Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Welcome back to the show,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist. We might be embarking on a two
Speaker 3: part episode this week. We're not sure. We have a
Speaker 3: lot of thoughts about this. It's something pretty important to
Speaker 3: all of us. We wanted to begin tonight's exploration with
Speaker 3: a question, do you believe in guardian angels or do
Speaker 3: it was someone who does.
Speaker 4: Jeez, that is a big question, because it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: you could think of someone in your life who looks
Speaker 4: out for you as like a corporeal embodiment of the
Speaker 4: idea of a guardian angel, and you could certainly use
Speaker 4: that like as a stand in conversationally, like so and
Speaker 4: so my best friend is my real guardian angel. But
Speaker 4: then you have to think about it too from the
Speaker 4: kind of more spiritual side, and that's where things get
Speaker 4: a little trickier to kind of parse out for me.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Yeah, Matt saved my life a couple of times.
Speaker 2: Actually, same, same, same, you guys, same you guys. I
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily believe in an angel, right, which is
Speaker 2: an interesting part of the show, because the thing that
Speaker 2: would be described as an angel can be described and
Speaker 2: thought of in so many other ways, and it's depending
Speaker 2: on the lens.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the cultural framework is a huge deal. Is
Speaker 3: this just a a higher educational power? Is there a demon? Right?
Speaker 3: You know? Whether not a given deity is considered demonic
Speaker 3: or angelic kind of depends on the culture and the
Speaker 3: way the Great Game of Telephone works out. It's weird, right,
Speaker 3: It's a question that is automatically divisive, because if you
Speaker 3: answer yes to the idea of guardian angels, then you're
Speaker 3: also required to say yes to a lot of other things,
Speaker 3: the presence of an afterlife, the concept of supernatural forces,
Speaker 3: and as we always say, your personal spiritual beliefs are
Speaker 3: your own. No one has ever had a spiritual belief
Speaker 3: that the rest of the world one hundred percent agrees with.
Speaker 4: Oh, well, you know, and also, like I mean, we're
Speaker 4: talking about what one belief kind of then begets. Is
Speaker 4: if there is a guardian angel on one shoulder, like
Speaker 4: the classic cartoon example, is there also a demon on
Speaker 4: your other shoulder fighting against your best interests?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah? What What are the mechanics of a given
Speaker 3: spiritual system? Right? Is there some kind of new tone
Speaker 3: in relationship between good and evil such that an equal
Speaker 3: and opposite force shall always be generated? That's weird. I
Speaker 3: sound a little off base there, but we have to
Speaker 3: say this. The bulk of human science has yet to
Speaker 3: acknowledge an afterlife, much less the idea of purportedly spiritual guardians,
Speaker 3: or have they. We're doing a setup. That's a setup.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. Welcome to the story of the
Speaker 3: third Man syndrome. Sometimes also called a third man factor.
Speaker 3: The name is derived from a passage that ts Elliott
Speaker 3: wrote in his haunting poem The Wasteland, which also if
Speaker 3: you like good stuff, you should read it in full,
Speaker 3: but specifically third Man factor is inspired by this passage.
Speaker 4: Who is the third who walks always beside you. When
Speaker 4: I count, there are only you and I together.
Speaker 2: But when I look ahead up the white road, there
Speaker 2: was always another one walking beside.
Speaker 3: You, gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do
Speaker 3: not know whether a man or a woman.
Speaker 4: But who is that on the other side of you?
Speaker 3: All right, because it's poetry, we're gonna do finger snaps
Speaker 3: instead of claps. Hey, good job ts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a beautiful poem. I've been you've You've mentioned that,
Speaker 2: or at least referenced that several times because it is
Speaker 2: a long poem, right, I think this is in like
Speaker 2: the fifth section of the poem. It's wonderful. I just
Speaker 2: reread it. I'm sure you guys did too.
Speaker 4: It's just guys, I can't help but think of that
Speaker 4: footprints thing people talk about, you know, about Jesus with
Speaker 4: He's like he was standing walking alongside you all the time,
Speaker 4: and the other set of footprints when they went away
Speaker 4: with when he was carrying you. That's kind of I
Speaker 4: feel like reference this.
Speaker 3: The Lord replied, my son, my precious child, I love you,
Speaker 3: and I would never leave you during your times of
Speaker 3: trial and suffering. When you see only one set of footprints,
Speaker 3: it was then that I carried you exactly.
Speaker 2: I don't want some dude carrying me around.
Speaker 4: Hey, come on, man, he's yoked, man, he can he
Speaker 4: can pull it off.
Speaker 3: It's okay, Yeah, it's uh. He's a classic persistence hunter.
Speaker 3: It just weird.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: This idea both a poem and the prayer that we're
Speaker 3: citing there, they describe a bizarre phenomena across time and culture.
