The Third Man

This is a fascinating phenomenon which either delves deep in to the human psyche or goes beyond it, depending on your point of view.

It occurs mainly in people who undergo extreme conditions which amount to a sort of sensory deprivation such as polar explorers or mountaineers. It is certainly not confined to extreme conditions and can in fact be experienced by anyone. But what is "it"? Well it is the feeling that someone else is there who shouldn't be there. Virginia Fiennes experienced a presence on an Antarctic expedition in 1980 when she had to spend long hours on her own inside the radio hut and often found herself outside in the darkness repairing antenna. And she was not the only person on that expedition to feel that presence.

Joe Simpson (Touching the Void) experienced a voice which calmly told him what to do to get out of his predicament.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, The Captain of the Polestar (which puts shivers down my back just thinking about it) has a theme about a ghostly presence on the ice of the Arctic and many of the accounts I have read of this phenomenon put me in mind of this story.

However, a lot of the time these presences are comforting rather than frightening and my favourite account, written so beautifully and matter-of-factly by Ernest Shackleton goes like this:-

" When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snow fields, 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 thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three."

He found out later that Worsley and Crean had also both sensed the Fourth Man.

What causes it is not known and explanations include guardian angels or the subconcious mind taking over. I rather hope an explanation is not found as it is such a wonderful mystery.

Oh and why the third man? Well T.S. Elliot wrote a poem The Waste Land inspired by Shackleton's Endurance mission and made the presence a third man rather than a fourth. Oddly this is the version remembered by history!