I Can’t Unsee It (11 Photos)

October 26, 2026

By Vidar

Rocks that look like something else

Nobody shaped the faces, animals and odd objects below on purpose. Water, ice and time did the work, in national parks, on a Kansas prairie and on the coast of Iceland. The rest happens in your head. Seeing faces in objects is called face pareidolia, and the brain is built to see a face rather than miss one. Once you see the skull, you can’t unsee it.

More: I Had to Look Twice (9 Photos)

🐘 Elephant Rock — Heimaey, Westman Islands, Iceland 🇮🇸

The eye, the forehead and a trunk dipping into the North Atlantic, on the coast of Heimaey. The cliff is made of basalt, volcanic rock that forms when lava cools and hardens.

💡 Island Fact: On January 23, 1973, a volcano erupted on Heimaey without warning, and all of its roughly 5,000 residents were evacuated, most of them on fishing boats. For a view like this one, you have to go by boat.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Diego Delso, delso.photo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🌊 Wave Rock — Hyden, Western Australia, Australia 🇦🇺

A wave that never breaks, in the farmland near Hyden in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt. The granite wall is 15 meters high and 110 meters long, rounded by weathering and water that undercut its base and left a curved overhang.

💡 Record Fact: Guinness World Records lists Wave Rock as the largest flared slope, on the north face of Hyden Rock. The granite itself has been estimated at about 2.7 billion years old.

📷 Photo: SKY-PuLeun / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🛌 Sleeping Giant — Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦

Look at it from Thunder Bay at dusk: a whole peninsula lying on its back in Lake Superior, like a giant asleep. It sits inside Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, and its cliffs are among the highest in Ontario.

💡 Legend Fact: In one Ojibwe legend, the giant is Nanabijou, turned to stone when the secret location of a rich silver mine was given away to white men. That mine is now known as Silver Islet.

📷 Photo: Giorgio Galeotti / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🍄 Mushroom Rock State Park — Ellsworth County, Kansas, USA 🇺🇸

A dark cap on a pale stem, in a prairie field in Ellsworth County. Each cap is a hard lump called a concretion. The softer Dakota sandstone around it eroded away and left the hard part standing on a stalk.

💡 Park Fact: At 5 acres, this is the smallest state park in Kansas, and its largest rock measures 27 feet across. The rocks were meeting places and landmarks for Native Americans and early pioneers.

📷 Photo: Nationalparks at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)

🦆 Duck on a Rock — Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA 🇺🇸

A duck sitting on the rim, looking out over the Grand Canyon from an unsigned viewpoint on Desert View Drive, just east of Yaki Point.

💡 Bill Fact: The National Park Service says it plainly: erosion and time have worked their magic on the once aptly named formation, and its bill was worn off long ago.

📷 Photo: “Duck on a Rock, Grand Canyon 9-15” by Don Graham / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

💀 Skull Rock — Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA 🇺🇸

Two empty eye sockets, a nose and a big bald forehead, right beside Park Boulevard just east of Jumbo Rocks Campground. It wasn’t carved: over many millennia, water drops slowly eroded the two holes. It is a short walk from the parking area.

💡 Rock Fact: The boulder piles around it formed underground. The park’s rock is a granite called monzogranite, rounded over time by groundwater seeping along its cracks.

📷 Photo and cover crop: డా. గన్నవరపు నరసింహమూర్తి / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

🐫 Kissing Camels — Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA 🇺🇸

Two humps, two heads, lips touching, and a window of sky where their necks meet: these are the Kissing Camels, on top of a red ridge at Garden of the Gods.

📷 Photo: “Kissing Camels 5” by James St. John / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

🥾 The Giant’s Boot — Giant’s Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK 🇬🇧

A stone boot big enough for a giant, sitting on the basalt shore at the Giant’s Causeway. The legend has an owner for it: the giant Finn McCool reputedly lost it during his rivalry with the Scottish giant Benandonner.

💡 Bay Fact: The boot lies in a bay that locals call Port Noffer, the “bay of the giant”.

📷 Photo: SeanMack / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

🐘 Elephant Rock — Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, USA 🇺🇸

The second elephant here is red and has its trunk on the ground. It stands by the parking lot at the east end of Valley of Fire State Park, northeast of Las Vegas.

💡 Dune Fact: It is Aztec Sandstone, desert sand dunes that turned to stone about 180 to 190 million years ago.

📷 Photo: “Elephant Rock (Aztec Sandstone, Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic; Valley of Fire, Nevada, USA) 5” by James St. John / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

👴 Old Man of the Mountain — Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, USA 🇺🇸

A frowning face in profile, made of five granite ledges, 40 feet from forehead to chin, high on Cannon Cliff above Franconia Notch. This photo was taken on April 26, 2003. One week later, on May 3, 2003, the Old Man collapsed.

💡 Repair Fact: People tried hard to keep him. Repairs in 1957 used 20 tons of cement, steel rods, turnbuckles and a gutter. Since 2011, steel “profilers” at Profile Plaza line up to put the face back in the sky.

📷 Photo: Jeffrey Joseph / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

🐕 Dog Rock — Albany, Western Australia, Australia 🇦🇺

A jutting snout, ear-like ridge and painted white collar turn this roadside granite boulder into a dog’s head at a glance. It sits at a bend of Middleton Road in Albany.

💡 Name Fact: Its official name is Yakkan Toort/Dog Rock; the local Menang Noongar people know it as Yacka, “wild dog tamed.” The collar was painted on after the Royal Automobile Club called the rock a danger to traffic in 1938.

📷 Photo: Aliceinthealice / Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0)