Speaker 3: During traumatic experiences, human beings often report sensing an unseen presence,
Speaker 3: sometimes hearing a voice, sometimes walking or encountering something they
Speaker 3: think they do see a human stranger. Yet when this
Speaker 3: third man appears, it is never a threat. It is
Speaker 3: a comforting in spe irene or helpful ally, and it
Speaker 3: only shows up at critical life or death moments, and
Speaker 3: afterwards the survivors often claim this thing, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: this helpful stranger, saved their life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really weird. And it's almost always like a
Speaker 2: human or a human like thing. That's why you get
Speaker 2: the angel, right, that's why you get that entity, that
Speaker 2: other entity, but is human like. So it's not I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's it's corporeal in some way and humanoid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is There are so many stories about
Speaker 3: these occurrences with just with a couple of quotations there
Speaker 3: you can see this date's deep back into history. One
Speaker 3: of the best books about this and shout out to
Speaker 3: our pal Dylan Fagan, there is the third Man factor,
Speaker 3: Surviving the Impossible by a guy named John Geiger, and
Speaker 3: in his book, which definitely should read if you're interested
Speaker 3: in this stuff, you'll see a litany of car helicopter
Speaker 3: playing crashes, people lost in the wilderness, people getting shot
Speaker 3: with firearms, other traumatic injuries. Whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3: It appears that in any situation there are at least
Speaker 3: a handful of instances involving a mysterious presence that shows
Speaker 3: up at just the right time and then disappears once
Speaker 3: the danger is passed, and the survivors this is a
Speaker 3: weird thing. The survivors are certain of what they've experienced,
Speaker 3: and they might ask family members, They might ask first responders,
Speaker 3: what happened to that person who pulled me from the fire,
Speaker 3: what happened to that person who led me out of
Speaker 3: the building on September eleventh, And the response is always
Speaker 3: there was no one there.
Speaker 4: There's a perk you can get in one of the
Speaker 4: fallout games called the Mysterious Stranger Perk, where like this
Speaker 4: dude in a Fedora will come and like, you know,
Speaker 4: take out a bunch of the means that are coming
Speaker 4: for you and then vanish like Kaiser soose.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think that character has always got like
Speaker 2: a long coat on. Yeah, always shows up in the
Speaker 2: VATS system when you exactly that's.
Speaker 4: What I'll ail the VAT system. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, well, okay, So this book is fantastic and if
Speaker 2: you want to check out a video version of it,
Speaker 2: if you've got some time to hang out, there's I
Speaker 2: think it's called Idea City, a talk that John Geiger
Speaker 2: gave about this book and about the findings, and it's
Speaker 2: just great. You can look at up on YouTube right now.
Speaker 3: You could also, if you're a little more pressed for time,
Speaker 3: there's a great primer interview he has on NPR with
Speaker 3: our buddy guy Roz. Guy. We haven't met, but we
Speaker 3: do have a parasocial relationship with you. Sorry, sorry, Bud,
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show. So one of the most famous
Speaker 3: documented examples about this As a matter of fact, we
Speaker 3: were talking about fair One of the things that likely
Speaker 3: informed ts Eliot was a guy named Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 3: For anybody who's seen The Terror, I know we all
Speaker 3: love that novel series and that show. This guy Shackleton
Speaker 3: is in his prime around the time that Europe was
Speaker 3: sending a lot of people to all sorts of whack
Speaker 3: could do places. He was in a nineteen fourteen to
Speaker 3: nineteen seventeen Antarctic expedition and their boat, the Endurance, became
Speaker 3: trapped in ice for about two years. It kind of now,
Speaker 3: I hope this is in the hot take. It kind
Speaker 3: of sucked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh boy, that would suck. So this is definitely
Speaker 4: the actual historical event that influenced The Terror, because that's
Speaker 4: that's what happens. They get like locked in ice and
Speaker 4: they begin to starve and run out of provisions and
Speaker 4: also lose their minds.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately. Yeah, this was not a singular occurrence, so Simmons
Speaker 3: is kind of writing about a genre of bad stuff happening.
Speaker 3: When Shackleton and his crew get jammed up literally in
Speaker 3: the ice, he and two companions say, the only way
Speaker 3: we're going to make it out of here is if
Speaker 3: we take a very dangerous journey on foot. So they
Speaker 3: trek across mountain ranges where humans are not meant to be.
Speaker 2: The humans have not been to right, there's no names
Speaker 2: for these things that we know of, well, at least
Speaker 2: he describes it in that way. I think like unnamed mountainous.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, very lovecraftied the Mountains of Madness right right exactly.
Speaker 3: And they go across glaciers and the whole thing is
Speaker 3: they're hoping, hoping against the odds that they can reach
Speaker 3: a whaling station in Stromness Bay. Somehow they survive. There's
Speaker 3: three of them, and after they survive, when they return
Speaker 3: to civilization, they unanimously credit their survival to an unidentified
Speaker 3: fourth traveler whom they all thought. They were all convinced
Speaker 3: this guy they did not know was with them every
Speaker 3: step of the way and was their guide, was telling
Speaker 3: them where to go and how.
