National Park After Dark - Spirit or Science? The Third Man Factor

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

We’ve all experienced it – the feeling of someone watching us, or in the room with us when we are by all accounts seemingly alone. A shift in the air or a tingle down your spine usually sets off these spider senses. Traditionally, when we think of this feeling, we are afraid. But what happens when this unseen force is helpful? And provides companionship in times of desperation and need, in circumstances of life or death? Today we travel the globe and through time to visit stories of survivors from all walks of life to discuss “The Third Man” and ponder where exactly it comes from.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off.Hello Fresh: Use our link and code npad16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping.Earth Breeze: Use our code to get 40% off.ZocDoc: Use our link to download the Zocdoc app for free.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. There are certain experiences that unify us.

Things that happen at least once in our lifetimes. The flutter of butterflies during the first kiss. The ache of a heartbreak. The belly laughter that accompanies joy. Or the sorrow of loss. There is a reason we collectively laugh, cry, or gasp in a crowded movie theater. There are parts of the human experience we all understand, like humor, sadness, and fear.

When it comes to fear, it is often. Often translated in a film as a knife-wielding assailant pursuing an unarmed victim, but what is equally as frightening is scenes of someone alone, yet with the feeling that they are being watched. The hairs on the back of their necks raise. Their pupils widen and they whip their heads around, searching for the eyes they feel on them, yet no one is there. Our heartbeats simultaneously quicken with theirs, because we too have been there. It could be as simple as looking across a crowded room to meet the gaze of someone already looking at you, to the understanding someone just entered a room, even if you can't visually see them yet, or feeling a shift in the air and just knowing

you aren't alone. And that's precisely what it is, a knowing, difficult to understand and nearly impossible to explain. Being in the presence of a presence is hard to comprehend. While most of these encounters are portrayed as anything but comforting, there are certain circumstances where people experience this type of phenomenon and feel the opposite. On the brink of death, in final moments of desperation, appearing to us when we need companionship the most, providing reassurance that we are not alone, and we are better for it. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello everyone, welcome back to National Park After Dark. Big shout out to all the new listeners, because we've had a little bit of jump in people coming along on this ride with us. Yeah, we have. We have a lot of

have ever since Apple promoted us on Apple Podcasts, we've had a influx of new listeners. So we just wanted to say hello and welcome. And if this is your first time listening, we are a podcast that talks all about morbid happenings inside of national parks. Outdoor adjacent spaces, national forests, national recreationaries, anything that has like a national word in it, we'll make it work. Yeah. We talk about survival stories, animal attacks, true crime, just interesting topics that we find and can relate to National Parks, you'll find them here. So welcome. Thank you so much for being here. If you have not already, please, please subscribe and follow us wherever you're listening, whether it be Apple or Spotify or whatever platform that allows you to do that. It really helps the show and it helps

other people find the show as well. And if you are all caught up on our episodes and you want more content, you can subscribe to us on Apple subscriptions. We have ad-free episodes and we have bonus content on there or you can also subscribe to us on Patreon. Yep, we release an episode twice every other week. So every Monday and every other Thursday, we do bonus content for Apple subscribers and Patreon. We actually just got an email like right before we started this recording about someone writing in for a story suggestion and we have already done it. But it's just our bonus content. So if you're interested in a story, just check out those other platforms to see if we've already been there, done that, checked it off the list. Yeah. But anyway, let's get into the

episode. All righty. So I have a, now that we just explained how this all works, I'm doing something different. Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. So generally, obviously, we focus within one national park for a story, but we're kind of bouncing around to a couple of different parks for this particular episode. We are talking about a phenomenon versus an actual one singular story. Oh, I like it already. All right, so let's get right into it. We're going to start in a park on April 1st, 1983, 28-year-old James 70 from Hanover, New Hampshire, and his friend, 33-year-old Richard Whitmore from Bellingham, Washington,

ventured to Delta Form Mountain within Banff National Park to climb. They were tied together as they ascended an ice golly when Richard, who was in the lead, cut loose some ice and yelled down to James. When the ice chunk whizzed by James without making contact, a deep roar from above signaled pending danger. Without having time to react, an avalanche consumed the pair and swept them nearly 2,000 feet down the mountain. James blinked back into consciousness.

He guessed about an hour later, and he was severely injured. His back was broken in two places. His arm lay limp at his side as nerves attaching it to his broken scapula were severed. Both knees had severed ligaments. His ribs were cracked. His nose was broken, as well as most of the teeth in his mouth, and his face had multiple open wounds. It had taken several moments for him to regain his bearings, initially thinking he was somewhere else entirely,

on a previous climb in Nepal, but soon he recognized his surroundings. Staggering up, he searched for his friend, but soon found him crumpled and motionless. It was apparent that Richard was dead. He lay next to his friend as the minutes ticked by. Five, ten, then to twenty. The thought that falling asleep and drifting to death

would be the easiest, most painless way to go, crept in. He dozed off, his shivers subsiding to the warm sensation of final stages of hypothermia. But suddenly, he felt a peculiar sensation, a presence. He recalls it communicating to him mentally, and although he couldn't visualize it, he pinned it as a very physical entity. It told me what to do, he recalls. The only decision I had made at that point in time was to lie down next to Rick and fall asleep and accept death. That is the only decision I made. All decisions made subsequent to that were made by the presence.

I was merely taking instructions. I understood what it wanted me to do. It wanted me to live. He then says that it instructed him to get up, gave him practical advice, directions regarding which way to go to travel for help, and it stood behind his right shoulder his entire journey, giving him words and feelings of encouragement.

He felt the presence to be that of a woman who traveled with him through the arduous journey through the valley of the 10 peaks and into a camp where he eventually heard far, R-F voices and he called out for help. He wasn't even sure at the time if he was hallucinating the voices, but it was only then, when he called for help, did he feel the presence leave him.

