Third Man Syndrome: one curious story, three brilliant books

[00:00:01]What happens to the human mind when reality becomes too overwhelming? That's the question we're going to answer today as I bring you one curious true story and three related, very brilliant books.

[00:00:26]Today we're going to look at what happened to 28-year-old James Sean in the spring of 1983.

[00:00:33]A very curious phenomenon which has affected people from Ernest Shackleton to the survivors of 911. But first, if you are a fan of curious stories and you love a good book recommendation, then you are in the right place because that's all we do and we upload every Sunday. So, make sure that you click the like button and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss a single episode. And now back to James.

[00:01:01]So, back on that spring day in 1983, uh, 28-year-old James opened his eyes and looked up at a clear blue sky. But that wasn't the first thing that crossed his mind. The first thing that crossed his mind was, "Why am I lying in very deep, cold snow?" And the second thing that crossed his mind was he was in absolute sheer agony. He felt as though he'd been run over by a truck. Just taking a breath caused this incredible agonizing chest pain. Um and he tried to lift his arms. One arm he could just about lift.

[00:01:34]The other one just would not work at all. Um his legs were killing him.

[00:01:39]Everything about him was sheer pure white agony. Um, and he couldn't work out why and what had happened. So, he decided to try and lift himself up a little bit and have a look around. And he managed to raise himself up and just raise his neck up. And he looked in front of him and there was a giant mountain. Um, and the whole thing came flooding back to him because it wasn't just any old mountain.

[00:02:07]This was Mount Delta for in the Canadian Rockies, uh, which is classed as a grade four climb. And if you think that Everest is a grade seven climb, you'll appreciate just how high and difficult this mountain was. And James immediately remembered that he and his friend Richard Whitmore had been trying to climb Mount Delta Form when they were struck by an avalanche and they fell around 2,000 ft. Now, the Empire State Building is 1500 ft. So that gives you an idea of just how far these two men fell. And as soon as James realized that, he thought, "I've got to find my friend. Where is he?" And so he managed to just hoist himself up a little bit out of the snow and he looked around and saw a crumpled figure a few feet away.

[00:02:53]So James managed to crawl over. He he used his good arm to crawl towards his friend, but it was immediately apparent that Richard had not made it. The fool had killed him. So James lay there in the snow and he thought, "You know what?

[00:03:10]No one is going to find me. I'm hundreds of miles from civilization.

[00:03:16]The chance of someone walking past is practically zero. And we're not going to be missed for 4 days, which is when they were due back home. I'm going to die out here." And he lay back and he closed his eyes and he thought, I've just got to accept it. And it was something that James always thought would happen to him because James was a self-confessed climbing bum. He drove around the United States looking for really difficult, challenging mountains to climb. And very often he slept out of the back of his car. So he knew eventually, you know, it it was a matter of time before one of these mountains got the better of him.

[00:03:51]And it would appear that Mount Delta Form had done that. And so he lay down next to his friend, closed his eyes, and he prepared to die. And about 20 minutes later, he was just starting to feel more comfortable and drifting off to sleep as he actually drifted into hypothermia when he heard footsteps in the snow behind him. And he thought, "Oh my goodness, the chances of somebody coming past were practically zero, but somebody is actually coming past." And he heard a woman's voice. And this voice was right behind him. And the voice said, "Come on, you cannot give up now. You've got to keep going."

