The Third Man Factor: How those in dire peril have felt a sudden presence at their side, inspiring them to survive



Third man factor: People in danger have reported the presence of another person who helped them to safety

Sleep-deprived, starving and gasping for air, former RAF pilot Frank Smythe was alone on Mount Everest.



One by one, his fellow mountaineers had turned back, frozen and exhausted, and the British Everest Expedition, which had begun as a large, military-style assault, had been reduced to just one man.



The date was June 1, 1933, the era of high altitude climbing was in its infancy and Everest, the world's highest peak, had yet to be conquered.



Smythe was now in the so-called 'death zone' - the area above 26,000ft where the amount of oxygen in the air is insufficient to sustain human life.



'Weak as a kitten', he pressed forward, but with each step he sank deeper into the snow. The summit was only 1,000 feet higher, but it might have been 1,000 miles.



Smythe was 'overcome by a feeling of hopelessness and weariness'. His limbs trembled and he felt like he was suffocating.



He made one last attempt to press on, but standing for a few moments 'at the very boundaries of life and death', at an elevation as high as any man had ever reached, he finally concluded that the summit of Everest 'was not for mere flesh and blood'.



Smythe had already earned a place in the history books. But what happened next made his story one of the most talked about endeavours in climbing folklore.



Weak and desperately hungry, he reached into his pocket for a slab of Kendal mint cake.



'This I took out of my pocket and, carefully dividing it into two halves, turned round with one half in my hand to offer to my "companion".'



Smythe was a man entirely alone, in one of the most inhospitable spots on earth. But astonishingly, throughout the solo part of his climb, he'd had a strong sensation that he 'was accompanied by a second person'.



And so real did this person seem that Smythe believed he, too, would need sustenance.



At the moment he held out the piece of mint cake, he described the presence as 'so near and so strong' that it was 'almost a shock to find no one to whom to give it'.



Smythe later revealed that the ghostly companion had joined him almost as soon as he had parted company with his last remaining comrade.



But after finally making it back to base camp, he was initially too embarrassed to talk openly about the phenomenon for fear of ridicule.



Indeed, he entered his experience on the official record only after much persuasion from the expedition leader.



He wrote: 'All the time that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person. The feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt.

Shared phenomenon: Sir Ernest Shackleton (second from left) and his team all sensed another person with them while on a treacherous Antarctic expedition

'It even seemed that I was tied to my "companion" by a rope, and if I slipped "he" would hold me. I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder.'

The sensation continued until he descended far enough to see camp. But as extraordinary as Smythe's story sounds, it is by no means unique, as a new book reveals.



In fact, it is such a widespread phenomenon that it even has a name: the Third Man Factor.



Thought to be named after the biblical story in which a resurrected Christ appears to two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, and walks along beside them, it has been experienced by mountaineers, polar explorers, divers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, astronauts, even 9/11 survivors.



All have escaped traumatic events only to tell similar stories of having experienced the presence of a companion and helper.



' I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person. The feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness'

The presence offered a sense of protection, relief, guidance and hope, leaving the person convinced he or she was not alone.



The most famous encounter - and one later recorded in verse by T.S. Eliot in his poem The Waste Land ('Who is the third who walks always beside you?') - is that of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Towards the end of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-16, at the point where Shackleton and his two surviving crew faced almost certain death, he reported an unseen presence joining them.



Their ship, Endurance, was ice-bound, and Shackleton and two others set off on foot to cross the treacherous ranges and glaciers of South Georgia to reach a whaling station.

The march took 36 hours, and some years later Shackleton confided to a journalist 'it seemed to me that we were four, not three'.



Although Shackleton said nothing to his companions at the time, the others later admitted they also experienced a sense that 'there was another person with us'.

Surely all three could not have imagined the same thing?



Then, in the decades following Shackleton's mystical experiences on South Georgia, there was a flurry of Third Man reports.

Personal helper: Peter Hillary, left, said he felt the presence of his dead mother when he was struggling on an Antarctic expedition

They occurred around the world under extreme, but also very different, conditions.



Some, like Shackleton's, appeared to be corroborated by more than one witness.



So why the sudden proliferation of Third Man stories? One theory is that the nature of exploration itself altered at around this time.



Instead of large ships carrying scores of men, or vast columns of soldiers, explorers began to travel solo, or in small groups.



Henry Stoker, a submarine commander and distant relative of Dracula creator Bram Stoker, wrote about how he and two others escaped from a Turkish prisoner-of-war camp and attempted to cross 350 miles of rugged terrain to reach the coast, with neither maps nor compass and only meagre rations of raisins and cocoa powder.



Hungry, thirsty, footsore and dispirited, Stoker became convinced a fourth man had joined them, and found his presence deeply comforting.



When he later discussed it with his colleagues, he realised they, too, had experienced the same thing.

The phenomenon continues to this day. Peter Hillary, son of Edmund, experienced a strange presence during an expedition to the South Pole in November 1998, retracing Scott's final Antarctic journey.



