3 times they saw bodies of dead people, but they were dolls

The term "apophenia" was coined in 1959 by German neurologist and psychiatrist Klaus Conrad for the phenomenon of perception of a pattern where there is none, or conclusion through inconclusive data. Although considered an example of a psychosis symptom, apophenia can happen in completely mentally healthy people, such as seeing human faces in random objects or shapes in the clouds.

The following three cases of apophenia are a little more serious: they were believed to have found bodies of dead people, but in the end they were puppets.

3. Some people go beyond creativity on Halloween

In 2017, in Greene County, Tennessee, USA, police received calls about a dead person in front of the garage of a nearby house. Arriving at the scene, the police saw the body of a person who had his head smashed through the garage gate, but as they approached it became clear that it was not a body at all.

Residents of the area were warned of the existence of this Halloween decoration and the neighbor who created the joke was congratulated on the idea. It is noteworthy that this was not the only time the confusion between dolls and bodies happened during Halloween in the United States.

2. A Foot and the Potential Crime Scene

In January of this year, a man who was trashing the house in Edmonton City in Alberta, Canada, saw a body inside the trash dump on the street and contacted police. The body was covered and only one foot was visible.

The initial hypothesis was that it was a homeless man who died of hypothermia throughout the night, but the police knocked on some neighborhood doors anyway to check if anyone had seen any strange movements around recently.

As the law does not allow it to interfere with the scene of a crime and there was a possibility that it could even be a crime, the forensic team had to keep their distance and did not realize so quickly that it was just a mannequin that burned and melted, was rolled up on a blanket and discarded.

1. When a policeman saw a body and didn't think twice

In February this year, someone was walking the streets of east London, England, when he saw a dead person inside an art gallery and called the police. Security camera footage shows a policeman breaking the glass door of the gallery to access the body, where he discovered that it was not really a deceased.

Kollier Din Bangura, a Sierra Leone artist, had created a fabric, paper and wire dummy, and installed it in his exhibit to express himself about adversity faced by refugees. Police left after leaving a note explaining what had happened to apologize. The artist was very upset and claimed that there were posters on the doors warning that this was an art exhibition.