I take your point. People who have a conviction that Bigfoot and Yowies are real are far more likely to see one. They hear a tree knock or an animal moving about and claim that they can tell the size and if it is bipedal or other. The same can be said for those who dedicate their lives to searching for the Tassie Tiger.
If you mix with people who are switched on to a particular subject and you live and breathe this subject you tend to be vulnerable to a false perception, or an over likelihood of seeing more than you are actually seeing. We already have a perceptive state called pareidolia, where we see faces in ordinary things and it may be that we can subject our perception to see other things that we become heightened to, such as UFOs, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
What is perceived as the Virgin Mary is an image of a statue of an imaginary representation of the mother of Jesus, so yes, eye witnesses are not very reliable and today we can't even believe photographic evidence.
That's a good point regarding Muslims. Same a the alien abduction phenomenon. It tends to be happening mainly to white Americans
