Sensed Presences in Extreme Contexts Originally published ... - Arts

Sensed Presences in Extreme Contexts
Originally published as a review of The Third Man Factor: The Secret of Survival in
Extreme Environments, by John Geiger, Penguin, 2009. 295 pp., $24:00 ISBN 978-0-14-
301751-6 in Skeptic 15 (2), 68-71 .
Geiger‟s book is a highly readable compendium of anecdotes about the remarkably common
experience of feeling the presence of a companion for whom there is no objective evidence. The
companion is seldom seen but strongly sensed and hence is often referred to as a “sensed
presence.” The presence is usually taken to be a stranger, but may sometimes be a friend or
mentor, a favorite aunt, a fellow adventurer, sometimes recently deceased, and usually providing
moral support, guidance, or protection and sometimes described metaphorically, or literally, as a
“guardian angel.”
Approximately three-quarters of the companionate presences discussed appeared in the
midst of harrowing misadventures of mountaineers, polar explorers, and sailors. Thus, Geiger‟s
book is about one version of the sensed presence experience, the version that occurs in what
Peter Suedfeld has called EUEs; “extreme and unusual environments.” 1 The anecdotes reported
by Geiger are nearly always first-person accounts of the appearance of mysterious, often neutral,
sometimes friendly, and rarely threatening, presences encountered during life-and death struggles
for survival. Indeed, the subtitle of the book implies what is explicitly claimed in the book itself;
namely, that the companion is a secret life-saver of either divine or biological provenance. Little
evidence is provided, however, that the companion experience, however comforting, is more
than a modest aid to survival, let alone the secret to survival.
It should also be noted that there is nothing special about the number three of the title.
The title could have just as justifiably called The Fourth Man, The Second Man, or, in at least
one case, The Seventh Person. An early version appears to have been The Extra Man. 2 Geiger
appears to have based his title on the experience of Ernest Shackleton and his two companions
during their trek across South Georgia – or to be more precisely accurate, on T. S. Eliot‟s
reference to the event, immortalized in “The Waste Land,” with its famous question: “Who is the
third who always walks beside you?” Either through poetic license or misremembering Eliot
reduced Shackleton‟s party from three to two: “When I count, there are only you and I together.”
Elliot‟s notes suggest he was rather vague about his recollection of “the account of one of the
Antarctic expeditions (I forget which but I think one of Shackleton‟s)”. 3 In the original account
of Shackleton, the companion was actually a fourth: “it seemed to me often that we were four,
not three” (p. 37).
One of the most striking features of the experience of the companion is its elementary
and minimalist properties and the consistency of these across individuals and circumstances. All
of the germane information about each and every encounter in the text could likely be described
in 10-20 type-written pages, and comprehensively summarized in one. The bulk of the
approximately 250 pages of text consists of background and context-setting events leading up to
the experience itself. The experiences themselves do become very familiar and repetitive, though
interesting variants do crop up from time to time. Although the descriptions of the events leading

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up the experiences sometimes went on just a bit too long for my liking it must be said that they
are, by and large, gripping tales well told, and, overall, mostly do provide relevant and
informative context for the companion experiences. I expect most people will find this an
engaging read
Though passing reference is made to the experiences of monks and saints, Biblical tales,
and the Christian notion of guardian angels, most of the anecdotes are modern, spanning a little
over 100 years. Geiger also provides, towards the end of the book, brief overviews of various
psychological and neuroscientific theories of presence experiences. Geiger highlights critical
features of the experience as well as of their precipitating conditions as he goes along. With
regard to the latter, he mentions the usual suspects: monotony, darkness, barren landscapes,
isolation, cold, injury, dehydration, hunger, fatigue, and fear; all often extreme, persistent, and in
combination and, in the case of mountaineers, compounded by lack of adequate levels of oxygen.
The accounts also frequently involve death and injury of real companions. The large majority of
anecdotes come from the experiences of mountaineers, likely because climbers have the largest
proportion of truly harrowing challenges and are often exposed to almost all of the precipitating
conditions for the companion experiences.
The vivid and compelling nature of the companion experiences, despite their elemental
simplicity, likely cannot be overstated. Such experiences are almost invariably described as
utterly compelling; far too vivid and real to be a mere hallucination; which is usually to imply
that it defies naturalistic explanation. Hallucinations do not, however, constitute the only, or even
most appropriate, naturalistic explanation available. Strictly speaking, the sensed presence does
not fit the definition of a hallucination at all, because, by definition, hallucinations involve
sensory experiences. Rather, the sensed presence of the unseen companion is a delusion; that is, a
compelling feeling that something is the case in the absence of evidence. Hallucinations may
sometimes accompany delusions. There may be sounds, voices and visions, even physical
contact, though these are all comparatively rare. None are intrinsic to the sensed presence itself,
which, by definition, is devoid of sensory experience. There is, as William Laird McKinley
stated of his Arctic experiences, there is “nothing of the senses in it at all, only an awareness” (p.
53). Yet, the same author can say of this insensible presence that “it filled me with an exultation
beyond all earthly feeling” generating a feeling of the “absolute certainly of the existence of
God” (p. 54). Yet, though the presence is not necessarily taken to be supernatural, there is often a
dual consciousness associated with the presence in which a hard-nosed realist is simultaneously
aware that the presence is not real in the normal sense of the term, yet utterly compelling; so
compelling, and persistent, that food may be offered to the presence in a casual and automatic
manner.
Geiger notes that hallucinations, though not often part of the presence experience itself,
do sometimes accompany the sensed presence. They tend to be vague and misty apparitions or
commanding voices. Rob Taylor, injured during his ascent of the Breach Wall of Kilimanjaro,
reported seeing a figure and being able to “make out his form, yet never can I distinguish exact
features.” The form was a human form without the clothing of a climber but rather “like a dancer
in a leotard” (p. 178). Charles Lindbergh encountered multiple presences on his famous trans-
Atlantic flight. He described “vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving” in the cockpit. Yet

