Woman speechless after spotting dead dog's 'ghost markings' on new pups' fur

A woman thought she’d gone barking mad... when she spotted her dead face in the fur of her new pup.

Jodie Murphy, 37, lost her beloved Sealyham Terrier Mavis and replaced her with pooch Patrick, who is the same breed. Shortly after bringing Patrick home, she was staggered to spot what appeared to be Mavis’s face in the markings on the back of his head.

Jodie said: “We had only had Patrick for a few days when I noticed the ghost markings in his fur. I did think I was seeing things at first, but when I took a picture I could definitely see Mavis. Once you see it you can’t unsee it! It’s certainly brought me a lot of comfort and just makes Patrick even more special. He’s our little heart healer for sure.”

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Jodie said tragic Mavis, who was put to sleep after suffering a slipped disk, helped her through some tough times. The mum, from Wrexham, continued: “Back in 2021 when I was 33, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Throughout my two and a half years of chemo, Mavis was my little sidekick – due to covid, I spent a lot of time isolating so Mave and I had many days together on the sofa recovering. It was heartbreaking to have to have her put to sleep but she was paralysed and in so much pain. She was only six-years-old and I thought we had many many years to come. Mavis always had a bit of a clown personality but was very loving and loyal. Patrick shares the same soulful eyes and most definitely has the same playful personality.”

According to new research from an international team of psychologists and published Tuesday in the journal Cortex, seeing non-existent faces in inanimate objects, is “perfectly normal” behaviour.

The phenomenon, known as ‘face pareidolia,’ is due to an interaction between two distinct parts of the brain responsible for visual perception, according to Kang Lee, professor at the Dr Erick Jackman Institute of Child Study at the University of Toronto and lead author of the research. Face pareidolia itself has been known for centuries, but the underlying brain mechanisms were largely a mystery until now.

“We tend to think of visual perception of faces as a bottom up process: we see a face and then our brains interpret that information,” says Lee. But what we have shown is that a lot of what we see and perceive is actually determined by biases that already exist in our brains before any external stimuli is actually processed by the brain.”

Examples include people who swear they've seen Jesus on a slice of toast or the Virgin Mary in a cloud formation.