Witch Psych

In 1916, Ernest Shackleton found himself making his way through the Antarctic after his ship, HMS Endurance, had become stuck in the ice. Shackleton then made the decision, along with two members of the crew, to make the journey to the nearest whaling outpost, which was about 24 miles away. To describe the journey as hard would be a gross understatement. 

The Antarctic is cold, which is an oversimplification of the survival situation Shackleton likely faced. See, in 1983, a station recorded a temperature of -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I am unsure if they were even able to log temperatures of that magnitude in 1916. It was cold, icy, and all hope seemed rather fleeting. 

It was then that Shackleton began to feel another presence that joined his party. A third man described as a “divine companion” accompanied them. They never saw this companion, but they had the overwhelming sense that this invisible person was there, suffering alongside them in solidarity. Shackleton and his party eventually reached their destination with the help of this third man.

T.S. Eliot wrote and published “The Waste Land” in 1922. An excerpt of which is based on Ernest Shackleton’s experience in 1917:

“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?”

I couldn’t find any sources describing Ernest Shackleton as a religious man. However, he was described as spiritual and grew up in a Christian family (Ross-shire Journal 2022). So why did he say this third man was divine?

The third man syndrome has various explanations through different lenses.

“Scientists and psychologists familiar with the phenomenon generally believe that third man syndrome represents a mysterious and poorly understood but natural function of the mind as it reacts to and attempts to navigate a severely stressful situation that poses a high risk of imminent death” (Greene 2023). Essentially, a naturally occurring coping mechanism.

Some explain this third man as the symptoms of sleep deprivation, lack of oxygen, hallucinations, exhaustion, dehydration, and any number of other conditions that can occur in a survival situation. The third man factor is also sometimes described as a “sensed presence.” However, from a religious or cultural perspective, it is something different, as Shackleton mentioned.

Recently, for one of my classes, I had to watch a video on a man named Clive Wearing who has a 7-second memory. He got sick after an infection crossed the blood-brain barrier. It damaged his brain, severely inhibiting his ability to make new memories. He can also remember some people who can play the piano, etc. His wife went through an emotionally difficult time just trying to figure out how to care for him, how to live her life, and how to cope, so much so that she found herself unhealthily dealing with alcohol. At the peak, she describes having a religious experience where she found comfort and that “god was with her”.

John Geiger said in an interview with NPR, “Many skeptics and non-believers also had this experience and they attribute it to other explanations and there is certainly some very interesting science behind this”(NPR 2009). He also went on to say in the same article, “If we understand that the Third Man Factor is a part of us, the way adrenaline is … then we can start to access it more easily…It’s not a hallucination in the sense that hallucinations are disordering. This is a very helpful and orderly guide.”

Geiger is an adventurer himself who is credited with popularizing the term “third man”. He published a book in 2009 on the subject entitled “The Third Man Factor”. In his book, he compiled stories of people and their experiences with this phenomenon. I haven’t read the book yet, but I do have access to Google, which allows me to explore this rabbit hole a bit further.

On May 20^th, 1927, at 7:52 AM, Charles Lindbergh started his nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris. It would take 33 hours, but it wasn’t until 1953, when he wrote “The Spirit of St. Louis,” that he discussed the ghosts that visited him with comforting advice (Petras 2017). Interestingly, Lindbergh and I attended the same high school, but I don’t know precisely how long he was there.

There are so many more stories. Notably, a significant majority appear to come from mountain climbers. However, there is a story from 2001, when the twin towers fell, that Ron DiFrancesco says he was guided by hand through the smoke by an invisible presence. DiFrancesco was the last to escape the south tower alive before it collapsed. 

So, is it a coping mechanism? Is it a hallucination? Or is it something religious in nature? We humans naturally look for ways to explain the unexplainable.

References 

Eliot, T.S. (2020). The Waste Land. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

Greene, J. M. (2025). Third man syndrome. Salem Press Encyclopedia of Health.

NPR. (2009 September 13). Guardian angels or ‘third man factor’?. https://www.npr.org/2009/09/13/112746464/guardian-angels-or-the-third-man-factor

Petras, G. (2017 May 20). Charles Lindbergh and the epic flight of the Spirit of St. Louis. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/spirit-of-st-louis-anniversary/#:~:text=Twenty%2Dtwo%20hours%20into%20the,recall%20precisely%20what%20they%20said.

Real Stories. (2016 August 13). The man with the seven second memory [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_P7Y0-wgos

Ross-shire Journal. (2022 March 6). Christian viewpoint: Shackleton saw providence as awesome, majestic and glorious – and he was half right. https://www.ross-shirejournal.co.uk/news/christian-viewpoint-however-you-define-providence-theres-267804/