Customer Reviews

The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This story will keep the interest of people who believe in a religious presence in their life... and it will just as strongly mesmerize people who don't. The "THIRD-MAN" is a term that was given to the phenomena that has been reported many... many... times by people from all walks of life... not only all around the world... but from above the earth as well... when they were "assisted" during a tumultuous event... that could have ended their lives. All of these people... that included... mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, shipwreck survivors, aviators... and even astronauts... admitted having a mysterious... yet calming... "presence"... either appear in a form they could actually see and talk to... or... that they just felt that someone was either leading them... or following behind them... when their life was on the line. Throughout the telling of these phenomenal stories... the author provides documented medical and historical evidence... that at times verifies that there really is a "THIRD MAN"... and at other times... neurologists attempt to explain it away... based on criteria such as thin air... or hallucinations. Every reader probably knows... that scientists admit... that they still don't know what a large part of the brain is capable of... and why it does what it does.

It takes a lot of courage for these famous people to openly write in books about their "THIRD-MAN" experiences... and they have been doing this for over one-hundred years. For the sake of any potential readers who might make a decision not to read this book because they're not interested in that thin line of "FAITH-AND-BELIEF"... I would like to wholeheartedly recommend you read this... even putting that subject aside... simply because of how utterly... utterly... fascinating the detailed stories of human survival... depicted in places such as the south polar island of South Georgia... or on Mount Everest... or deep under the sea... or in the middle of the ocean in giant storms... where a sailor is just too beaten down by the elements to even get off the floor... and yet somehow the boat steers itself through.

There is one story that involves Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men attempting to cross the south polar island of South Georgia... during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-16... that will grip you in such a way... that you will never look at the ability of a human being to survive... in the same way again. I will be shocked if you don't find yourself grunting... groaning... or moaning... as these poor men are stripped bare by the harshest elements on this planet. In a much more current and well known event... 9/11... Ron DiFrancesco... the last living survivor to make it out of the towers... tells how... when he was ready to give up... laying face down on the floor... overcome by smoke and gasping for air... "THEN, SOMETHING REMARKABLE HAPPENED: SOMEONE TOLD ME TO GET UP. SOMEONE, HE SAID, CALLED ME. THE VOICE-WHICH WAS MALE, BUT DID NOT BELONG TO ONE OF THE PEOPLE IN THE STAIRWELL-WAS INSISTENT: GET UP! IT ADDRESSED DiFRANCESCO BY HIS FIRST NAME, AND GAVE HIM ENCOURAGEMENT. IT WAS, HEY! YOU CAN DO THIS. BUT IT WAS MORE THAN A VOICE; THERE WAS ALSO A VIVID SENSE OF A PHYSICAL PRESENCE."

This book will not... cannot... give the final answer to the question that all mankind has always been looking for. "As the climber Greg Child said, 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." And finally... and poignantly... "Paul Firth, the physician and climber who was joined by a "THIRD-MAN" on Aconcagua, argues that even if we accept prevailing neurological explanations for the "THIRD-MAN", a mystery endures:

**"A BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION DOES NOT PRECLUDE A BENIGN METAPHYSICAL ORIGIN-AN EXPLANATION OF "HOW" DOES NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION OF "WHY".

Anyone who loves adventure in the wilder parts of our planet will be enthralled by this book. According to Wikipedia, the "Third Man" factor is a phenomenon in which an unseen presence provides comfort or support during traumatic experiences.

The most famous example is recorded by Sir Ernest Shackleton, who said in his book about the harrowing final leg of his epic tale of struggle and survival in the Antarctic region "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."

Since then, numerous other reports of a strikingly similar nature have come to light. Geiger's book describes many of these experiences in vivid language.

Interestingly, it is not only people "in extremis" who experience the feeling of another presence at certain times in their lives. Geiger also describes many such examples, from the invisible friends of young children to the experiences of religious mystics.

A surprising number of people sense the presence of a loved one after death. Others have had vivid experiences of Guardian Angels at critical points in their lives.

Geiger makes the point that our minds have an ability to evoke "sensed presences" in many critical situations and that this is a powerful evolved survival mechanism. He marshalls good scientific evidence for this claim. It is all quite credible, but sometimes he seems to want to believe his hypothesis too much and reads too much into the evidence.