A cross-country skier named Alan Derbyshire heard his cries for help. Alan recalls James being in critical condition, but despite that, he was surprisingly quite lucid. Banff National Park Rescue Specialist Tim Auger was quoted in a newspaper article about the incident saying that he was, quote, lucky to both survive the fall and to be discovered by cross-country skiers who happened to be in the area. And although James didn't immediately comment on his experience with this unseen presence, he knew there was more than luck involved. And James is not alone in his experience. And although

it was the first and only time it happened to him, it is far from unheard of. In fact, this experience is prevalent enough that it has a name and that name is the third man factor. And that would be the phenomenon and that is what we're talking about today. Very interesting. This is cool. Whenever I hear avalanche stories, it always scares me ever since I, ever since I did that episode, it's a Patreon and on Apple subscriptions, but I did an episode on the worst ski avalanche in history and I read a book for it and it went in depth of how you die from an avalanche and what happens. And then I took an avalanche course on avalanche safety after that. And now every time I hear, avalanche stories, they immediately give me anxiety. I'm like, oh, oh my God. And now we're adding a

phenomenon to it and how he survived it, which was really cool. And I'm guessing we're going to be doing a bunch of different types of survival stories. Yes. So that's just one of the many that we're going to be talking about. I actually don't think we're going to be talking about another avalanche story, but you're right, they're gnarly. They're really crazy. There's a video going around right now, viral video. I think it's in Colorado, actually, of someone stumbling across. like a snowboarder that got covered in an avalanche and he was digging him out. I saw that one too. Yeah, it's so scary. Yeah, that guy was very lucky.

Yeah, very, very lucky. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L. Every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns. Second chances. Chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. While this phenomenon has been experienced by people around the globe for

centuries, it is most commonly linked to Ernest Shackleton and his ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic. Does Shackleton sound familiar to you? Yes. As soon as you said their name, I was like, okay, bells are ringing. Yeah, so we were just in Patagonia, well, maybe about a month or so ago, now. And our welcome dinner was at a restaurant called the Shackleton, named after this explorer. Very cool. It was really cool. Days before the eruption of World War I, in August of 1914, Shackleton and his team set sails to the frozen continent in hopes to make a victory for Britain by being amongst the first to cross Antarctica on foot. And it was actually his third attempt at this goal. After 10 months being carried in the ice, the crew abandoned ship. And their ship is

called The Endurance, which has also made news within the last couple years because it has been found. Oh, wow. Very cool. I want to go to Antarctica. Was it found in Antarctica? Yeah. Yeah. It got trapped within the ice flows and was drifting for like nearly a year.

And that was just the beginning of their problems. Wow. All 28 men were ordered off the ship as it was trapped within the ice and eventually consumed by it and pulled under. A thousand miles from the nearest human settlement and. with dwindling supplies after a five-month trek across the ice, it was clear that the men were in rough shape, physically and mentally. Fifteen months from when the ship was first trapped in the ice, the men boarded small boats that they had been dragging along the ice

and launched them into the open sea for several days until they reached the rocky cliffs of remote desolate Elephant Island. Elation surrounding reaching the island was pretty short-lived, as Shackleton knew the chances of rescue there were close to zero, because Elephant Island is still extremely far from any sort, yeah, from any sort of, at the time, at least, from any sort of big population of people. It's like we found land, but there's no one here. Yeah, still we're screwed. Shortly after their arrival onto Elephant Island, Shackleton made the decision to leave most of the men behind and bring with him a small team in an attempt to reach aid on the island of South Georgia, which was still another six.

180 miles away by boat. Wow, that's so far. How far is that in kilometers? A lot. Still a lot. And this is after over a year of survival, just on top of that. Yeah, and you're like, we're almost there. Just 680 more miles to go.

For 17 days, this small team of six men were battered by the sea and inclement weather in a small whaling boat. There already low supplies dwindled even more. freshwater was limited, and ice was forming on the boat so frequently that they had to take turns chopping it off in order to keep the boat from capsizing or sinking. When they finally approached the island, 680 miles down the road. They made it. A hurricane made landing the boat safely a near impossible task, and it took them nine hours just to gain access to land.

And even then, their ordeal was not over. Help in the form of a small whaling station was located on the other side of the island. So Shackleton again set off. This time he left most of the men at the boat and he took two with him. So it was him and two other men. With nearing zero supplies at this point and little equipment for the journey that they soon found out required tactical climbs and traversing the then uncharted interior of South Georgia Island, they set off. Perfect.

Finally, on May 20th, 9. The men approached Stormness Bay and its staffed whaling station. So thank God people were there. Finally, people. They were saved and rescuers were dispatched to collect the rest of the Endurances crew. And miraculously, they were all saved, not a single man perished out of their entire crew. Shackleton eventually wrote the entire epic struggle of the expedition in a narrative titled South. He employed the help of a man named Edmund Saunders as his literary assistant.

who Shackleton dictated his story to, and Edmund wrote it down. I kind of envision, have you seen the new Moby Dick movie? I say new, but it's probably like a decade old now. It has one of the Hemsworth brothers. No, I haven't seen it. Surprise, surprise. I haven't seen a movie. But, well, great.

Well, anyways, like he's, the guys, like, recalling this, like, epic saga that he lived. And he's saying it to, like, a scribe, essentially, who's writing it down for him. Oh, okay. Yeah. Reciting his story was a difficult process emotionally, bringing up a wide variety of different emotions, which were very apparently difficult for Shackleton to speak about between the suffering of him and his men, all the treacherous conditions, the isolation. There was a lot of near-death conditions, you know, that went into this.