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despite his ability to describe the presences, however minimally, they actually seemed to have
been out of sight, as he also says: “without turning my head, I can see them as clearly as though
in my normal field of vision” (p. 85). He also wrote that the presences had “voices that spoke
with authority and clearness.” Yet he admitted that “I can‟t remember a single word they said”
(p. 87).
Almost always, there is a vague feeling that the presence is there to help in some
unspecified way or, in the case of temporarily incapacitated sailors, like the solo sailor Joshua
Slocum, simply trusted to man their craft. Or it may simply be a feeling that a navigational
decision was made on the implicit advice of the presence. More often, the companions offer
wordless advice, which is typically highly nonspecific, or provides information and advice of the
sort that the individual would already know and believe – or hope. The advice is typically,
“Don‟t fall asleep,” “Keep moving,” and “You are going to make it.” That is, sensible
commonplace advice that is more reassuring than informative. Nonetheless, this sense of
reassurance is often credited by the individuals for their survival. This feeling is essentially the
basis for the claim that the presence is the secret to survival in extreme conditions. As Geiger
acknowledges, however, we obviously have limited access to negative cases, the stories of the
presences of the non-survivors in recovered diaries are obviously rare, though such cases do
exist. 4 Perhaps as many non-survivors as survivors received support and encouragement from
their presences. Alternatively, perhaps the companions of non-survivors gave bad advice.
Moreover, we do not have information about how many survivors never experienced the
companionate sensed presence. We have essentially one cell of the four-fold table necessary to
draw the functional conclusion.
In one especially interesting and harrowing anecdote of extremity is recounted by climber
Joe Simpson in his book Touching the Void, about his summiting of Siula Grande (not Huascarán
as indicated in Geiger‟s book), and the aftermath of an accident during descent. This is perhaps
the most compelling evidence for a survival function of a hallucination, but ironically, not
actually involving a presence. Simpson‟s recurring hallucination was simply a voice in his head,
but a compelling and very authoritative one:
The voice was clean and sharp and commanding. It was always right, and I
listened to it when it spoke and acted on its decisions. The other mind rambled out
a disconnected series of images, and memories and hopes, which I attended to in a
daydream state as I set about obeying the orders of the voice.
Not surprisingly, this description leads Geiger to invoke, as Peter Suedfeld had done previously,
Julian Jaynes‟s notion of the bicameral mind. Indeed the quotation above is essentially a
definition of a bicameral mind at work. Interestingly, Jaynes‟s perennially controversial theory,
of all those discussed by Geiger, is really the only one explicitly directed at explaining the
version of the sensed presence covered in this book. What Simpson‟s account reminded me of,
however, was a more current and mainstream theory involving a distinction between two levels
of processing always active in human cognition. They go by different names, but the cognitive
process that corresponds to Simpson‟s rational and authoritative voice is commonly referred to
as an “executive” or “control” process. Another level of processing, which corresponds to
Simpson‟s jumble of images, memories, and emotions, appears to reflect what are referred to as