However that may be, it is the stories themselves that make this book well worth buying. We can choose whatever explanation we like for the "third man factor."

I am a keen trekker in the mountains and have travelled in some remote places. While I don't have a personal third man story to tell, Geiger's book gives me much comfort that a third man may come even to me in some future hour of need.

There is an excellent list of notes for readers who want to delve further into the subject.

John Geiger's terrific new book was one of the more rewarding reading experiences I've ever had. Yes, it's entertaining--Geiger is a talented writer who recounts many thrilling tales here--but I was even more moved by the underlying message of hope. Whether you think the Third Man can be explained by science, or divine intervention, what is undeniable is that there exists within us an innate will to survive. What can possibly be more universal than that? There is something in this book for every reader.

Geiger is the editorial board editor at the Globe and Mail and author of Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. What he is not is a scientist I didn't expect nor receive an in-depth review of the scientific side of this phenomenon. Geiger does give us an intelligent tour of Third Man visitations. This tour includes a serious look at the scientific aspects along with the spiritual elements.

While Geiger never says, I suspect that he comes down on the side of the spiritual aspect. At the end of several of the `laboratory' discussions, he pointed out the flaws and natural short-comings of their investigation. While many were going through extreme physical distress, this does not explain the mass experiences and sightings nor does it explain the vast differences in many of the stress factor situations - i.e., Oxygen deprivation vs sea level events.

The blending of anecdotes and science is never achieved in a smooth fashion. They are of two vastly different worlds. Whether you want to call the phenomenon Guardian Angels or hallucinations will depend on your own personal view of the world. Regardless, this book is a very exciting read and will make you thankful that you are in a warm house with a glass of tea.

I would recommend this book to anyone that is drawn to mountaineering, survival skills or wishes to explore the divine side of life.

I would also recommend: Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, The Crystal Horizon: Everest - The First Solo Ascentand Surviving the Extremes: What Happens to the Body and Mind at the Limits of Human Endurance.

Great book.

Michael L. Gooch
Author of Wingtips with Spurs

It is a very interesting subject, which is why I ordered the book. He writes well. It gets a little long in places with all the various opinions of other writers and studies. Personally I wonder if some of these studies are made by people who cannot accept that strange things happen - they have to analyze and find an explanation for them that their mind can accept. It takes the greatness out of these experiences to have them explained away like this. Also, I was quite saddened to read how people lost their lives so unnecessarily, putting themselves at risk. When you don't have a choice is one thing, but quite another thing is putting yourself and other people at risk just because you want be the first or the best. Anyway, any chance of having it translated into Norwegian? Would be good for a lot of people to read. Regards, Gerd Dansholm

I bought this book after favorable press in the Wall Street Journal and NPR. It's interesting for about 20 pages and then falls flat. It's basically a laundry list of anecdotes of people under duress experiencing help from a guardian angel or non-human presence. The book is overloaded with numerous 3-4 page stories of this sort, which quickly wear thin. I'm not sure if the subject matter is lacking or the writing (maybe both). A disappointment, nonetheless.

Mr. Geiger has collected many stories about people under extreme duress who have felt and/or seen someone else with them when logic meant the person was alone.
Geiger covers very briefly the possiblity of the "other person" being a religious experience, but seems to dismiss that train of thought. He spends a good deal of time covering scientific theories concerning the brain's reaction to duress, resulting in the "other person" delusion. It is all well written and interesting, but it has two flaws. A minor flaw is that the stories of duress become repetitive, with most of the stories being very similar descriptions of danger in mountain climbing incidents or explorations of the polar regions.
The other flaw, a major one, is Geiger's failure to address situations Geiger describes such as this: a person all alone on the sea is exhausted and barely awake at the helm in the middle of a storm. He senses that someone else is there. He is told by the voice of "the third man" to steer this way or that way. He does so and realizes that he has just avoided a destructive wave that he had not seen coming. So, if the "other person" or third man is a delusion caused by a stressed mind, where did the timely warning originate? It would have been a better book if Geiger had spent some time exploring that question.

This book is a pretty good read. The writing is good and flows well. The author's purpose is to relate a series of seemingly unexplained events in which people experience the feeling or sensation of a mysterious person, the "Third Man", who seems to appear from nowhere, and arrives in time to assist in time of danger or extreme stress. Additionally, the author tries to suggest an explanation by relating a variety of answers provided by investigators.