Very emotional journey, especially for how long they were gone for. Mm-hmm. And how close they all were to losing their lives. Yeah. Yeah. But there was one subject in particular. particular that he seemed really hesitant to speak about, that of a fourth man. He revealed that he had a feeling that during the last part of their journey, so when they were going over the island of South Georgia,

which he described as the most arduous, something out of the ordinary had been with them. He said, quote, when I look back at those days, I have no doubt that the providence guided us, not only across the snowfield, but across the storm white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. What's most interesting is that he had never mentioned this to anyone else in the party, yet three weeks after first speaking of it during that transcription of his story, without prompt, one of the other men that navigated that last stretch of the journey with him approached Shackleton, saying, quote, boss, I had a curious

feeling that on the march there was another person with us and then the last man on their team came to the other two with a very similar statement so all three separately had the same feeling that there was another presence with them over the next few years and even to today people have questioned the legitimacy of this presence many stating it was nothing more than a shared hallucination a product of the men's physical and mental limitations being pushed to the very brink However, all three men were reluctant to elaborate on it further, keeping the experience very close to their chests for the rest of their lives. Did they talk about seeing someone or it was just a feeling that was this presence guiding them? Did they all feel that way?

They all felt that way and there was no visual aspect to this experience. But we'll get into there's some variation there depending on the story. Okay. But this story very obviously states that there were three men who referred to the presence as the fourth man. But the whole thing is called the third man factor. So what is the disconnect here? So the reason we know this phenomenon today as the third man is thanks to one of the 20th century's most famous poems. And it's called The Wasteland.

It's by the famous poet T.S. Eliot. Written in 1922 and inspired by Shackleton's account, Elliot took some poetic license to alter the number. In part, the poem reads, who is the third that walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together. But when I look ahead up the White Road, there's always another one walking beside you. So he just altered the number a little bit, and it stuck. In 1916, Henry Stoker, cousin of Bram Stoker, who is the author of Dracula, was serving in the Royal Navy during World War I when he and two other service members were captured in Turkey. They were all held in hell-like conditions as prisoners of war until they made a daring escape.

The Turkish guards didn't even bother to send out men to capture them as their odds of survival were just so bleak. It's kind of like Alcatraz. Like when you read about Alcatraz and they're like, yeah, there's no way you're going to survive. It's like getting off of this. It's like, you got out, I guess, but you're not going to make it very far. Mm-hmm. The men had 300 miles of rugged terrain to cross without a map, without a compass, or adequate clothing before they could reach the coast and possible freedom. Progress was extremely slow but steady, and on the 11th night of their escape, Stoker first became aware of a presence, saying later of his experience,

In the midst of the night, I felt not suddenly or surprisingly, that we were not three men struggling along in line, but four. There was a fourth man following at the end of our line in the correct position for a fourth man to be. When we stopped for a few minutes to rest, he did not join us, but remained in the darkness. out of sight, yet as soon as we rose and resumed our march, he dropped into his place forthwith. He never spoke, nor did he go ahead to lead us. His attitude seemed just that of a true and loyal friend who says, I cannot help. But when danger is at hand, remember always that I'm here to stand or fall with you. All three of us had been sensible and all had seen him. We all three agreed that the moment he left us was when we felt we had put the danger behind us. I cannot exaggerate how real

his presence was. It was a strange experience. We felt that he brought us great luck. So they actually saw someone. Yes. But always kind of just like in the periphery, never coming right up to them. Okay. What did he look like? They didn't describe in detail. Okay. So it's just a shadowy figure of a person. Shadowy. So no details. Interesting. And speaking of luck, even John Muir suggested he had some sort of help by a presence when he was stranded alone and close to death in the Sierra Nevada's while attempting to summit Mount Ritter. These stories are just a couple of the many different examples of circumstances in which a presence was felt and explained as some sort of guardian angel by those who encountered this phantom person incidentally in the most extreme of circumstances. However, it is important to note that people from cultures around the globe have been seeking this type of experience intentionally for thousands of years.

People from Egypt, Tibet, North America, Africa, and Asia have all sought isolation to produce these types of experiences. Spirit or vision quests have been utilized by North American natives and Inuit peoples for thousands of years as a sort of right of passage. These quests would often be comprised of solo ventures out into the wilderness, accompanied by hardship and deprivation of food and water. Sometimes there's some drugs involved, ayahuasca. That's my ayahuasca is there. but it's all in hopes to evoke a spirit or some sort of supernatural being. For those who have a religious background or some sense of faith or belief system, the guardian angel explanation is one of the most obvious and leaned heavily upon.

But for others who have experienced the third man, they don't ascribe any sort of spiritual encounter to them at all, and they believe that the presence comes from within. And it's really interesting to note that the occurrence of encounters with this third man, they're all kind of increasing. An author John Geiger attributes this to the simple fact that more and more people are engaged in journeys that have to do with extreme and unusual environments. So basically more and more people are putting themselves in positions where the conditions

are right for this to occur. There's so many people that are expeditioners and explorers and climbing and doing all these crazy adventures and intense places. Yeah. All for the gram. I'm just kidding. Hopefully not. I'm just kidding.

But John Geiger will come up again later, and this is the book that I relied pretty much entirely for this episode. His book, it's called The Third Man Factor Surviving the Impossible. It's amazing. It's so good. I read it cover to cover in like two days. It's if you're interested at all in even just like the sampling of stories I'm touching upon today, you have to pick it up. It's just, it's amazing. And these extreme and unusual environments that we're talking about, they're kind of classified as EUEs.

And in order to be considered one of them, several factors are considered. But there are three pretty broad categories that they typically fall into. So environments such as deserts, the Arctic or mountains where special equipment is usually needed for survival, but they do serve as natural habitat for some people. You know, like you and I couldn't go to the Arctic and survive easily, but Inuits have been doing it for millennia. You know, like it's not unreasonable that people could live and thrive there. And also environments in which survival is completely dependent on special equipment and training, like within space or the deepest depths of the ocean.