Speaker 2: To get there, basically encouraging them the entire way.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's almost like it's the problem solving part of all
Speaker 2: of their minds where it went together into this fourth
Speaker 2: person and they just said, this is what we do,
Speaker 2: now go, you know, like that.
Speaker 3: Kind of thing they so much shared between three people
Speaker 3: three moves.
Speaker 4: But I mean, is the idea that this is some
Speaker 4: sort of collective delusion, This is some sort of product
Speaker 4: of ice madness.
Speaker 3: This is the thing that haunts these explorers for the
Speaker 3: rest of their natural lives. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: we have a couple of quotations, one from Shackelford's seminal
Speaker 3: work on his expeditions, called simply south because you know
Speaker 3: it's Antarctica. This is kind of a long quotation, but
Speaker 3: I suggest we round robin it because it gives us
Speaker 3: a real sense of place.
Speaker 4: When I look back at those days, I have no
Speaker 4: doubt that Providence guided us not only across the snowfields,
Speaker 4: but across the storm white Sea that separated Elephant Island
Speaker 4: from our landing place on South Georgia.
Speaker 2: I know that during that long and racking march of
Speaker 2: thirty six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of
Speaker 2: South Georgia, it seemed to me often that there were
Speaker 2: four not three.
Speaker 3: I said nothing to my companions on the point, but
Speaker 3: afterwards Worsley said to me, balss I had a curious
Speaker 3: feeling on the march that there was another person with us.
Speaker 4: Cream confessed to the same idea. One feels the dearth
Speaker 4: of human words, the roughness of mortal speech in trying
Speaker 4: to describe things intangible. But a record of our journeys
Speaker 4: would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very
Speaker 4: near to our hearts.
Speaker 3: And before we get to the next part, let's remember,
Speaker 3: let's acknowledge that during this particular era of exploration, it
Speaker 3: was not uncommon for authors to embellish, to judge up
Speaker 3: their stories a little bit so that they could sell
Speaker 3: books and do lectures more successfully. However, this case is different.
Speaker 3: It's not one of those, because, as our buddy indicates,
Speaker 3: his companions one hundred percent unanimously agreed with him. In fact,
Speaker 3: one of them, Frank Worsley, who he just mentioned, he
Speaker 3: later went on to write something eerily similar.
Speaker 2: He said, there was indeed one thing about our crossing
Speaker 2: of South Georgia, a thing which I have never been
Speaker 2: able to explain. Whenever I reviewed the incidents of that march,
Speaker 2: I had the subconscious feeling that there were four of
Speaker 2: us instead of three, and.
Speaker 4: Guys, I couldn't help. But you know, remark on in
Speaker 4: the in the beginning of the previous quotation, the word
Speaker 4: Providence is capitalized, and I just for a second I
Speaker 4: was like, is was that the name they gave to
Speaker 4: this unseen helper? But it is a religious word that
Speaker 4: is imbued with like godlike power, and it really does
Speaker 4: refer specifically to divine guardianship from a deity or a god,
Speaker 4: and often people of faith thank God for his quote
Speaker 4: unquote providence exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Providence is in this milieu. It is a way
Speaker 3: to attempt to explain how you managed not to die
Speaker 3: when the odds were so against you.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, Well, I before you move on to another example,
Speaker 2: just there's another one that I'm coming that's coming to
Speaker 2: mind because it's so old and I'm trying to imagine
Speaker 2: like these older written down experiences like this. It's like
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen, nineteen seventeen kind of era. Back in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, there was this guy, Joshua Slocumbe that is
Speaker 2: also described by John Geiger in his book Who He
Speaker 2: It's just so weird to me, this one. All of
Speaker 2: these are weird, but this one was particularly strange to
Speaker 2: me because of maybe the physical aspect of it. This
Speaker 2: is a dude who's he's a sailor. He's like a
Speaker 2: captain of a ship. He stops off in port eats
Speaker 2: a bunch of cheese. Apparently some of that cheese starts
Speaker 2: to mess with his system. He gets really really really
Speaker 2: sick cheese madness. Well as as he gets back onto
Speaker 2: a ship and sails it out in the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 2: and as he's going there's a terrible storm and he's
Speaker 2: so sick that he basically passes out. And then he
Speaker 2: has this remembrance of waking up and seeing a person,
Speaker 2: a tall man, manning the wheel and the dude says
Speaker 2: to him, hey, we're I'm gonna get you through this
Speaker 2: night to safety basically where and the dude passes back
Speaker 2: out slom and then wakes up and he's safe and
Speaker 2: everything's cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know it's funny too, though. There are
Speaker 4: often also accounts of people at death's door, you know,
Speaker 4: at the very ends of their lives, seeing a third
Speaker 4: person that does not rescue them from death, but rather
Speaker 4: shepherds them into death.