[00:04:31]And he lay there and he listened to this woman's voice and she was so reassuring and so calm that he thought, you know what? I've got to give it a try. His whole mindset changed from giving up to thinking, "I've got to try. I've got to at least attempt to get out of here for the sake of my family, my parents. I need to give it a go." Now, this woman was obviously fit and strong because of where she was, but she wasn't fit and strong enough to lift James up. He was a big guy, but she said, "Look over there, there's a tree. Do you think you can crawl your way to that tree and then use the trunk and the branches of the tree to get yourself onto your feet?" Now, miraculously, he managed to do it. And I do mean miraculously because it later turned out that James had broken his arm. He had broken his scapula. He'd broken his nose. He'd smashed all his teeth. He'd ruptured ligaments in his knees, but he somehow managed to crawl to this tree and get to his feet. And the woman said, "Right, okay. You need to put your coat on properly because it've been torn off in the fall. You need to put that back on properly and you need to have a sip of water and prepare yourself because we're going to have to walk. We're going to have to walk back to where you and Richard made your camp." And James thought, there is no way I'm going to be able to manage that. I'm in absolute agony. I can barely take a breath because he had smashed ribs. But this woman was so encouraging and she said, "Come on, you can't give up. We've got to keep going.

[00:06:03]We've got to try." And so he tried and he began walking. And he trudged his way through kneedeep snow all the way back to the camp that he and Richard had made. And there were times when he fell in the snow. There were times when he felt like he couldn't carry on, when he just sank down to his knees and gave up. And the wind said, "No, come on. You've got to keep going.

[00:06:26]Come on. Do it for your family. Do it for your parents. Keep going. One foot in front of the other, and we will be there." And they made it. And it took them 4 hours to make it. But they finally got back to where he and Richard had made the camp the night before, you you know, and in the camp there was warm bed, there was clothes, there was food, there was a fire, there was water. And he couldn't believe that he'd actually managed to make it with the help of this woman. And so he turned round to say thank you to her. And of course, there was no one there. The woman didn't exist. And when he looked back in the snow to where he just walked, there was only one set of bloody footprints.

[00:07:12]Now, James could not work out what had happened. Was this woman a figment of his imagination, but she was so real and without her help and her encouragement, he never would have made it 4 hours in the snow back to this camp. But his first priority was survival. And he couldn't with his injuries light a fire or get himself food or even unzip the tent. But as luck would have it, in the distance he saw some climbers, some fellow mountaineers and he shouted and they heard him and they came over and miraculously one of them was a nurse and one of them was an expert mountain rescuer. So whilst the nurse tended to him and dealt with the injuries as best she could and got him food and kept him warm, the mountain rescuer went to get help and pretty soon the uh the helicopter came, airlifted him out and took him to hospital where James made a full recovery. Now he didn't tell anyone about this mysterious woman uh for about 10 years because he was embarrassed. He thought people are going to think I've lost my mind. But when he finally did open up and tell somebody what had happened to him and how he managed to get back and survive, it turns out that this is a common phenomenon of people who are in desperate neardeath situations or very stressful situations.

[00:08:39]And it's called the third man syndrome.

[00:08:43]And I will explain why it's called the third man syndrome later on. Um but the first person to ever document this phenomenon was Ernest Shackleton. Now Ernest Shackleton on his uh British expedition to Antarctica in 1914 1915 was trying to get to the South Pole. The ship ended up trapped in ice. They abandoned it. They set up camp on ice for 4 months waiting for the ice to break up. Then they rode for six days to reach an island. And he was all the time, we've got to keep going. We've got to keep going. and they had to make it to the nearest uh inhabited place which is a whailing station on South Georgia Island 800 miles away. And they rode for 16 days to get to this island. And they landed on the wrong side. So they made the rest of the way on foot, which was 18 miles and took 36 hours. And it was in that final last push that Shackleton remembered having a presence with them. another person, a third man who encouraged them and helped them and kept them going uh to get rescued which they all were in the end. Now Ernie Shakleton was a very famous case of this and also another famous case was Charles Lindberg.

