I do the same thing.....see faces, writing, animals etc. in floor tile patterns and even terry-cloth towels. It happens more often when I'm manic because my imagination goes wild, but even when i'm not, I can still conjure up images if I look hard enough.

As for hallucinations, I've had both auditory and visual ones, but only a couple of times and only when I'm severely manic---never in depression. That was how I got bumped up to BP 1 from NOS. The scariest happened in October of last year. I don't normally hear classical music that's never been composed, nor do I lie in bed at night watching lava creep down the bedroom walls. I was afraid to call my pdoc because I was paranoid about going to the hospital; what he actually did was keep me OUT by increasing meds and tossing in a second AP. Luckily the gambit worked, and I came down within a couple of days.

So no, hallucinating is NOT normal, period, but it's certainly not unheard of in bipolar.