And finally, environments that have been touched or altered by disaster, such as natural disasters or caused in the wake of a terrorist attack, like the Twin Towers Falling, which this whole book opens with, by the way. With a third man aspect. A third man aspect of the last. man to make it out of one of the towers before it collapsed. Wow. He said he was, his name is Ron.

He said he was guided by a presence out of the building. That must be a really interesting story. Mm-hmm. That's tough. One common denominator these environments have is monotony and boredom. So whether it be the endless ocean, either below or on the surface, the white of the Arctic tundra or seemingly endless dunes in the desert. Charles Lindberg experienced this monotonous boredom of

looking at the same scenery hour after hour at the age of 25 during his first solo non-stop flight from New York to Paris. And on the 19th hour of this flight, he felt he suddenly was not alone. He says, the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences, vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane. I feel no surprise that they're coming. There is no suddenness to their appearance. Without turning my head, I see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision. I've never believed in apparitions, but how can I explain the forms I carried with me

through so many hours of this day? Transparent forms and human outline. Voices that spoke with authority and clearness that told me, but what did they tell me? I can't remember a single word they said. And a lot of people attribute, you know, first thing, they're like, it's sleep deprivation. You're hallucinating, you're tired,

you've been up for 19 hours. Well, was he in a life or death situation, or he's just bored? No, he's bored. He's just looking at the same thing over and over. No change. He's by himself. There's no outside stimulus.

Some people are like, well, he's tired. Things happen when you're tired. Your brain does some weird things. And this seems like maybe the most obvious explanation for this experience. But some psychologists believe it to be an actual coping mechanism conjured up by the brain as a way to cope with this monotonous environment. As a changing sensory environment seems pretty essential for humans. Like we need outside stimulus, we need things happening.

That's why solitary confinement is such a punishment because you're by yourself in a cell. No outside stimulus. Yeah. It's torture. Other professionals believe that the presence occurs when this monotony and isolation is compounded by another stressor on top of it, such as extreme cold, starvation, dehydration, and this is called the multiple trigger theory. Still others theorize that it is a result of actual physiological changes to the brain,

a sort of decay of brain function. Dr. Griffith Pugh says all of these ghostly sightings are no more than hallucinations caused by extreme cold, exhaustion, and lack of oxygen. Exhausted men pitting their strength against a mountain may well see anything. A meeting with a dead friend or relative is typical. And Dr. Charles Houston agrees, attributing to the manifestations to altitude sickness or cerebral edema, or a swelling of the brain,

that can happen as the body increases blood circulation in, an attempt to get more oxygen. This reasoning, of course, can be considered for instances in mountaineering, but what about the wide array of environments when altitude and hypoxia is not a factor at all? Like Charles Lindbergh. He wasn't hypothermic. He wasn't scaling Mount Everest.

He was just in a fuselage. Yeah, nothing was happening. I don't know, because I definitely feel like I lean more towards scientific sides for a lot of things. Mm-hmm. And him to just have this random hallucination or vision or whatever it is where he's seeing a lot of ghosts on the plane is hard. I mean, when you were talking about it, the first thing I thought I was like, did he take drugs before he got on the plane? That's a good point.

But I don't think so. Yeah, like, what's going on with him was my first thought. It's interesting. And where was he? He was flying from where to where? He was doing the first solo flight from New York to Paris. So this is back in the day. And it took 19 hours?

That was on the 19th hour. Oh, okay. I mean, I've flown from Paris to Boston and I didn't hallucinate. Well, that's good. And I'm glad. I was bored. I guess I had a television. Maybe that's why they installed TVs on airplanes to keep their passengers from seeing all the ghosts on there.

Yeah. Maybe. Right. Right. Moving on. climbers and mountaineers, such as Reinhold Messner and Greg Child, who have both had memorable experiences with the third man, dismiss this explanation altogether. Arguing that, in the words of child, those of us who have experienced the other presence make a distinction between it and a

hallucination, which often disorient and misguide. The presence, on the other hand, seems much more real, assisting by either guiding or allaying fears with companionship. So it's like they're describing it as an intelligence versus just a hallucination that you're seeing things and you're confused and you're tripping out all over the place. This is very direct, real. It gives practical advice reassuring. It's not scary. It's not frightening.

It's a different experience, essentially. Yeah. Well, in these life or death situations to have that, it almost feels like we're talking about a presence, but it also feels like an intuition, like a survival portion. of your brain that's popping out giving you this very real logical advice. It like it feels like it takes over the terrified side. And we'll get into that a little bit too. Okay, cool. Because I just picture it when you're in fight or flight or you have something very stressful going on. It's really easy to make mistakes and it's easy to make mistakes that maybe in certain circumstances would

end your life. And this sounds like your internal being choosing survival. And it's like another way that your body forms your survival mechanisms. And we'll get into, I think I put it at the very end, but we do touch upon that. I'm intrigued. Yes. Very interesting subject. Very different from our normal content also. I know. I know. I'm so excited. So of course, like you, there are those among us who are very of scientific mind. You know, like they need to understand this from a scientific perspective, just having blind faith that it is an otherworldly experience is just not enough for them. And one of those people who is very scientific minded, his name is Jerry Leninger, and he

explained that during his time on the space station, Mur, he encountered what he explains as encounters with his father, who had died seven years earlier. His time on this station orbited Earth an astounding 2,000 times over 132 days. And during that time, Jerry and his crew experienced their fair share of trouble. From fires on the station, near death experiences, and extreme isolation, he was mentally and physically pushed the limits. He was still maintaining, like, a routine. He would, like, go on the treadmill every day. He would have the same type of breakfast and just try and maintain some sort of normalty.

over and over live the same day every day for yeah i don't get why people want to go into space it's just not for me it's not for me yeah i don't get the draw of it it's super interesting and maybe if we knew more about space and had more access to go farther to places to explore i'd be more interested but like if there was an avatar world we could go visit for the day i would be interested but to zoom around in space i'm i'm all set yeah i just finished the second avatar actually Really? Me too. Really? Did you like it? Yeah. I just think that there's, it's hard to make a sequel. I didn't like it. I'm just going to say that. Yeah. There were a lot of things about it that the graphics are just so fun to watch and they always are and the ideas behind it are really interesting to watch. But the storyline of it was hard for me to get into and some of the decisions that they made for the, I won't give it away or anything, but some of the decisions that they made for the characters. I wasn't really a big fan of. I think it could have, I think the storyline could have been done a lot better,

but of course the graphics were beautiful and fun to watch. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend. I mean, whatever. I hated it. Do not watch. I was actually upset for like three and a half hour straight. Anyways, okay, so back to Jerry. He's on the space station swirling around for 132 days.