[00:09:58]Charles Lindberg also felt it during that first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in 1927. The aviator was just flying above the ocean was desperately struggling to stay awake 22 hours into the trip when he became aware of vague forms aboard his plane who offered reassurance to him and discussed navigational problems with him. Now that presence stayed with him all the way until he reached the Irish coast and Paris was in sight. Um, now I said I would let you know how the third man came to be called the third man. And it's actually from a TS Elliot poem, The Wasteland. Um, and in the poem he writes, "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." Now, of course, really it should be called the third person syndrome or phenomenon. Uh, but we stick with the third man because this is what Elliot wrote. And also, it might not be the third. It could be the second. It could be you and another person as in Lindberg and also as in James in our original story. The most common group of people to experience this is uh solo sailors um and shipwreck survivors. Um the second most common are polar explorers and then mountaineers um and people who go hiking in strange and very challenging places. Um and there are other really famous cases as well. First of all, there's Frank Smay who um attempted to climb Everest solo.

[00:11:47]He was the first person who did that. Um and his second man or third man was so real that he turned to offer them some of his cake before he realized there was no one there. In more recent times, Joe Simpson um who was climbing in the Andes in 1985 and who broke his leg wrote in his book Touching the Void about a voice who guided him to safety and also voices that helped people to safety were apparent in the 911 attacks. Uh and two people who survive those attacks reported it. Ronda Franchesco was the last person out of the South Tower before it collapsed and he reports being led down three stories of fire because he was urged on by a voice behind him and a hand on his shoulder which turned out not to be real. And then secondly, Janelle Guzman McMillan, who was a woman trapped in the rubble of the North Tower for 27 hours, also experienced third man syndrome when a voice told her, "Janelle, I've got you. My name is Paul and you're going to be okay." Now before we move on to what third man syndrome is and the different theories behind it, I want to talk to you about three brilliant books which take the idea of third person third man syndrome and make it into a fabulous story. And the first of these very timely is a book which was published just this past Thursday and it's called Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt and it's by the brilliant Ben Reeves. It's actually a debut. Can you believe it's absolutely extraordinary? This is a book narrated by death himself and death in the modern world is called Travis and he lives uh with his cat in a flat in a very ordinary English town. Now Travis is a third man because his job is to go to people who are dying and help them to come to accept and come to terms with what's about to happen to them and shepherd them over to the other side.

[00:13:56]that's his sole purpose in life. So he is kind of a third man. Uh and that is until he meets uh a single midwife, a single mother um with a very boisterous 8-year-old daughter who live in the flat opposite him. And together they show Travis what life is really all about and the joy of living. Um and he is faced with quite the dilemma. This is a fantastic book. I cannot recommend it enough. It's absolutely beautiful. The last few pages will give you serious chills. Um, and they will change the way that you look at the world and you look at your life. I guarantee it. So, that's book number one. And the second book is Matt Hag's utterly brilliant The Midnight Train, which also came out recently. Now, this is a story about Wilbur. And when we first meet Wilbur in chapter one, he's a young man. He's just got married to the love of his life, Maggie, and he's on honeymoon in Venice.

[00:14:54]and everything's going smoothly. Uh but in the second chapter when we're meeting him again, he is now 81 and he has had a heart attack and he's dying. And as he dies and uh becomes one of the non-living. He gets onto a train as everyone does when they die according to Matt, which is a lovely idea. He gets onto a train, does Wilbur. And on this train is an elderly woman called Agnes.

[00:15:21]And Agnes is someone that we'll be used to know in years gone by. And she is there as his guide, as his third man, third woman, uh, to help him come to terms with his life because his life is going to flash by through the windows of the train and he can watch how he lived his life as he goes on the journey to the other side. And Agnes guides him and helps him on his way there. Uh, but occasionally the train stops and Wilbert is allowed to get off. Uh but he's not supposed to meddle with what has happened in the past. But sometimes it's just a little too tempting. However, if you meddle with the past, does that affect the future? This is an absolutely beautiful book. Um it's so uplifting.

[00:16:07]It's so life affirming and it's written with Matt Heg's incredible insight and humanity and humor. And of course with Agnes uh we are offered a third person third woman uh phenomenon as she helps Wilbur find his way to the afterlife.