Speaker 3: Or tells them to turn around. It goes And I
Speaker 3: love that we're mentioning Slocum, who is an historical figure
Speaker 3: that I wish more people read. His book Sailing Alone
Speaker 3: around the World. Is a stem disturned banger. Yes that's
Speaker 3: a ship joke. There's also a there's a great song
Speaker 3: about him by a group called rail Yard Ghost and
Speaker 3: it's the Ballad of Joshua Slocomb. It's also great. But
Speaker 3: this is I love that we're pointing this out because
Speaker 3: it seems that we see already one thing in common.
Speaker 3: People are not having this happen on a regular Tuesday, right. No,
Speaker 3: you're not not late for Blockbuster. That's a dated reference.
Speaker 3: You're not like late to go by a case ada
Speaker 3: and then a mysterious stranger shows up and helps you
Speaker 3: through traffic. The stakes have to be pretty high for
Speaker 3: the third man to appear.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the veil concept that's referenced a
Speaker 2: lot in several different religious sets of beliefs, as well
Speaker 2: as in popular culture. Where as you get closer to that,
Speaker 2: the actual veil that separates this world from whatever the
Speaker 2: next one is, sure, it's almost like you become visible
Speaker 2: to that other side, and perhaps something from the other
Speaker 2: side comes into either again, as you were saying, pull
Speaker 2: you in or put get you out of there, it's
Speaker 2: not your time yet or something, or maybe just guide
Speaker 2: your ship.
Speaker 3: The void stares back, right, And so much fiction is
Speaker 3: full of this idea. Again. Lovecraft really dug this concept
Speaker 3: that if that the idea of true perception or enhanced
Speaker 3: perception is a two way street. The ability that a
Speaker 3: human may have to see beyond the mortal pale also
Speaker 3: makes them more visible. And this is to your excellent point, Matt.
Speaker 3: This is something that we see across cultures and across
Speaker 3: spiritual belief systems.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the thing that always gets me. When you
Speaker 4: start seeing all of those parallels and synchronicities between cultures
Speaker 4: and religions separated by you know, thousands and thousands of
Speaker 4: miles and language barriers and all that. That's where my
Speaker 4: head really starts to begin to believe in this kind
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating. Right, will pause for a moment for a
Speaker 3: word from our sponsors, and we'll be right back. And
Speaker 3: we've returned. While we're sticking with explorers, do we want
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about Frank Smith?
Speaker 5: Oh dude, mister Smithe yes, yes Smith, if you yes,
Speaker 5: because that's smyt still an explorer nineteen thirty three, he is.
Speaker 3: We don't want to talk trash about him. Okay. Way
Speaker 3: before climbing Mount Everest became an environmentally dangerous proposition for
Speaker 3: the world, this guy was one of the front runners
Speaker 3: to summit Everest, which means reaching the top of this
Speaker 3: cartoonish mountain, and the journey to the top was an
Speaker 3: absolute disaster and honestly not surprising it would be. So
Speaker 3: he had a hiking party with him. They fell back
Speaker 3: as they ascended the mountain because the wind was brutal.
Speaker 3: There's snow everywhere, there's dangerous unstable ice, and of course
Speaker 3: there's a lot of low oxygen, which we'll play into
Speaker 3: our exploration tonight. Our buddy Frank, though he continues, is
Speaker 3: on when the others fall back, and he does not
Speaker 3: summit Everest. He misses it by just one thousand feet.
Speaker 3: But unlike many other people in the past and you
Speaker 3: know in the present who attempt to climb Everest, he survives,
Speaker 3: and he thinks he survives because somebody helped him.
Speaker 2: It's really weird because he did have a bunch of
Speaker 2: companions with him, right, so he already has this sense
Speaker 2: of companionship as he's making his way up. Then he
Speaker 2: gets to that point you're talking about Ben, where he
Speaker 2: he's like, now, okay, I'm now I'm on my own,
Speaker 2: and something stays with him there and it's not like
Speaker 2: he just had that sensation, right, he acted.
Speaker 3: On it, right. Yeah, and this is something that you
Speaker 3: know right to us with your own accounts here. We
Speaker 3: think this will be personal to a lot of our
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Have you ever had
Speaker 3: a moment where you knew that you might be losing it,
Speaker 3: like a couple badgers might be falling out of your
Speaker 3: cognitive bag, because Frank does. He is later writing his
Speaker 3: diary and he says, Oh, I had this moment where
Speaker 3: I realized something was not all the pistons were firing
Speaker 3: the way they should because I pulled out a slab
Speaker 3: of something called kindle mint cake.
Speaker 2: I've heard it's like a not a candy bar, but
Speaker 2: something similar to that. That's what I think about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, peppermints, brittle of some sort perhaps.
Speaker 3: Something like Yeah. And he breaks it in half and
Speaker 3: he turns around. He's like, Oh, I'm gonna give the
Speaker 3: other half to this guy's with me and there's no
Speaker 3: one there, and he thinks.
Speaker 4: Oh, whoops.
