word is a lamp to my feet and a light
to my path. We don't need to decode hidden messages
and medieval party songs when we have the actual revealed
word of God. John eight, verse thirty one records Jesus saying,
(36:32):
if you hold to my teaching, you are really in
my disciples. The test of discipleship isn't mystical experiences or
perceived signs. It's faithfulness to what has actually been revealed. Second,
we embrace humility. Verse Corinthians eight, verse two reminds us
if anyone thinks they know anything, they do not yet
(36:53):
know as they ought to know. We hold our interpretations loosely.
We acknowledge that we might be wrong. We stay teachable.
James one, verse five promises if any of you lacks wisdom,
you should ask God, who gives generously to all without
finding fault, and it will be given to you. Asking
for wisdom implies we don't already have all the answers.
(37:16):
Humility is a prerequisite. Third, we test everything first. Thessalonians five,
verse twenty one tells us to test all things and
hold fast to what is good. That means not accepting
every claim that sounds spiritual or meaningful. It means asking questions.
It means doing research. It means being willing to say,
(37:39):
that's a nice story, but it's it's not actually true.
The Bareans in Acts seventeen verse eleven were commended because
they received the message with great eagerness and examined the
scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
They didn't just accept teaching because it came from an apostle.
(37:59):
They checked it against scripture. Fourth, we value truth over comfort.
John eight, verse thirty two says you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall set you free. Notice it doesn't
say comfortable stories will set us free. It doesn't say
patterns that confirm our beliefs will set us free. The
truth sets us free, even when that truth is inconvenient
(38:24):
or disappointing. Fifth, we cultivate genuine discernment. Philippians one Versus
nine and ten records Paul's prayer saying that your love
may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
so that you may be able to discern what is best.
Discernment comes from growing in knowledge and insight, not from
(38:46):
following hunches. There is a beautiful irony in all of
this apophania. This same tendency that makes us see Jesus
in toast and hidden codes in Christmas carols is also
the engine behind art, behind storytelling, behind mythology, behind creativity itself.
It's how humans turn randomness into narrative. It's how we
(39:09):
see constellations in scattered stars. It's how we find meaning
in chaotic universe. Without it, we'd have no gods. But
we'd also have no stories to tell around the fire,
no parables, no metaphors, no poetry. The same mental tool
that sees God in a sandwich also lets Salvador Dolli
create paintings where faces emerge from groups of figures, where
(39:32):
reality bends and meaning multiplies. Dolly deliberately played with paradolia.
His famous painting slave Market with a disappearing bust of
Voltaire shows a group of characters when viewed up close,
but Voltaire's face when viewed from a distance. The key
is learning to wield this sword wisely. Romans twelve verse
(39:52):
two tells us, do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that
you may prove what is the good and acceptable and
perfect will of God. Notice Paul talks about the renewal
of our minds. Our brains need to be trained. Our
pattern seeking needs to be disciplined. We need to learn
(40:13):
the difference between genuine divine revelation and the stories we
tell ourselves. So when someone shares that post about the
twelve days of Christmas being a secret code for Christian doctrine,
we can smile, kindly and gently correct them. We don't
need manufactured meaning. We have the real thing. We don't
(40:33):
need hidden codes and silly songs about too many birds.
We have the Gospels, Matthew, bark Luke, and John telling
us plainly about a savior born in Bethlehem. We don't
need divine Jesus in toast or turtle doves. We have
his own words, his own promises, his own presence through
the Holy Spirit. Luke two verses ten and eleven gives
(40:54):
us the Christmas message without any decoding required. The Angel
said to the shepherds, do not be afraid, for behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will
be to all people. For there is born to you
this day in the city of David as Savior. Who
is Christ the Lord. No hidden meaning, no secret symbolism,
(41:16):
no code words, just the truth announced plainly to ordinary
working people in a field in the middle of the night.
That's the real miracle of Christmas. Not the God hid
himself in puzzles for us to decode, but that he
revealed himself clearly for all to see. Emmanuel God with us.
(41:38):
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that's
worth celebrating more than one hundred eighty four birds could
ever represent. Our brains will keep seeing patterns, That's what
they do. It's the hardware we're running. The fire will
always be more interesting when someone swears they saw something
move in the dark. But as believers, we're to something
(42:00):
better than chasing shadows and decoding party songs. We're called
to truth, to discernment, to testing the spirits, to grounding
ourselves in the solid rock of God's word rather than
the shifting sands of our own pattern seeking minds. So
let's enjoy the twelve days of Christmas for what it is,
our ridiculous, cumulative, impossible to remember song about giving someone
(42:25):
an absurd number of birds and a troop of dancing entertainers.
And let's say of our faith for the things that
actually deserve it. The real hidden treasure isn't in a
medieval carol. It's not in a grilled cheese sandwich, or
a water stain or a piece of burnt toast. It's
in a manger in Bethlehem, announced by angels, confirmed by scripture,
(42:46):
and available to anyone who asks, no decoding required. If
you like what you heard, share this episode with others
whom you think might also like it. Maybe the person
(43:07):
you share it with I want to join this weird
o congregation too. To listen to previous messages, visit weird
Darkness dot com slash church. That's weird Darkness dot com
slash church. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me weirdos,
and until next time, Jesus loves you, and so do I. God,
bless and Merry Christmas. We're still in the twelve days
(43:29):
of Christmas, you know,
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