The Third Man

I read a fascinating article titled “The Mystery of Survival,” in “Men’s Journal,” this week about special “invisible” help received by explorers and desperate individuals caught in dire and extreme circumstances.



Have you ever heard about the Third Man?


The Third Man metaphor was coined by a poet who wrote about Ernest Shackleton’s trek across South Georgia Island. It was actually a “fourth man,” presence that Shackleton’s group felt, but the poet got the number wrong.


John Geiger’s article includes this paragraph about Shackelton:


“There are some things which never can be spoken of,” Shackleton said of the presence. “Almost to hint about them comes perilously close to sacrilege.” After navigating a small boat on a 17-day sea journey, Shackleton and two other men had to traverse the forbidding peaks of South Georgia Island with little equipment or experience. As he later wrote, “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.” Both of the other men, without prompting, said the same thing."


Geiger shares many accounts of explorers caught in extreme need feeling the presence of the Third Man.


He tells about DiFrancesco, the last man out of the South Tower on 9/11, who faced horrendous odds to escape as he descended the stairs from the floor where the plane hit, through 4 floors of fire and super dense smoke. When all looked hopeless, something remarkable happened, “Someone," he says, "called me. The voice, which was male but did not belong to anyone in the stairwell, was insistent: Get up!” It gave him encouragement. It said, “Hey! You can do this.” But it was more than a voice, DiFrancesco claims. He goes on to tell how “he received help from a seemingly external source. He had the sensation that ‘somebody lifted me up.’ He felt he was being guided: ‘I was led to the stairs. I don’t think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led.’ When facing fierce fire that normally sends people in the other direction, the presence led him through three stories of flames. Once light appeared, the benevolent presence left.


Geiger tells about Reinhold Messner, the first man to conquer Everest solo, and without oxygen, encountering the Third Man more than once. On one tragic descent from Nanga Parbat’s Diamir face that claimed his brother’s life, he said, “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…The mere presence somehow helped me regain my composure.”


Geiger shares other stories of survivors joined by an additional, unexplained friend who lent them the power to overcome the direst of circumstances.


He also addresses the topic of those who don’t survive. Do they feel the Third Man presence? He says, yes. He tells the story of Maurice Wilson, an Englishman who was hell bent on climbing Everest, but had no experience. On his ascent, and encountering severe weather, he was strongly advised by his Sherpa to retreat and not continue. He wouldn’t listen. He advanced on his own. In his diary he wrote about feeling someone at his side while struggling with partial snow-blindness and exhaustion later on. But he wouldn’t turn back. And he died. Geiger concludes, “Wilson’s sad story emphasizes something important: There is no saving the life of one who will not be saved. The Third Man requires a willing partner.”


While reading these accounts I couldn’t help but think of the fourth man in the fiery furnace with the Hebrew boys who were thrown into the flames by their angry king as told in the Old Testament. That fourth man was Christ. It’s the same “man” who helped the survivors Geiger tells about. And it’s a presence with each of us too, no matter where we are or what we face.


As Geiger recounts, though, it helps to be a willing partner.