Third Man Syndrome: What is the strange presence that assists us in life-or-death moments?

Italian mountain climber Reinhold Messner (Brixen, 80 years old) is often seen as one of the best alpinists of all time. Though his official title was revoked by Guinness World Records in 2023, he is still considered by some to have been the first person to climb the world’s 14 peaks rising above 8,000 meters (26,247 feet) without supplemental oxygen, and has received a plethora of awards and recognitions, including the 2018 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports. The year was 1970 and he, a young man of just 25, when he took on his first eight-thousander: Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat. He intended to solo climb the Rupal Face, the highest in the world at 15,090 feet. Messner had left his 24-year-old brother Günther behind at base camp with another climber, but on one of the frequent stops he was forced to make on his ascent, Messner spotted the figure of Günther in the distance — his brother had decided to accompany him, after all. After an arduous ascent, the two managed to reach the summit, but Günther was not in optimal condition. He was suffering from a powerful bout of altitude sickness, which concerned Messner. Soon after, they began their descent down another route that was, in theory, easier: the Diamir Face.

Günther was getting worse and worse, and kept falling behind. Messner often lost sight of him, and found his own strength flagging. Then, as the climber describes in his book The Naked Mountain (2018), something strange began to happen. “Suddenly there was a third climber next to me. He was descending with us, keeping a regular distance a little to my right and a few steps away from me, just out of my field of vision. I could not see the figure and still maintain my concentration but I was certain there was someone there. I could sense his presence; I needed no proof.” The companion never spoke, yet they did not scare Reinhold. Although he knew that it wasn’t possible that there was another person on the mountain that day, the presence helped him to survive an experience that wound up taking his brother’s life.

Messner’s story is not unique. In his book The Third Man Factor, historian and science writer John Geiger collects several dozen similar tales. All share one thing in common: they take place in moments of desperation, of extreme loneliness, in which death is a near certainty. Many have to do with mountain climbing, but also shipwrecks and the crossings of scorching deserts and icy tundra. In the moment when it seems all has been lost, this “third man” appears — though he may be the second or fourth, man or woman, young or old, depending on those involved — silent and distant, or on other occasions, closer, talkative, or the bearer of strange wisdom, and always helpful and comforting. Clearly, the elusive figure would, at first glance, seem to be the basis of the “guardian angel” archetype — but is that the whole story?

Lost at the South Pole

Although it’s likely that the so-called “third man syndrome” has been around since the dawn of humanity, the first well-documented case that exists — and from which the phenomenon got its name — took place in 1916 and involved the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his two companions. Shackleton was leading the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which had set out to cross Antarctica from Vahsel Bay, on the Weddel Sea, to Ross Island, on the other end of the continent. But due to the area’s freezing temperatures, the ship in which they were traveling became trapped in the ice. Shackleton was forced, together with Frank Worsley and Tom Crean, to undertake a suicidal march on foot through the mountains of Antartica in search of help. The journey, which lasted 36 hours in impossible temperatures and with very poor equipment, took them to Stromness, a whaling station on the north coast of South Georgia, where they managed to find the help they needed to rescue the rest of their team.

Weeks later, the three men confessed that something strange had happened during their trek: the feeling that “often there were four, not three” men on the journey. The fourth explorer did not speak, but he accompanied them to their salvation and had been perceived by all. The story made an extraordinary impact in the British media, although Shackleton, in accordance with what one would expect from a dour Victorian-era hero, subsequently opted to drown his trauma in Scotch whisky and essentially, refused to speak again about the strange phenomenon, eventually dying on another expedition in 1922. Nevertheless, his story would later inspire a passage from T.S. Eliot’s legendary poem The Waste Land: “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/Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded/I do not know whether a man or a woman/But who is that on the other side of you?” Although in Shackleton’s account, the strange companion was not the third, but the fourth, Eliot’s poem wound up baptizing the phenomenon.

What causes the third man syndrome?

According to Geiger’s book, there are numerous theories that explain why, when we are facing extreme situations in which our life is in serious danger, an elusive figure appears, conveying calm, coolness and even the common sense that we may have begun to lack. It may be “a sensory illusion or hallucination caused by extreme physical exertion or monotony; a medical condition attributable to low blood glucose, high-altitude cerebral edema, or cold stress; a ghostly apparition or mediumistic experience; a manifestation of a guardian angel, or a psychological ‘compensatory figure’ that embodies ‘inner resources that the beleaguered person is not able to call on in the ordinary way,’” writes the author.

To date, no one has been able to demonstrate unequivocally the reason as to why the phenomenon occurs. Scientific studies dedicated to the subject are rather scarce, perhaps due to the specificity of its appearance and the difficulty of replicating the exceptional conditions under which it occurs. In any case, if superstition is ruled out, all roads point to the involvement of our inner self, to an emergency mechanism of the brain that is activated when we are faced with great danger.

The most interesting study carried out on the phenomenon to date was led by Professor Olaf Blanke and other scientists from the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne. In the experiment, the team was able to artificially provoke the third man syndrome in a young student who had epilepsy, through the electrical stimulation of the left parietotemporal junction, an area of the brain responsible for organizing sensory information. Each time they stimulated the area, the woman clearly felt the presence appear. When they stopped the procedure, the apparition suddenly vanished. That area of the brain seemed to act as a “switch” for the appearance of the third man.

No angel — despite appearances

Though this kind of apparition seems the perfect invocation of “guardian angel” archetypes, most of the people interviewed by Geiger for his book did not interpret the phenomenon as such. Messner, for example, was quite clear on this point: “No, no, no. I think it is quite natural, and I think all human beings would have the same feelings or similar feelings, if they would expose themselves to such precarious situations. The body is inventing ways to let the person survive.” Fellow mountain climber Greg Child explained it as, “not a fearful sensation, not a sense one might expect to have if confronting something supernatural. I felt its origins are within the self, not without.”

Another surprising aspect of these experiences is that, on some occasions, as in that of Shackleton and various others, they are shared. “What was possibly the most amazing thing about this is that both I and Robert Schauer had [it] at the same time,” said Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka, speaking of his and Schauer’s 1985 ascent of Gasherbrum IV. “It was so striking, so tangible, this sense of a third person, that at one moment I tried to talk about it with Robert, and the moment I started, I could not express myself, I just said something like “Robert, I would like to tell you something, but it’s very strange.” “I know what you mean,” he said. “You sense him, the third person?” “Yes. Do you?” “Yes.”

Castaways surviving for days at sea, extreme situations in outer space, prisoners escaping from impossible captivity, and prolonged starvation are all situations in which the third man appears. When all is lost, our body seems to invoke the figure as a last resort to overcome adversity. Such a notion serves as confirmation that, as the Hungarian-Canadian psychologist Peter Suedfeld once said, we Homo sapiens are “the indomitable species.”

In his book’s closing thoughts, Geiger plants a fantastic idea. If all of us, in extreme situations, have access to this “angel switch” that activates the third man, what would happen if we could turn to him voluntarily in complicated moments? Would it be possible to create an ever-faithful, ever-present, never-far-away presence to accompany us? Could we overcome times of anguish with the help of an infinitely understanding and comforting presence that we ourselves create? The idea, though it may seem somewhat dystopian and far-fetched, is perhaps not so improbable. Don’t many children have an imaginary friend, and don’t people who have lost their partner converse with them long after their loved one’s death? Perhaps a key to ending loneliness lies dormant within us.

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