Geiger has clearly studied the literature to cull out these many accounts, mainly of explorers but also others such as Ron DiFrancesco, who escaped from one of the 911 towers during its collapse. For me, the main interest of the book was in the numerous interesting accounts that were assembled here.

Are these entities manifestations of guardian spirits or angels, or something which emerges from the mind? The author seems to prefer the latter conclusion and adduces researchers who produce theories or evidence for the materialist conclusion. Mr. Geiger is too polite to clearly state this conclusion himself, so he lets the scientists do it for him. Against this latter hypothesis is the testimony of those who experienced the "Third Man". It seemed so real to them that most were reluctant to attribute it to a hallucination or other mental phenomenon; or if they thought so, they preferred not to dwell on that conclusion during their crises since the experience was so comforting and helpful to them.

As a believer in guardian angels, I would be inclined to attribute some of these manifestations to those beings; however, one strike against this is the fact that, with one exception, it seems that all of the accounts related here are subjective experiences only. The role of the Third Man seems to be to provide encouragement and hope, but not any physical support. This would be consistent with a purely materialist account of the phenomenon. On the contrary, the story of Joshua Slocum concerns a being who apparently navigated his ship for him through a tremendous storm while Slocum lay incapacitated. As reviewer C L notes, this happening cannot be explained away as a mere feeling. Somehow, that ship really avoided destruction. Mere chance doesn't seem to be the answer since the ship not only survived, but made a straight beeline on course through the storm. Not included in this book are numerous accounts of others like Slocum who can back up their experience with objective facts.

On the whole, there is not much support here for the religious believer. My own opinion is that some of these stories depict actual intervention by spirits and others are perhaps some form of mental coping. The neurological researchers seem to be able to induce this feeling of an unseen person by using electromagnetic fields applied to the brain. However, this doesn't conclusively show that these experiences are only mental. It has been shown that electrical stimulation of the brain can make one hear voices or produce certain emotional states. Clearly, we also hear voices because there really are people speaking and we feel emotions because of real events which cause them. So the induction of these effects in the lab is suggestive but is not very strong evidence.

One weakness of the book is that Geiger cannot decide whether these experiences are rare or common. All the discussion about stress and multiple triggers seems to lead to the conclusion that these are a rarity. Yet interspersed is some discussion about children and their imaginary friends (a common experience) and about a large percentage of widows sensing the presence of their dead spouse. Perhaps what he is saying is that everyone can/does experience a weak form of "The Third Man", but that when pushed hard (explorers), a strong form of the experience occurs. In any case this kind of implication is not clearly stated.

So, go ahead read and enjoy, but don't expect any strong arguments either pro or con vis-à-vis the supernaturalist/materialist debate.

There is a phenomenon called "the third man factor" in which many individuals close to death have a sense of someone with them who encourages them to try to get through the experience. Globe and Mail editor John Geiger explores whether this is a scientific mystery or a religious experience in his book, The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible. Through many stories of this phenomenon, mostly from mountain climbing, and an overview of the latest science, Geiger's writing will engage most readers, especially those with an interest in unusual phenomena and those who like hearing stories about the real experiences of others. I think that believers are likely to consider the feeling of another presence to be a form of divine intervention. Scientists aren't likely to find Geiger's reporting to be compelling.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

The author shows no care for the reader's time.

I've never read a book that gave the source but ignored adding page numbers. It's a basic tradition of scholarship: Give exact details so readers can confirm the source. Readers who want to verify a quote from _Varieties of Religious Experience_, for example, might need an hour or more to find the context; a considerate scholar will give the page and so guide readers in an instant.

My guess is that most high school students are taught this need early, surely no later than senior year, so I'm sure most readers and writers will see my complaint as no mere quibble. Time is precious; we always have less time to read than we need. If I must take time rereading a book to confirm a quote, then I've lost time that could have gone to other studies.

Another reviewer notes that the book reads like a collection of anecdotes, soon tiring the reader. I feel some of that weariness, but was glad to read and compare tales.

Still, the distraction of unfinished footnotes is a shock. If _Third Man_ comes up in conversation, I will discourage reading it.