The Third Man Factor
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
I just finished reading a fascinating book authored by John Geiger called The Third Man Factor: The Secret to Survival in Extreme Environments. When faced with edge-of-death circumstances, numerous people throughout history have encountered what is commonly referred to as ‘the Third Man’. Confronted by life at its extremes, these people have had the sense that they were suddenly joined by a friendly, trusted presence – a guardian, if you will, who “led them out of the impossible”. The Third Man Factor details many of these remarkable experiences, highlights the common threads of extreme physical and mental distress, monotony and isolation, and explores the domains of physiology, sociology, religion, neurology and psychology to flesh out the meaning of the appearance of the Third Man.
In 1895, while attempting to complete the first solo circumnavigation of the world, Joshua Slocum’s sloop-rigged fishing boat Spray was caught in a violent storm. Slocum became convinced of another on board who steered the boat through the gale while Slocum huddled in the boat’s cabin, sick with food poisoning, but unworried. Slocum had experienced the Third Man phenomenon, someone to whom he referred as his ‘invisible helmsman’. An account of Slocum’s surreal encounter was published in the Boston Globe on October 14, 1895, under the headline “Spook on Spray”.
Other Third Man experiences include:
· Reinhold Messner, legendary Italian mountaineer and the first man to summit Everest solo and without supplementary oxygen. In 1970, after having summited Pakistan’s 8,126 metre Nanga Parbat with his younger brother Günther, the two became separated on the precarious descent, and Messner soon came to the horrific realization that Günther had been swept down in an avalanche. It was then that Messner encountered a lone phantom climber calling out to him, comforting him and eventually guiding him down the mountain to safety.
· Ernest Shackleton, British explorer, and head of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1916. After his ship Endurance became trapped in ice and was destroyed, Shackleton (pictured below) set off on a perilous 36-hour trek across the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia in an attempt to seek rescue. In his book, South: The Endurance Expedition, Shackleton wrote that “...it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.” He referred to this fourth man as a ‘Divine Companion’. It was Shackleton’s experience that actually inspired T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land.
· Charles Lindbergh, early aviator. In 1927, during the first solo, non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris, Lindbergh encountered ‘vague outlined forms, disembodied beings’ aboard the Spirit of St. Louis while desperately trying to stave off profound exhaustion. These forms not only reassured Lindbergh, but discussed navigational problems and advised him on his flight.
Hallucination? Divine intervention? Sensory illusion? Visit www.thirdmanfactor.com to join a forum for a more in-depth discussion of this phenomenon.
Jennifer Hartman, guest blogger
