The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible by John Geiger

Melanie McGrath5 April 2012

Shortly after 9.00am on 11 September 2001, a money broker called Ron DiFrancesco realised what had happened. A plane had crashed into the building he was in, the south tower of the World Trade Center. Worse, DiFrancesco saw that he was above where the plane had hit — he was on the 88th floor. He found the only operative staircase, and started struggling down through the debris and smoke. He began to have breathing difficulties. He thought he wouldn't make it.

But then something weird happened — or, at least, seemed to happen. "I was led to the stairs. I don't think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led." DiFrancesco felt that someone, or something, was helping him. It was a ghostly presence — a sort of "angel". Finally, when DiFrancesco was close to safety, the presence seemed to vanish.

DiFrancesco was the last man to come out of the South Tower before it collapsed; he was one of only four people to escape from above the 81st floor, where the plane hit. He owes his escape to some sort of spiritual guide, or divine intervention. Spooky.

In this book, John Geiger recounts many, many tales of people who have found themselves in extreme situations, and felt a ghostly presence helping them. Almost without exception, they are exciting, edge-of-the-seat tales. Some of them might be familiar, which is no bad thing; it's like revisiting the greatest hits of exploration and daredevilry, but from a new angle.

There's Ernest Shackleton, hacking his way across a mountain range in South Georgia, in the South Atlantic, desperate to fetch supplies for a group of stranded colleagues. Shackleton had two companions; they were all close to death, but soldiering on magnificently. But then Shackleton felt the presence of a fourth man, as did at least one of his companions. The year was 1916. A similar phenomenon had been reported from the trenches two years earlier — the "Angel of Mons", a ghostly presence apparently guiding soldiers to safety.

This all sounds fanciful — albeit in an attractive, fireside sort of way. But the stories keep on coming. Reinhold Messner, the greatest climber ever, felt a ghostly presence in the Himalayas. "I was certain there was someone there," he said. "I could sense his presence. I needed no proof." In the Andes, Joe Simpson, the author of Touching the Void, began to hear voices. He thought it was his Walkman. But it wasn't. It was voices.

A diver called Stephanie Schwabe, having recently lost her husband in a diving accident, found herself trapped in an underwater cave in the Bahamas. She was running out of air. And then — you guessed it: a ghostly presence guided her out of the cave. In the Antarctic, Ranulph Fiennes' wife, Ginnie, sensed a ghostly figure hanging around the camp. And there's an amazing story about a doomed Himalayan expedition, in which four climbers battled an avalanche with the aid of a spiritual guide.

There is, it seems, a possible scientific explanation. In extreme situations, it is possible that your brain might create hallucinations to stop you feeling alone. Having stopped panicking, you find yourself doing something, which is better than doing nothing. These are ripping tales, and Geiger tells them well. And who knows? Possibly, just possibly, they're not hallucinations at all, but maybe the ghosts of dead climbers. Or even God himself.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

The Third Man Factor tells the revealing story behind an extraordinary idea: that people at the very edge of death, often adventurers or explorers, experience a benevolent presence beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive. If only a handful of people had ever experienced the Third Man, it might be dismissed as an unusual delusion shared by a few overstressed minds. But the amazing thing is this: over the years, the experience has occurred again and again, to mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, aviators, astronauts and 9/11 survivors. All have escaped traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories of having experienced the close presence of a helper or guardian. The mysterious force has been explained as everything from hallucination to divine intervention. Recent neurological research suggests something else.

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