Why people in life-or-death situations sometimes have trouble counting
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
–TS. Eliot, The Waste Land, written about Ernest Shackleton’s 1916 third man experience.
On this day in 1916 Ernest Shackleton reached a whaling station in Stromness in the South Atlantic, completing an epic 26 day journey to reach help after losing his ship. While crossing the mountains, starving and without climbing gear, Shackleton famously saw a fourth person in his group of three desperate sailors.
And he’s not the only one. The “third man,” named for the poem above, is the phenomenon where people in life-threatening or highly stressful situations sense another person (of whatever gender) with them. The solo hiker has a companion, or the group of four becomes five, of which most or all report seeing the extra person.
Read all about the Third Man Phenomenon and get writing prompts on my blog, such as:
The little man who wasn’t there. If the third man is a scientifically explainable brain phenomenon, you could have a plot where people try to induce it on purpose. Maybe a company sells a headband with an electric pulse that brings out a companion for lonely people, or perhaps it’s part of training for soldiers, a way to keep themselves calm in stressful situations. A horror plot could have a person uncertain whether a third man experience is an expected hallucination…or if someone is actually there.
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