I agree, Roger. I've never understood the compulsion to 'identify' an image as being someone specific and most especially someone so significant to so many people.

If those images appear in response to some mysterious event why could not that event have been the death of someone close to someone who somehow effected the image? In other words, if a human mind or psyche is capable of conjuring up an image of any sort, isn't it more likely that the image would have significance only to the person who possesses that mind?

If my husband had just died and I was grieving and my grief somehow imprinted an image onto a stone wall or a cowpie or a potato it certainly would have as much or more validity as an image that someone else comes along and identifies as Jesus or the Virgin Mary.