Speaker 6: Isn't that funny though? The idea of thinking about the
Speaker 6: moment where you you're the you meta cognitively, No, you're right,
Speaker 6: you're not experiencing things accurately, and yet there you are
Speaker 6: having that experience in media arrests.
Speaker 4: I look forward to it, fellas I look forward to
Speaker 4: being aware of my own descent into madness.
Speaker 3: You say that now, but I know you guys from
Speaker 3: the front lines. It's I'm not having a grand.
Speaker 4: Now, I'm not even wait wait a minute, and now
Speaker 4: you're fine, man, don't don't don't worry.
Speaker 3: I can't count on my looks forever. But I appreciate that. Well.
Speaker 2: I want to get back into Smith because he's got
Speaker 2: a great quote here. Yes, but just I want to
Speaker 2: add this one thing. When my grandfather was on his
Speaker 2: deathbed and we talked about this, I think in a
Speaker 2: couple other episodes, but that thing that happens right as
Speaker 2: you're about to pass over, where he was referencing things
Speaker 2: that he was seeing in the ceiling and people and
Speaker 2: stuff and objects, and he was seeing it and experiencing
Speaker 2: it in real time, and it just you know, that's
Speaker 2: another common thing, right, Oh oh, you'll hear someone who's
Speaker 2: on their deathbed exclaim oh there you are, and talking
Speaker 2: about someone specific. It does make me also make a
Speaker 2: connection to that here where he is, Smith is on
Speaker 2: the edge. He is not doing great. The reason he
Speaker 2: has to turn back is because he's almost dead. Its
Speaker 2: terrible conditions. There's no way he's gonna make it if
Speaker 2: he keeps going. But whatever this thing is he feels
Speaker 2: is there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he says. All the time that I was climbing alone,
Speaker 3: I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by
Speaker 3: a second person. The feeling was so strong that it
Speaker 3: completely eliminated listen to this part, completely eliminated all loneliness.
Speaker 3: I might otherwise have felt.
Speaker 2: Whoa and like you.
Speaker 3: Were saying, no, he's he's aware.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it's encouragement, right, It's it's someone is pushing someone,
Speaker 2: someone physically is essentially that you have the sensation that
Speaker 2: someone is physically pushing you to keep going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these guys are not crackpots. We gotta point
Speaker 3: that out. These are not These are not the hippies
Speaker 3: of their time by any measure or means. These are,
Speaker 3: in the case of explorers in particular, hard practical individuals. Sure,
Speaker 3: they probably all have their own set of closely held
Speaker 3: spiritual beliefs, but that just means they're the kind of
Speaker 3: guys who will pray while they're also double checking their gear.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are guys that are experienced, seasoned, you know,
Speaker 4: wilderness he dudes. They know how to survive in a
Speaker 4: pinch and would not rely on the divine you know
Speaker 4: as such.
Speaker 3: Yeah, their idea being that whatever divine forces may exist,
Speaker 3: you still have to prepare yourself for life in the
Speaker 3: real brutal world. And look, we're talking about this often
Speaker 3: rose colored glasses age of exploration. It launched a thousand
Speaker 3: novels and a thousand travelogues and so on, but it's
Speaker 3: important to the third man factor still exists in the
Speaker 3: modern day. You'll hear stories from yeah, historical figures, a
Speaker 3: lot of them. Actually, you'll hear stories from a lot
Speaker 3: of military veterans, and some of the audience may have
Speaker 3: had this experience as you're hearing this tonight. You'll also
Speaker 3: hear much more recent stories like people who survived nine
Speaker 3: to eleven. We refer to this at the start of
Speaker 3: our exploration, but maybe we should talk a little bit
Speaker 3: more about Ron de Francesco.
Speaker 2: Ron de Francesco has this crazy story where he's working
Speaker 2: in the South Tower. He is a money market trader.
Speaker 2: It is nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: He's on the eighty fourth floor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's above the impact that occurs in the South
Speaker 2: Tower that day. So he goes into the stairwell. It's
Speaker 2: filled with smoke, there's fire down below in the stairwell.
Speaker 2: He has to get down on his stomach and he's
Speaker 2: just there, as you would, panicking, right, what the heck
Speaker 2: am I gonna do here? And he said there were
Speaker 2: people around him who had just kind of given up.
Speaker 2: There were people who were just you know, crying, wailing,
Speaker 2: and he felt something someone physically touch him, grab his
Speaker 2: hand and pull him down towards the fire, and this thing,
Speaker 2: whatever it was, gave him courage and just said, come on,
Speaker 2: we have to go. If you want to live, go now.
Speaker 2: And he went down through the fire like push through
Speaker 2: the fire and debris that was there, made it down
Speaker 2: the stairwell where it looked normal and everything was fine.
Speaker 2: And he ended up being the final person out of
Speaker 2: the South Tower before it collapsed.
Speaker 3: The last person out of the South Tower before it collapsed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and Thomas S. Geiger talks about this quite quite in depth. Also.
