Every once in a while, you’ll hear of yet another person claiming to have found the image of Jesus in their grilled cheese (Grillled Cheesus?), and when you look at the image, you can’t help but see it too. Well, science has a word for this phenomenon, and many believe it can explain why people claim to see Elvis, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs when they aren’t actually there.

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that allows us to detect images or sounds in places where there actually are none. Coming from the Greek word for “beyond the image,” pareidolia has a long, interesting history that can explain some of the past’s most common misperceptions.

For example, the Shroud of Turin was thought to have the face of Jesus after experiencing crucifixion imprinted on the cloth. The negative image, first observed by 1898 by photographer Secondo Pia became a mass religious symbol and attracted many to the Turin Cathedral.

But most scientists have another explanation for this; many believe that pareidolia is another instance of our brain trying to make sense of the random information we are constantly being bombarded with. When we see an image, or hear a sound, our brain will try to find order in the chaos, often defaulting to things we feel most comfortable, with like faces.

In a 2011 experiment, people were shown images of a face in a noise background, and 90 percent were able to observe the face. However, when the face was taken away, and the noise background was displayed on its own, about 40 percent of people still claimed to see the face.

Some believe there is an evolutionary explanation for this as well. Carl Sagan, American cosmologist and author, says that recognizing faces can be a survival advantage. Being able to discern these images once helped us identify if a friend or enemy was approaching, says Sagan, now this feature often translates to finding images of people where there are none. This key characteristic of pareidolia has since been used as the basis for the Rorschach inkblot test; the belief is that the images you find within the inkblot could reveal certain key facts about your mental state.

Also, there is a reason why most of these “sightings” are religious in nature. A 2013 study conducted by researchers in Helsinki, Finland tested 47 people for pareidolia. Some of these people were religious or paranormal believers, while the others were more skeptical. Not surprisingly, these religious/paranormal individuals were consistently more likely to find faces in random images, which may explain why Jesus seems to be popping up in food items so often.

So, that one time you could have sworn you saw Elvis roaming the woods outside of Memphis …well that was probably a fluke. While our brain plays tricks on us, there is a reason why we will see things when there is nothing there, and it helps us process information.