Swirling around. And while he says that he never visually saw a baby, being he didn't need to. He knew that this presence was that of his father and he had multiple brief mental conversations with him. He says it offered an opportunity to escape and was a profoundly moving experience each time leaving his mental state better than it had been before the encounter. He goes on to add, quote, it wasn't a religious experience and I as a physician understood it as a psychological defense mechanism, but I didn't want to disbelieve it and I didn't rationalize it. So here's someone who's super scientific minded, he knows that this is likely something his brain is conjuring up.

He's like, has a very outside rational perspective of it. But when he experienced it for himself, it was a different story and he just kind of let the experience be what it was and accepted it and welcomed it for how it positively helped him during that experience. And while the third man factor is prevalent in extreme survival scenarios, it also appears in a few other areas that I wanted to touch on briefly. And first is children. So just picture it now. You have a child. They're staring into a corner, smiling, giggling, waving, or speaking to an unseen entity. It's the stuff of nightmares and horror films. It's creepy, but it's not uncommon. In older studies, 30% of children ages 3 to 6 had an imaginary friend that lasted for at least six months, while no,

Newer studies as of 2004, quote unquote, new, reveal that by age seven, 65% of children have had at least one imaginary friend. And psychologists have come to this consensus that the presence of an imaginary friend sometimes develops in conjunction during times of distress, like the death of a parent or a sibling, a big move, lack of friends, and it's not a cause for concern. It's actually viewed as a positive sign of a child developing social intelligence and creativity. But what remains a mystery and what a lot of people cannot come to a consensus of is what prompts this creation, because it's not always in correlation with one of those big events. I had an imaginary friend and I can tell you my secrets. Okay. Did you make it up? I remember seeing kids in TV shows and on movies had imaginary friends,

but they were real in movies. It was an actual person. And I was so jealous that I made one up in my head and I tried to make them real for like weeks. This is when I was probably six or seven. And I can remember being on my swing set. I named her Emily. I don't know why.

But I can remember being on the swing set and trying to pretend there was someone there. And then they're never. I even told people about her. I'm like, yeah, my imaginary friend Emily, who did not exist. And I never saw anyone. and I tried to pretend for like probably like three weeks and when she never became real I was just like never mind I'm not one of the gifted ones who gets a friend that no one sees so you were mirroring something that you saw you were trying to copy something that you saw which is I don't think

you would have been counted in that study but I don't think so either no you were a phone I would have tried I would have I would have faked it the whole time be like she's real I swear no she's right there She's right there. I see her. Emily. She'll go over here. So a lot of people just kind of write it off as active imaginations and leave it at that. And in a lot of cases, it probably is. But what gets tricky is when the other percentage of children start describing maybe some relatives that passed away before they were born, that they had never met, or when they start imitating exact phrases or pitches or accents in their invisible companion's voices. Like very specific things that are way too difficult to kind of write off.

Like tell me right now, what was Emily? Was she American? Did she have an accent? She was American. Okay. I just like picture like an American girl doll. Like in your mood. She probably was.

I had Samantha. She probably looked like Samantha. So that's the children. And next is what is called the widow effect. The third man appearing as a response to the stress felt by those whose lives have been left with a voice. In several studies conducted in Wales, Arizona, and in Britain of widows and widowers, more than half of each test group felt the presence of their deceased partners.

At the weakest, a feeling that one is somehow being watched, and at its strongest, it's a full-blown sensory experience. So responses to these hallucinations, quote-unquote, can be anything from people acknowledging a presence, speaking out loud to a loved one, cooking for their deceased partner, or going about daily activities as if there were two people living in the home, and not one. Nancy Reagan commented on this in a Vanity Fair interview in 2009, saying of her late

husband, Ronald, quote, it sounds strange, but I see Ronnie. At nighttime, if I wake up, I think Ronnie's there and I start to talk to him. The fact is, I do think he's there and I see him. And it's not just those who have lost partners that feel this way. A much larger study throughout the UK conducted in 1995 revealed that 35% of people of all ages had experienced or gained some sense of the presence of the dead, whether it be a parent, a grandparent, other type of family member, a friend, a spouse, etc. And while the leading scientific explanation for this is that these experiences are purely illusionary, quote, symptoms of broken hearts and minds and chaos, some simply say the third man appears to people as psychological help produced from within to stem loneliness.

pretty much a way that the body provides companionship in times of our deepest need. So whether or not someone is truly sensing this presence or it's truly there or they're just going about their day as if that person was still there as kind of a coping mechanism type of thing. Okay. So then that relates to it relates back to the survival stories. If you're going with that theory, that it's your mind making up a companion. So for that, it would relate back to the survival stories because they're feeling a presence of someone who's helping them in their time of need. Yes. Here where we're talking about someone losing someone they love and feeling their presence later kind of intertwines.

Right. And it intertwines because, you know, they're feeling this presence in their time of need that just happens to be extreme loneliness and grief and debilitating heartbreak versus I'm going to die physically. You're feeling like I'm going to die emotionally. I don't know. I feel some kind of way about this because for the presence for the for the survival versus presence of now I feel like we're talking more into the paranormal where you're feeling the presence of loved ones and spirits and things where we're going into two different maybe two different realms or maybe the you're the voice for the survival people are someone that they love who knows but well it's different each and everyone is different. So Jerry that felt the presence of his father when he was in space. And then there's a couple of other stories in this book that the people feel their deceased husbands, their deceased brothers. It's like people they know. And sometimes it's just purely a presence. A presence. They can't identify it as someone that they've lost.