Speaker 3: You know, if we assume Ron's perspective here, then it
Speaker 3: makes sense that you wouldn't see the person because of
Speaker 3: all the smoke and the chaos. So now it's just
Speaker 3: an any port in a storm situation.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't a person. It was just him.
Speaker 3: That person, if they do indeed exist, have never identified themselves.
Speaker 3: They have never been found. There is no record of
Speaker 3: a second person accompanying Raun outside of the South Town.
Speaker 4: Well, guys, do you think there's a difference or a
Speaker 4: separation between third man syndrome and just good old fashioned
Speaker 4: divine intervention?
Speaker 3: That's the question, Guardian Angel Or is there another explanation.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess I just mean like not manifesting as
Speaker 4: an individual, but maybe like getting a premonition, you know,
Speaker 4: hearing something on the radio that you interpret in such
Speaker 4: a way that leads you to take an action that
Speaker 4: ultimately ends up saving your life. Things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's difficult because often when people explore or navigate
Speaker 3: or interrogate the idea of divine intervention, they're doing so
Speaker 3: with the benefit of retrospect.
Speaker 4: That's very true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can get our full divine intervention ideas. I
Speaker 2: think an episode that came out last year. It's way
Speaker 2: October November last year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this actually harkens back to many other episodes
Speaker 3: we've done, we'll recommend them as as we're as we're
Speaker 3: exploring this. But our question now is, what's the deal?
Speaker 3: Why have so many people from widely disparate backgrounds, Why
Speaker 3: have so many people throughout history encountered this phenomena even
Speaker 3: before it had a name? Is the third Man syndrome
Speaker 3: just a more secular way of believing in the supernatural?
Speaker 3: Could it somehow be possible for us to truly understand
Speaker 3: what's going on here?
Speaker 2: And with that, we're gonna break just for a moment
Speaker 2: here from our sponsors. We'll be right back, and we've returned.
Speaker 3: Where it gets crazy. Maybe, you know, maybe we all
Speaker 3: have very spiritual people or very religious people in our lives.
Speaker 3: And after talking with some of those folks, you know,
Speaker 3: I was speaking with some monks about this a while
Speaker 3: back out there in Knyr's Georgia. For people of that,
Speaker 3: you know, pre existing belief system, all the explanation you
Speaker 3: need is helpful spirits or angels or divine intervention. Why
Speaker 3: would you look at gift horus in the mouth just
Speaker 3: thank your lucky stars that you survived, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true, it's true, And I mean so often,
Speaker 4: you know, these types of phenomenon that we describe are
Speaker 4: kind of ways of codifying or of like, you know,
Speaker 4: making manifest things that religions can explain, you know, in
Speaker 4: and of themselves. They don't need science, they don't need
Speaker 4: any other like rational explanation. But you know, as thinking individuals,
Speaker 4: we oftentimes are looking for that if we're not fully
Speaker 4: just able to just on faith. Right.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The way I like to put it is science attempts
Speaker 3: to answer how a thing occurs. Religion attempts to answer why.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 2: I like that because it does feel as though if
Speaker 2: you experience something like that, this third Man syndrome, whatever
Speaker 2: it is, you feel as though it helped you through
Speaker 2: and survive a situation. In my mind, that individual who
Speaker 2: survived would want to in some way devote themselves to
Speaker 2: whatever that thing was.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If is this a part of some religious belief? Is
Speaker 2: this part of some spiritual thing that I'm currently not
Speaker 2: connected to that I maybe should be more.
Speaker 3: Like MDes near death experiences, the transform the transformative, the
Speaker 3: transformative thanks folks still learning English. The transformative aspects of
Speaker 3: this are similar to the overview effect that astronauts encounter
Speaker 3: when they see the world from above. It makes you
Speaker 3: rethink your priorities in your place in reality.
Speaker 4: You know, we talked about this pretty recently, at least
Speaker 4: this year, the overview effect, And I think it came
Speaker 4: up that William Shatner, you know, who went into space.
Speaker 4: He had a very distinctly different experience of the overview effect,
Speaker 4: where he experienced it very negatively, not in a way
Speaker 4: of like the grandeur of the universe, but in a
Speaker 4: way of like, boy, are we fucked right?
Speaker 3: Also, the overview effect is not super friendly to people
Speaker 3: with big egos, not saying that's will I haven't met.
Speaker 2: Him, but hey, well not also that feeling that, oh shoot,
Speaker 2: we're alone on that thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is everybody is living on a non consensual spaceship.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Earth. Other people, though, are not immediately just
Speaker 3: taking this as it is. A lot of folks will
Speaker 3: not look a metaphysical gift horse in the mouth. Right.
