The quest for ‘The Endurance’, the long-lost ship of famed Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton is scheduled to resume in 2022. Though a previous attempt in 2019 failed, organizers of the new expedition are undaunted, and more determined than ever to find the ship, lost since 1915. To succeed, the expedition will have to struggle through miles of pack ice and dive to 10,000 feet below the dark waters of the Weddell Sea. But though the target may be elusive, searchers, like Shackleton, perhaps may hope for some special help.
Author John Geiger’s 2010 book, The Third Man Factor, Surviving the Impossible, has many stories of how people at the very edge of death often sense a presence beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive.
Such anecdotes, it turns out, are quite common. In moments of great danger, stress and privation many find themselves accompanied by a stranger, or unseen presence, who comforts and guides them. The phenomenon is so common, in fact, that it has a name: ‘the Third Man factor’, described as an encounter with an unseen presence or spirit providing comfort in a traumatic situation.
Shackleton wrote about one such event in 1916 when he and two others were accompanied by a mystery companion during their arduous 36-hour hike across Elephant island to a whaling station in South Georgia on a mission to bring help to stranded colleagues. All three spoke later of their shared awareness of another individual who walked with them to the whaling station, but no further. Shackleton later wrote in his book South: “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.”
The significance of such experiences are, of course, dismissed in orthodox circles as hallucinations brought on by stress—psychological disorders like sleep paralysis. When compared to the evidence, though, such explanations fall short. Shackleton and his companions, for instance, all experienced an encounter with the same individual, something unaccounted for by any theory of strictly subjective awareness.
Perhaps it is time to take another look at the notion of guardian angels. Certainly, in this tumultuous time, we could all use a little more angelic assistance.