It's totally dependent on the person experiencing it. Very interesting. I feel like this branch is off in a lot of different ways because there's so many questions. So many. I mean, I'd be really curious if anyone listening. has ever had an experience like this, whether in a survival circumstance or a visual circumstance like you talked about on the plane or with loved ones, whatever it is, I'd be very interested to hear other people's take on the third man aspect. You say that, but you, there's one particular

instance I'm thinking of that's very close to my heart that you experienced. Yeah, and that's also why I am curious about it because of my own personal experience. When we say like it's chalked up to your brain. I'm like immediately my scientific thing goes out the window for my own experience. I'm like, no, there's no way. See? It's hard. It's really hard. Yeah. I know your mind can play tricks on you and your mind is very complex and things, but I just think that some things can't be full. And I say I lean more towards scientific because I do lean more towards scientific, but that doesn't I mean, I don't believe that everything has to be explained by science to be true, if that makes sense.

I completely understand. And that's why I really loved and I picked this phenomenon to do because it is such a mixture of there are clear indications of physiological deterioration that is going on that can trigger like end of life hallucinations and your body is literally shutting down. You're either starving. You're dehydrated. You have a lack of oxygen. or whatever. It's like clearly we have proof that your body does things like this when it shuts down.

Yeah. However. I'm also sorry. I just thought of, sorry, I'm just going so far into the subject. I just think it's so interesting. And I actually know someone who experienced a third man effect with me. Not with me. I was there, but I was not there. I have to explain it. So when I was, now that I'm thinking about like this whole subject, sorry, it just came to my. mind this but when I was a kid so I've had two kidney transplants my first one was when was when I was 11 years old I know this story okay yeah so the first one was when I was 11 years old and my transplant ended up going well and I had a really my mom gave me my first kidney and the transplant ended up going really well my mom was a great match but when I first had the transplant

I was a kid and it was really hard on my body and there was a point in time where I went really downhill and I was in the ICU and there were moments of of talking about like if I was going to make it and pull through and the difficulties that I was going through. And my uncle was coming and he was staying in the hospital with me a lot because my mom was in the hospital because she was recovering. And I was a child and my dad was working and jumping from work to the hospital. So when my dad wasn't there, my uncle was there. And my vital signs were really bad. I was in the ICU. Things were not looking great. And my uncle was in there just really upset about what was going on and hanging out with me. And we had been in the hospital for so long

that he knew everyone there. He knew everyone who came in to clean. He knew all the nurses. He knew all the doctors. He knew the kitchen staff. He knew literally everyone because we were there for so long. And one night when things were going bad and he was feeling really discouraged and sad, a woman came in and she was cleaning and he had never seen her before and he noticed that he had never seen her before. And she asked him, she came up to him, and this is all secondhand information. I was not conscious for this. I was knocked out with drugs because I wasn't doing well. And she said to him, are you her dad? And he said no. And she's like, okay. She's like, well, you are her dad right now. And I just want to let you know that everything's going to be okay. And he was just like, okay. And she walked out of the

room and he said as soon as she walked out of the room like the air just lifted it didn't feel so heavy and dark and almost immediately like my vital science started slowly improving and i started slowly getting better right after she left and no one knew who she was he never saw her again i'm just saying explain that with your scientific line never saw her again and never knew who she was and as soon as she left it was just like you turned a corner yeah i turned into corner and things got better. And I lived with that kidney for 16 years. So yeah. It's just wild. I mean, the experiences that people have and you having it more personal and recent experience, you know, within the last year that's kind of more aligned to like the sensing of something versus

like speaking with somebody and you encountered it. And, you know, it's just, it's hard because your rational, it's funny. So, oh, God, this episode's going to be with so long. Sorry. We're going off on a lot of directions for this one. So I've been taking, everyone calls me a medium junkie because I've been to many. Because I am. Actually, Ian called me a medium junkie through a medium. When I was my eighth medium I've seen because again, here I am with my scientific mind. I'm like, I want to believe. But my rational brain, I'm not going to keep going to the same person because they know everything. So I kept going to different people. I got to. I got to. tested out. I got to, you know, rule out anything. And I go to this lady and she starts laughing like the first minute. She's just like, and she describes Ian to a T. And she's like, he's laughing. He's calling you a medium junkie. And I'm like, well, you're my eighth medium in less than a year. So yeah. You could refer to me as that. Yes, I will go by that. But essentially, after all that, and I've been taking intuition classes and things like that.

My teacher, if you will, will say, like, it's hard to control your monkey mind and separate your monkey mind from your spiritual body and your inner knowing because everyone has this monkey mind, the scientific. You want to understand. You want to explain things like intuition, empathy, like all that. It's faith-based. Like, you just have to believe. And there is no scientific explanation for that as of now, you know?

So, and especially for us. You went to school for psychology. I went to school for biology. Very science-based modes of learning and like understanding the world and making sense of things. Where you're looking for evidence. Yeah. You're measuring data. You're, yeah, it's just it's very scientific based.

Yeah. So it's like it is. It's a battle of the monkey mind versus just trusting something else entirely. So back to this whole, like let's loop it around. Real it on back. back to the story. That's why it's so intriguing in this book is amazing because it straddles the line. There's one foot on each side.