Speaker 3: Whatever happened, however it came to be, whatever providence smiled
Speaker 3: upon me, Thank you. I'll keep it moving, I'll try
Speaker 3: to be better. But other folks are increasingly interested in
Speaker 3: solving this mystery. Can we explain the thing? The humans
Speaker 3: are the great artificers. We want to know the mechanisms,
Speaker 3: they say. So there's this interview we mentioned on MPR
Speaker 3: with Guy Roz talking with Geiger. You can hear a
Speaker 3: bunch of other stuff. Again, we cannot overemphasize how good
Speaker 3: this book is. He is one of the world's foremost
Speaker 3: experts on third Man factor, and he says, look, science
Speaker 3: may provide some answers. Spirituality and science do not have
Speaker 3: to be diametrically opposed. They can coexist. And he says, look, first,
Speaker 3: you don't have to be spiritual to have these kind
Speaker 3: of inexplicable experiences. If that was true, then how come
Speaker 3: atheists and skeptics and other non believers still have the
Speaker 3: same thing happen?
Speaker 2: Dude, another great place of throwing an example here Jerry Lenninger,
Speaker 2: who was on the Mere space Station in the late nineties,
Speaker 2: I think ninety seven. There were a series of like
Speaker 2: terrible events that occurred on the Mere space station. We're
Speaker 2: talking like big old fires when you're floating around there
Speaker 2: in orbit on the Mere space station. And Jerry, who
Speaker 2: is at least is described by Geiger as very scientifically minded.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a dude with PhDs medical degrees.
Speaker 2: Very serious. Again, Geiger describes him as scientifically minded. He's
Speaker 2: up there going through these things, and he says he's
Speaker 2: guided by some other presence that is not physically on
Speaker 2: you know, mere space station with him, but is guiding
Speaker 2: him and telling him solutions to problems. Right, Yeah, like these,
Speaker 2: in these terrifying situations. There's this other presence that he
Speaker 2: kind of attributes to his father. So for somebody who
Speaker 2: isn't isn't religiously minded, perhaps it's like a in ancestors
Speaker 2: kind of connection or someone else he's passed on because
Speaker 2: his dad had died a couple of years back when
Speaker 2: he was going through this, and he attributed this presence.
Speaker 4: To his dad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he was primed to do so. As we'll
Speaker 3: get to as we'll see. You know, this is a
Speaker 3: big point. The first clue to solving this case hinges
Speaker 3: upon perspective to kind of what you're saying. Earlier survivors
Speaker 3: all experience this presence, however they may explain it as
Speaker 3: something outside of them external. So our question begins with
Speaker 3: most of critical thoughts, or a lot of it is
Speaker 3: reinterpreting how you frame a question. So what if the
Speaker 3: answer to the third Man mystery can be found not
Speaker 3: outside but within the person experiencing it. That's where we
Speaker 3: get to the science.
Speaker 4: Yeah, at its core, third Man syndrome is really most
Speaker 4: easily described or explained as a coping mechanism. I think
Speaker 4: we've been hinting at that kind of all along. When
Speaker 4: we as you know, thinking, feeling terrified, often human beings
Speaker 4: are in a situation that threatens our existence. Our minds
Speaker 4: are pretty malleable and can play some pretty interesting and
Speaker 4: often functional tricks on us. They can create these worlds,
Speaker 4: these hallucinatory sensory experiences that help us parse something that
Speaker 4: feels unparsable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have a side question has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with our exploration this week. What is cope? Like? I
Speaker 3: see it on the Internet where they say, oh, that's
Speaker 3: a cope? Is it bad?
Speaker 4: Well, I do you know copium? People talk about sometimes
Speaker 4: are opium, But I don't know. I think a cope
Speaker 4: is just like a way of getting by. It's just
Speaker 4: like it's very much what we're talking about here. It's
Speaker 4: just like a method of powering through. Okay, I think
Speaker 4: and I know, Ben, I haven't actually seen that in
Speaker 4: internet to parlance, but I'll be on the lookout. I
Speaker 4: bet you the moment. Now that I'm mind aware of this,
Speaker 4: I'll see it everywhere. What's that one called that's the one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might happen. Shout out to our Shout out
Speaker 3: to our friends on our Facebook page. Here's where it
Speaker 3: gets crazy. You who have been having a lovely discourse
Speaker 3: about better Minehoff as well, We see you. We're on there.
Speaker 3: This idea of science is fascinating. I love you're bringing
Speaker 3: this up because we know that if you look at
Speaker 3: just the way a human brain functions, take third man
Speaker 3: experiences out of the equation for a moment, you see
Speaker 3: things get weird when you're really sleep deprived. You know,
Speaker 3: I love sleep deprivation because it helps your mind go
Speaker 3: to really weird places. It's kind of meditation. It's probably
Speaker 3: not good for you. But exhaustion, high altitude environments, you
Speaker 3: know that lack of oxygen, they all can disrupt normal
Speaker 3: brain functions. So your point, nol, perhaps that does lead
Speaker 3: to well we know it provably leads to vivid hallucinations,
Speaker 3: sensory experiences. What was that voice over there? What's that
Speaker 3: on the edge of my peripheral vision? So, because this
Speaker 3: can alter your normal brain function, these extreme conditions may
Speaker 3: be fundamental to the third man factor. They may be
Speaker 3: the crucial piece that has to happen, because again, the
Speaker 3: third man only shows up when you're in a very
Speaker 3: high stake situation. Right.
