I have encountered a phenomenon called “seeing the fish”. Here’s where it comes from:
In 1990, I was at a conference for high schoolers in NYC. On Saturday night, we went to the World Trade Center, and whatever that shopping area/ mall type thing is near the bottom of it. We were all walking around, looking at the stores. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I see a giant floating red fish. I thought I was crazy. I ignored it. After a while, I saw it again. Then I started to see other things like an eye and the letter “I”, a basketball player, and other objects. I could see them if I spinned my head really fast in one direction. I started asking other people at the conference (some of whom I had never met before) if they could see the fish. No one could – they thought I was nuts. “Who is this weird guy asking me if I can see the fish”, they must have thought. Finally, one girl saw it. Then the next. And so on – everyone could see it, except the director of the conference who was really annoyed that I was messing up his program.
A couple of years later I understood what had happened, when I visited the Exploratorium in San Francisco. They had the same exhibit – it was actually designed there. But in SF, you could see the objects quite clearly, if you looked at them in a mirror. But there was no mirror in NYC.
So now whenever I see (or know, etc) something, that noone else believes, I call it “seeing the fish”.
Anyone else have similar experiences?