Third Man Syndrome: what is the otherworldly presence that helps humans in need?

When Frank Smythe was alone and facing the perils of being the first person to summit Mount Everest, he was met by a mysterious unseen presence that helped guide him through his treacherous journey up Earth’s tallest mountain... but what did Smythe encounter?

"All the time that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person,” wrote the British mountain explorer in his diary.  

“The feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt,” Smythe recounted. 

Symthe wasn’t the only explorer to talk about what has become widely known as Third Man Syndrome or the Third Man Theory. Ernst Shackleton experienced it during his life-threatening expedition to Antarctica after he and his crew abandoned the Endurance. 

"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," wrote Shackleton in his memoir about the incident that nearly took his life. 

Since that time, dozens of other adventurers like Reinhold Messner, Peter Hillary, and Ann Bancroft have all reported experiencing the Third Man phenomena according to Wikipedia. 

"Some believe it's a guardian angel," wrote Toronto Star reporter Nancy White in a 2009 article on the phenomena. "Others say it's the brain's way of coping under great duress."

“Whichever,” White continued, “the experiences are eerily similar: the sense of a presence that encourages, advises, and even leads a person out of peril.”

White spoke with John Geiger, the author of 'The Third Man Factor', and the world’s leading expert on Third Man Syndrome to better understand the unnatural phenomena. 

Photo by Twitter @JohnGGeiger

"In every case I found,” Geiger told White, “it was a benevolent helpful companion, not a single example of a malevolent being." 

White noted that Geiger was able to find at least 100 reported cases of people experiencing Third Man Syndrome, and not all were linked to dare-devil explorers. 

In his book, Geiger recounted the story of Ron DiFrancesco, a money market broker who was led out of the collapsing south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11 by an otherworldly presence that guided DiFrancesco to safety while encouraging him not to give up. 

Photo by Twitter @cbcmarkus

“To this day, DiFrancesco cannot understand why he survived when so many others did not,” Geiger wrote in his book. “But he has no doubt about the reason for his escape.”

The experience can happen to anyone, according to an explanation Geiger gave to White. "They're people in a life-and-death struggle, often but not always in nature."

Understanding what Third Man Syndrome is is a lot more difficult than understanding why it manifests.  "Opinion is divided," Geiger said. "There's not a definitive explanation."

"It's not a hallucination in the sense that hallucinations are disordering,” Geiger told NPR’s Guy Raz in a different interview. “This is a very helpful and orderly guide."

Geiger was hoping that by studying Third Man Syndrome he would be able to better understand it, which would allow humans to access the phenomena more easily. But since the publishing of his book, it seems like little progress has been made.

"It's an astonishing capacity if you think about [it]," Geiger told Raz. "And it sort of hints at this idea that as human beings we are never truly alone, that we have this ability to call upon this resource when we most need it in our lives."