And John Geiger does a great job. I mean, he reports the stories as they were reported. And then he goes into different explanations and theories. And it's not one-sided. It gives you all the information. And it's kind of up to you to make up your own mind about what you think. And of course, some people simply say, that the third man appears to people just as psychological help produced from within to, you know,

stem this loneliness that I was talking about before. But it's the way in which the brain does that that is also argued. So it's like, is it the brain? Is it not the brain? If it is the brain, how does it do it? And then there's people who have more opinions on like the mechanisms in which the brain does that. And there's just so many theories. The book goes super in depth with all of them. So definitely pick up the book if you want to learn more about it. that because there are several chapters dedicated to the mechanisms and the different neurosciences behind all of that. So all the science people. So yeah, please go into that. I think I'm going to lose a lot of people if I go into the neuroscience aspect, but it's there and he does discuss it at

length. Felt presences are also common during sleep paralysis events. In some neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease, various mental disorders such as schizophrenia, and in some cases of brain damage. The causes once again vary from emotional stresses, neurotransmitter factors, chemical and hormonal imbalances, and damage to certain areas of the brain that kind of elicit this feeling of a presence. But what's important to point out, though, about all of these, is there is a big difference between these circumstances and the third man experience in the events that I spoke of before. Because each case of encountering the third man in those stories that I've been talking about and that we're kind of focusing the episode on today, never involves feeling

fear or discomfort any sort of negative emotion. However, in the cases of sleep paralysis, people who suffered brain damage, either different neurological or mental disorders, it is not uncommon for there to be feelings of intense fear, confusion, dread, stress elicited by this other presence. So it's not comforting. It's not a friend. In a lot of cases. It's a major difference. There's a major difference. So, of course, you know, people that experience schizophrenia aren't always with presences, quote, unquote, that are scary. Sometimes they're friends. So obviously there is differences.

But my point is when you have sleep paralysis, you're not having fun. Sleep paralysis is scary as hell. You're frightened. And it's a negative experience of feeling that you're not alone. But with the third man, it's never a experience that elicits fear. or discomfort of any kind. So that's a big difference. That is.

Going back to another little story example from another national park, from Kilimanjaro National Park. There's another example of someone who felt very comforted through a traumatic event by an unseen force. Rob Taylor attempted to climb the 19,340 foot peak of Kilimanjaro in 1978 with a friend. Taylor fell when the ice that he was climbing gave way and he shattered his leg. The arch of his left foot was twisted so bad it touched his inner calf. Ew.

Yeah. Sickening. The bones of his shin were protruding and his boot was filling fast with blood. At 18,000 feet and nearly 80 miles from the nearest hospital, his climbing partner did all he could to help him descend. But after hours of excruciatingly slow and painful progress, the decision for his partner to leave for help was made. So he left Rob behind, went to try and get help. And after two days with no aid arriving, Rob first sensed his companion. And he actually saw him.

He saw him crouching near him about 50 yards away. And at first he thought he was a member of the rescue party. And he was like, oh my God, over here. I'm over here. He was shouting at him trying to get his attention. And he was like shouting questions at him. And he was receiving no response. And his mind was trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

Because he knew what he was seeing, but it didn't make sense that this person wasn't coming over to help him. Over time, this companion moved closer and closer to him. He said, quote, hour upon hour, this companion watcher, as I call him, peers out at me through the curtain of snow. Someone, some being, guides me on my journey. Despite the snow, there was none on this figure.

It took up absolutely solid space like a stone or anything else. It was very benevolent and very positive. It was peaceful and reassuring. So this presence stayed with Taylor for days, until it suddenly disappeared. Taylor was really distraught and upset by his sudden absence until minutes later when he heard voices. His climbing partner had finally been successful at reaching help

and Taylor was rescued. And he sums up his time with the third man saying, quote, I don't often talk about my companion watcher these days. He is a creature out of place here. Misunderstood. When I first spoke of him to people, they acted quite predictably.

What an imagination you have. Your fever had you hallucinated. and at first I persisted in my stand. He was real. There in the flesh, or at least in some concrete form that I could see. Later, I left him out altogether. It was easier than trying to define or defend him to people who could not understand. Now I know this and say this to you. He was there and as real as you or I. I do not know to this day his purpose, but I sensed that it was good. That same good was sensed by Angus McKinnon, who began pondering consciousness after he encountered his own presence in the form of his wife, giving him direction on a solo voyage from Nova Scotia

to Scotland in 1995. And he kind of just presents this thought-provoker as, quote, what is our presence? Why should skepticism narrow down our cognition to exclude fields of knowledge that seeing is believing as a foolproof principle of induceive inquiry is glaring obvious to an open mind? So he's basically being like, if you have an open mind, why can't you not understand just because we don't understand it yet doesn't mean it's not real and we should think about that and open minds are open to many theories as we discuss there are several too many to get into completely here but there is one more that I wanted to highlight and this is where when I said earlier we're going to talk about like that kind of like your inner self-acting as kind of like self-preservation

your survival mode yeah so swift's neurologist Peter Brugger conducted a study on the third man phenomenon in the 1990s, and the results were really intriguing. He and his colleagues studied many cases of unilaterally felt presences, so the third man, and proposed that an alternative explanation for the invisible being is similar to that of the phantom limb sensation described by amputees, only a full body version of it. After a person loses a limb, the brain creates a sensation that that missing limb is still present, hence the nickname ghost or phantom limb. Over 90% of amputees report this,

still feeling its position relative to their body. They can even feel different sensations, including pain. Brueger made the argument that the third man is essentially the same thing, a phantom double, quote, an extension of one's inner awareness into external spaces. The body externalizing its own awareness and recognizing it as a false sense of another. So in this way, people aren't actually caring

for a third man but for themselves. So they're not seeing someone else. They're not seeing a different presence. There is no other outside presence. It's a projection of themselves that helps them then survive. So they're in turn taking care of this person, quote unquote person or, you know, it's their companion. It's helping them, but it's really them helping themselves. I think that's a very valid theory because there's so many ways that your mind tries to make you survive. And we have to Two more examples of how that's done. Okay, let's hear him. So the first is exemplified by Steve Swenson.