Speaker 4: Have you guys ever seen the Orson Wells film The
Speaker 4: Third Man?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I haven't.
Speaker 4: I've just seen clips from it. I know it's like
Speaker 4: a classic noir and I've been meaning to I was
Speaker 4: reading up on it a little bit, and I'm not
Speaker 4: sure if it actually has anything to do with who
Speaker 4: we're talking about today, but I had to bring it
Speaker 4: out just because of the name alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a couple third Man things, right, There's
Speaker 3: one by Carol Reid. I think the idea first off,
Speaker 3: it's just a really great title, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Well, there's also, of course Jack White's record label Third
Speaker 4: Man Record.
Speaker 3: Ah nice?
Speaker 2: Who is this muse up there somewhere that is inspiring
Speaker 2: all of this music and film mckery what but no?
Speaker 2: But yeah, intense situations at the cusp of potentially death
Speaker 2: right where there are stories in the era of people
Speaker 2: who were floating on a raft for thirty days for months,
Speaker 2: who experience this thing because they're experiencing all the things
Speaker 2: you just described there, exhaustion, sleep, deprivation, starvation, all of
Speaker 2: that occurring simultaneously. And it is it does appear to
Speaker 2: be some kind of no it's I would I would
Speaker 2: say cusp of death. Really. I mean, you're right there
Speaker 2: on the edge.
Speaker 3: You're right there on the edge. And it's it's huge
Speaker 3: in a lot of fiction too, for anybody who is
Speaker 3: still kind of trying to rock what what we're describing.
Speaker 3: Think of novels like the Life of or the film adaptation, right,
Speaker 3: we all remember that just as you're describing their Matt,
Speaker 3: there's someone unfortunately stranded on a boat in the open ocean.
Speaker 3: And are their animal companions real or is it a hallucination?
Speaker 4: I mean a tiger of the mind.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's almost the way your conscious mind can't
Speaker 2: get you to do the actually your body needs to
Speaker 2: take It's functional. I love that well, because your body
Speaker 2: is so let's say, just exhaustion, right and maybe potentially
Speaker 2: hypothermia if you're talking about Shackleton and his crew, just
Speaker 2: to get your legs to keep moving right like, sometimes
Speaker 2: maybe your conscious mind won't allow you to do it,
Speaker 2: so you need something else in.
Speaker 3: There because your conscious mind is a grand tapestry of
Speaker 3: fears and safeguards and constraints, which is why your unconscious mind,
Speaker 3: if you're human, does so much excellent work at night
Speaker 3: while you're asleep. So look, we know that oxygen deprivation
Speaker 3: on its own will give you crazy experiences. To be clear,
Speaker 3: do not try this at home. This is not medical advice.
Speaker 3: Try to just keep breathing oxygen the way you already do,
Speaker 3: and hold the phone. Call the third man. This is
Speaker 3: part one of a two part series. Guys, Let's be honest,
Speaker 3: we're not exactly sure how we're going to break this
Speaker 3: up yet. Wow. I can't believe that we went so
Speaker 3: deep on this. This is fascinating, I think, very personal
Speaker 3: to all of us.
Speaker 4: Oh, I couldn't agree more. I mean even outside of
Speaker 4: just like the facts as you put it, Ben, I mean,
Speaker 4: we all have so much visceral, very personal connection and
Speaker 4: experience with this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I just want to encourage everyone to keep
Speaker 2: that open mind as we go through this, because it
Speaker 2: is way more interesting as we encourage you to do
Speaker 2: in the show in every episode, just allow yourself to
Speaker 2: think about some of these things if they don't match
Speaker 2: up exactly with either your scientific or religious beliefs. Just
Speaker 2: let yourself go there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're coming into this as we always endeavor to
Speaker 3: do with humility, with respect, with great affection, because this
Speaker 3: is a very sensitive, heavy topic, so much so that
Speaker 3: we didn't share a lot of our own personal experiences.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I had a Maryland accent on
Speaker 3: own there, but maybe I'm being possessed by a third entity.
Speaker 3: We will explore more of this in the future, and
Speaker 3: we want to hear your personal stories inasmuch as you
Speaker 3: feel comfortable sharing them. Find us on email, call us
Speaker 3: on the phone, Find us on the Internet.
Speaker 4: The Internet's indeed the Internet of Things. You can find
Speaker 4: this in the handle conspiracy Stuff, where we exist.
Speaker 7: On Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy.
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Speaker 4: However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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Speaker 2: can call it right now. It is one eight three
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Speaker 2: the dude who wrote the idea of a presence, which
Speaker 2: is one of the things that went into this episode,
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