[00:16:27]And finally book three, A Monster Calls by Patrick Nes. Now this has been out a long time, so you'll absolutely be able to get this in paperback because I know some people like to look at books that are available in paperback. Um, this is a story of a little boy called Connor.

[00:16:43]And Connor is going through a lot. Not only have his mom and dad divorced and his dad now lives in America with another woman and a new family. Um, he suffers from bullying at school from some very unpleasant children and can't children be unpleasant when they want to be? Um but more than that, his mom, his lovely mom, who he adores, um has cancer and she is going through cancer treatment and she seems to be getting worse rather than better. Now, this is a lot for Connor to take on. It's a crisis in his life. He's anxious, he's stressed, he's worried, he feels all alone. Um and when he looks out of his bedroom window, he can see the church in the distance. And next to the church, there is a utree. And one night the utree gets up and comes walking towards him. It is a monster utree. Um but why is the monster there and what is he trying to do? Is he there to help Connor or is he there to hinder him? This is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful story.

[00:17:48]Um it's written with such empathy and such understanding and such kindness towards children. Um it's kind of a young adult book, but it's perfectly suitable for a non- young adult to read because it is quite astounding and absolutely stunningly written. Um and the utri in this book is the third person. uh because it's someone or something that appears to Connor when he is at his crisis point when he needs someone to talk to. Can't recommend this enough. Um it's it's very sad in parts and very emotional. Um but absolutely worth reading. It's a stunning book. So now let's look at a few theories of why third person or third man syndrome actually exists. And the first theory is a physiological one.

[00:18:38]It's it's saying that in times of high altitude, low oxygen, dehydration, kind of physical crisis, the body's temporal parietital junction, which is the bit of the brain where you end and the outside world begins, gets a little bit glitchy.

[00:18:54]Um, and we're not quite sure where that boundary is. And so something which is in your own mind because of the state your body is in may seem as though it's an external force. And likewise in an emergency uh you don't want to be on your own. So it is the brain's way of giving you a companion kind of an imaginary friend if you like um that will help you so you don't feel as lonely. Another theory is it's the brain's wiring having a throwback to when we were primitive souls. Um we all talk to ourselves. Uh we all do it now or we've always done it. Um even primitive man did it. Um and this is called the biccameal mind because primitive man believed that their internal narrator that inner voice that we all hear was actually the voice of the gods. It was external to them. And uh there are some people who think that the third person or third man syndrome is when the brain dials up that feeling again and we get the idea that an internal narrator is actually coming from an external source.

[00:20:01]But medicine agrees on one thing. It's not a situation where you would get auditory and visual hallucinations and assume that the person is having a psychotic episode. This isn't a psychotic episode. This is a an extreme stress reaction. And when that stressful situation uh subsides, then the voices and the sense that someone else is there subsides with it. But as well as the medical and kind of physiological explanations, there are also um some more spiritual ideas about why we experience third man syndrome. There are many cultures where spirit guides and guardian angels and loved ones watching over us are part of tradition and folklore. Um and in the Tibetan cultures uh as people walk on these sacred mountains uh they believe that the deities are watching over them. It's the diversity of it that makes sense syndrome such a fascinating thing. It's not just a western thing. Um it's not a religious thing. It's not a biological thing. It's a human thing. Um, and whether you are praying to a god or whether you are calling upon your ancestors for help or whether you just have this gut feeling that something is there. Um, it points to a universal truth um that when we are at our lowest and our most vulnerable and our most frightened, we are never truly alone.

[00:21:36]I hope you've enjoyed this week's curious true story and the three brilliant books that we discussed which touch upon that subject. Um do let me know if you've read any of them or you're planning to read any of them. Um don't forget to like this video if you liked it and do please subscribe. I'll be back next Sunday when we will be taking a look at one of the most mysterious disappearances at sea. Um, and three brilliant books which use the theme of drowning in their story lines.

[00:22:07]Join me for that next Sunday. And in the meantime, have a brilliant week.