He was in Sargamantha National Park. Sagamartha. It's Mount Everest. Mount Everest, yeah. Sagamatha. He was there. In 1994, climbing Everest, when he found himself with no choice but to spend two nights at over 26,000 feet in elevation, he made the decision to skip sleep as he was worried

about the elevation and the altitude that combined with a slower. respiratory rate that is attained while sleeping, that he would have had a problem on his hands. He was afraid that he was going to go into respiratory distress, so he attempted to pull an all-nighter. Try as he might, he kept shutting his eyes and dozing off, unable to stay awake and alert. But as soon as he would shut his eyes and start to doze off, he was awoken by a person. He would look over his shoulder to see a kind, older-looking Asian woman. He was never startled or frightened and stated he knew she was there to help. She was gentle and nurturing, saying things like,

No, you need to stay awake. And have a cup of tea. You need to stay awake. He said later of his encounter with her, quote, everything. Every piece of advice I was getting from her was exactly what I needed to do. And then another example comes from Frank Smith, also in the same national park attempting to summit Everest in the 1990s. After inclement weather forced him and his climbing partner named Shepton

to camp two nights above the death zone, he and his partner pushed on to above 27,000 feet. Shortly after, Frank found himself alone because Chifton was unable to continue. Frank pushed on until he was roughly 980 feet below the summit. He was exhausted and was using every last bit of physical strength and mental grit to get him to the finish. He stopped at a ledge for a bite to eat and describes the following.

Quote, when I reached the ledge, I thought I ought to eat something in order to keep up my strength. All I had brought with me was a slav. of Kendall Mint Cake. This I took out of my pocket and carefully dividing it into two halves, turned round with one half in my hand, and offered it to my companion. All the time I was climbing alone, I had this strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person. This feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt. It even seemed that I was tied to my companion by a rope and that if I slipped, he would hold me. I remember

constantly glancing back over my shoulder. It seemed to me that this presence was a strong, helpful, and friendly one, and that it was not until Camp 6 was cited that the link connecting me, as it seemed as the tie to the beyond, was snapped. And although Shepton and the camp were about a few yards away, I suddenly felt alone. So in these two cases, it's like he knew he needed to eat,

he offered it to his friend, the other one's like, you need to stay awake. You know, it's just like there's another person there that's caring for them and helping them, but is it just themselves helping? Are these all things that they internally actually know they need to do and are now projecting it to themselves in a different way? Right, exactly.

So these presences have been felt on expeditions to the highest points on Earth into the far reaches of space to the polar regions of our planet, in the seas and skies during some of the first solo circumnavigations of the planet, in the depths of the earth by cave divers, by prisoners of war, and by those trapped under the rubble after terrorist attacks, and in the aftermath of avalanches. The question isn't if this happens or if this is real. It's happened to people and it's real to them. It's been experienced too many times by too many people to dismiss that. The pursuit of understanding the origin of these experiences will continue

to answer the question of where this phenomenon comes from, from within or from the outside, from our minds or something else entirely. No matter what camp you fall into or if you can identify with parts of all sides, if there is an otherworldly explanation or if our brain simply step in to help us at critical times, the third man factor remains a very real and very powerful mechanism for survival. As John Geiger states, in these stories, situations where success appears impossible or death imminent, something happens. There, amid the anxiety, fear, blood, sadness, exhaustion, torment, isolation and fatigue is an outstretched hand. Another existence, preferring, a transfusion of energy, encouragement, and instinctual wisdom from a seemingly external source.

A presence appears, a third man, who in the words of the legendary Italian climber Reinhold Messner, leads you out of the impossible. The third man represents something extraordinary. His appearance has always signaled a movement of transcendence over an explorers, adventurers, or survivors' immediate, dire situation. The notion that is fundamental to human nature, the belief and the understanding that we are not alone. And that is it. It's all I have on the third man phenomenon. What an interesting topic. I mean, we talked about it so much in this episode, but there's just so many unanswered questions at the end of this. And I feel like it was a very interesting turn of a survival episode. We've done so many survival episodes. And this is the first time we've ever

gone into a survival episode, mainly survival that's more mentally based or phenomenon based or paranormal or whatever way you want to look at it. It was just a very, very interesting take on it. It's just a combination of all of those things, I think. And it's so cool because I have the book in my hand. There's just like a whole section on it about another part that I didn't even like really get into. But the chapter is called the power of the savior. And it kind of goes into like the difference of these hallucinations and these presences of like, okay, so not everyone who experience. A hallucination or a presence in a dire survival situation like this, experiences something helpful. I also read another book about a World War II shipwreck that a lot of the service members were out in the open ocean for a really long time.

And he kind of touches upon a lot of situations where people are in open ocean. Survival situations where things happen where all of a sudden they're hallucinating islands. They're like, oh, I need to get something at the bottom of the ocean. I'll be right back. They swim. They're seeing things. that are leading to their death. Like, I'm going to jump off the side of the boat.

I'm going to, like, someone's trying to kill me. I need to get out of here. Like, there are hallucinations that are not helpful in that people experience in dire situations. And of course, there's different factors, like sun exposure for weeks on end, drinking salt, water, things like that, that can produce these things.

But he just makes a really good point of, like, there are people who are in the exact same life raft that experience different presences that are either helpful or not. And is there a difference between a presence and a hallucination? More questions. More questions. So, yeah, God, I wish I had, like, everyone's addresses so I could gift them this book for Christmas.

But if you're interested, yeah. There's one to add to the recommended books. This is it. What's it called again? It's called The Third Man Factor Surviving the Impossible by John Geiger. And I'll put a picture of it on, like, our socials and stuff and all that. But I got it off Amazon and it's really great. So, yeah, that's it.

I've talked enough, I think. Yeah, well, thank you. This is a very interesting episode. For everybody, we'll see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye, everyone. Bye.

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