' The voice was insistent but encouraging, and was accompanied by a vivid sense of physical presence '

In his case, Hillary knew the entity which appeared to him and guided him: it was his late mother, who had died in a car crash more than 20 years earlier.



'It was like she'd come out there to keep me company,' he said.



In a similar vein, diver Stephanie Schwabe escaped certain death when she heard the voice of her late husband and diving partner Rob Palmer.



Diving in an underwater cave off South Bahama Island in August 1997, Stephanie lost the guide line - which led back to the entrance - and began to panic.



Convinced she was going to die, and still desperately missing her husband, she gave up on life.

Then, at the height of her desperation and sadness: 'I suddenly felt flushed and it seemed like my field of vision had become brighter.'



She believed the presence to be her dead husband and heard him mentally communicating with her, calming her down and instilling in her a belief that she would survive.



Calmed by the presence, Stephanie discovered renewed resolve. This time she slowly and methodically scanned the cave - and just as she saw the flash of a white line, the presence left her.



Swimming immediately to the line, she followed it to the surface and emerged unscathed.

Disaster: Survivors of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre have reported being helped by a 'guardian angel'

For others, the Third Man is not nearly as personal, or easy to identify. But it is no less efficient.



On the morning of September 11, 2001, Ron DiFrancesco was at his desk at Euro Brokers, a financial trading firm on the 84th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Centre.



When the first plane hit the North Tower at 8.46am in what was to become the biggest ever terrorist atrocity on U.S. soil, DiFrancesco and his colleagues were initially told that there was no threat to their building and to remain at their desks.



Fortunately, he had already started to vacate the building when the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, slammed into the South Tower at 9.03am, slicing into the tower between floors 77 and 85.



The higher wing cut into the Euro Brokers office. Because he had left the office, DiFrancesco was hurled against the wall and was showered with debris, but survived the devastating impact.



The trading floor he had just left no longer existed. He made his way to an emergency stairwell and, following the advice of others gathered there, decided to ascend and wait for emergency services to rescue them from the roof.



By the time he reached the 91st floor, the intensifying smoke caused him to panic and he changed course, groping his way down the staircase.



'Somebody lifted me up. I don't think somebody grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led'

On the 79th floor, he fell to the concrete floor with a dozen others, gasping for air. They were prevented from descending farther by a collapsed wall, and even through the fug of smoke, the panic was evident in their eyes.



Some were crying, some slipped into unconsciousness. And then something remarkable happened.



DiFrancesco heard a voice - not one of the group - address him by his first name. It told him to get up. The voice was insistent but encouraging, and was accompanied by a vivid sense of physical presence.



'Somebody lifted me up. I was led to the stairs. I don't think somebody grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led.'



The benevolent helper guided DiFrancesco down the stairs, insisting he walk through fires - which he did, covering his face - before continuing to make his way down.



Almost an hour after the second plane hit, DiFrancesco reached the ground. But as he headed for an exit, the building began to collapse.



He heard 'an ungodly roar', saw a fireball and fell unconscious, later waking up in hospital.



Ron DiFrancesco was the last person out of the South Tower. A lot of people made split-second decisions that day that determined whether they lived or died.



What is different about DiFrancesco is that at a critical moment he received help from a seemingly external source.

A deeply religious man, DiFrancesco is convinced he experienced divine intervention.



But what else might have caused the timely arrival of the Third Man?



Divine intervention? 9/11 survivor Ron DiFrancesco said he was helped out of the collapsing building by an unseen presence (photo from the film '9/11 The Twin Towers')

According to climber Greg Child, solving the mystery of the Third Man is like a 'detective stalking the invisible man; there is no fingerprint, no solid evidence at all. The clues lie deep within us'.



Increasingly, that is where science is also pointing. While some dismiss the sensations as hallucination or the ramblings of a decayed mind, the sheer wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.



Most instances occur in the absence of delirium, and if the sensation were a form of madness, why would they give such clear, concise instructions?

For those who do not believe in guardian angels or God, the most likely explanation is one suggested by scientists in Switzerland.



In a laboratory setting, they were able to evoke such a presence in an epileptic 22- year-old woman, by electrically stimulating part of her brain.



Every time they stimulated the left temporo-parietal junction - a part of the brain involved in organising sensory information - the woman turned her head to the side, convinced there was 'someone' there.



When the electrical current was switched off, she turned her head back again, reporting that the sensation had ceased.



This mechanism has been called 'a switch'. Although people in everyday life are not electrically stimulated, scientists believe those under extreme physical stress, at the limits of their endurance, have access to this switch.



Suddenly, they are aware of being in the presence of some ineffable good.



Celebrated mountaineer Reinhold Messner said: 'I think it is quite natural. I think all human beings would have similar feelings if they exposed themselves to such precarious situations.'



But whether the Third Man is a presence generated by the human mind in times of great stress, or a heavenly guide sent from above, it is certainly real to those who experience it.



And many would not have survived if it hadn't led them back from the brink.



The Third Man Factor: True Stories Of Survival In Extreme Environments by John Geiger is published by Canongate at £12.99. © John Geiger 2009. To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.