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“automatic” processes, which operate according in an associative and appropriately named,
“pandemonium mode,” in which different impulses vie for attention and execution. There has
been little written about the nature, of the phenomenological component to these two modes
though a little self-reflection will, I think, uncover a subtle version of Simpson‟s experience in
our own mundane experiences. In extreme situations – and they do not come more extreme than
that of Simpson‟s descent from Siula Grande – the phenomenology of the two processing
streams may become enhanced, perhaps through a general emergency reaction of the brain of the
sort discussed by Geiger. One can readily see how the sort of experience might lead people who
have experienced extreme circumstances to interpret the voice as that of a guardian angel - or a
god à la Julian Jaynes. Yet Joe Simpson was a self-declared atheist before his Siula Grande
experience and remained one afterward and attributes the voice to a “sixth sense” buried deep in
our evolutionary past, never personifying it but consistently referring to it merely as “the voice”
or “it.”
Curiously, Geiger fails to mention that Simpson did report sensing the presence of
companions during a period of absence of the voice toward the end of his ordeal. He felt that he
was being followed closely by two companions, who “hung back out of sight,” and whom he
imagined to be other members of the expedition, Simon and Richard, who were actually at the
camp ahead of him. He reported that he was happy at the thought of “company and help if I
needed it.” In contrast to the positive guidance of the voice, however, the presences appear to
have been merely comforting.
I have long been fascinated by how the most subtle feelings of presence can convince a
McKinley of the absolute certainty of God‟s existence and the much more dramatic experiences
of a Joe Simpson elicited no spiritual gloss at all. Perhaps most instructive is the fact that, despite
his condition of serious injury, fatigue, hypothermia, starvation, and dehydration (at the end of
his ordeal he weighed 90 pounds), Simpson, upon first hearing “the voice” immediately and
systematically considers alternative hypotheses. Did he leave on his Walkman? Were the sounds
the result of his balaclava rubbing on his ears? Geiger concludes that ancient people, lacking
Walkman-type hypotheses, fell back on religious hypotheses. Yet Geiger need not have gone
back to ancient peoples. His own book is filled with numerous examples of moderns invoking
religious or mystical interpretations. It does seem reasonable, nonetheless, to suppose that
moderns have a greater range of possible interpretations and this must, one would suppose, make
a difference in the way experiences are perceived. Yet this is clearly, as the Simpson and
McKinley contrast illustrates not the only, or even the main, story.
Geiger discusses but does not focus particularly on the supernatural, though, judging
from the reviews beginning to appear on the web, these sorts of phenomena are magnets for
those invested in the occult and spiritual. Geiger cites Michael Murphy as claiming that many of
these experiences “defy easy explanation,” by which he means naturalistic scientific
explanations. Geiger also briefly falls into this casual sophistry describing the physiologist
Pugh‟s explanations as dismissive. Why commentators so often consider scientific explanations
“easy” or “dismissive” has never been clear to me; especially when I then read of Murphy
claiming that these experiences are evidence that “humans can indeed perceive disembodied
entities” (p. 78). Now that strikes me as an easy explanation.

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One set of naturalistic theories Geiger reviews favorably are those that suggest that the
sensed presence is a biological mechanism for copying with loneliness in only children in the
form of “imaginary companions,” and for adults alone under threatening and fearsome
conditions. On this view, the sensed presence provides an imaginary companion to relieve
anxiety. One can see how this could be functional – avoiding despair and giving up – but it does
raise another question. If it is biological, which would entail affecting the relative availability of
neurotransmitters and somatic hormones, why does it need a phenomenological or experiential
component? Why are brain mechanisms not arranged to just make us feel less threatened and
more optimistic without the spooky experience to confuse us? I realize that this is a rather
generic argument regarding consciousness, but it all seems a rather Rube Goldberg contraption to
have evolved just to make us feel comfortable in extreme environments.
Perhaps the companion experience is not functional at all, in itself, but rather is an
anomalous dissociation that provides evidence of a deeper, more general, function on which its
own functionality, if any, is parasitic. Perhaps, for example, the feeling of presence is simply a
misfiring of normally functional sensations associated with real companions.
Having done some trekking and climbing in the Himalayas and the Andes, I am
somewhat familiar with the experience of spending long hours moving in single file. One has a
constant sense of companions ahead and behind, as well as a sense of dependency on them.
There is the constant reminder of the rope in the downhill hand binding one to the other. Frank
Smythe, for example, specifically notes that it “seemed that I was tied to my „companion‟ by a
rope” (p. 48). Though Smyth was alone, if he had had a companion they would have been tied
together. The rope is truly a life-line. When a comrade falls, the others dig in with ice axes and
crampons and brace themselves to break the fall of the other. Thus, there is both a strong
expectancy of the others to be constantly at a regular distance, maintaining appropriate tension
on the rope, and to be available for assistance. One also finds oneself periodically looking over
one‟s shoulder to check on the others; even though one knows and feels that they are there
without looking. As noted, in the large majority of cases, the presence is just out of sight, often a
couple of meters behind. Although the presence is described as guiding and encouraging, it is
usually following behind rather than leading.
The sense of the presence of others is pervasive and continuous when one is with others;
but we rarely remark on it because, after all, there really are others present and this is the normal
feeling when they are there. We feel it explicitly when in intense relationships and acutely when
in love; but mostly it is just the reassuring background feeling of companionship. Our feeling
corresponds with recent memory and with current sensory experience. When this feeling
becomes disconnected from what we know from recent memory and current experience,
however, we may then have the experience of the sensed presence. If so, then the presence
experience parallels the “feeling of knowing” something as a separate experience from the actual
knowing of it that we have all experienced as the tip-of-the-tongue experience. In both cases,
background becomes foreground. This is not to dismiss or trivialize either experience, but to
attempt to turn a mystery into a potentially solvable problem; namely, how does this normal
feeling of being with others become dissociated from what we know from memory and current
sensory experience? This, in turns, suggests the possibility that there is a separate set of cognitive
and neural events constituting the feeling of presence, over and above those that register the

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sensory experiences generated by the actual presence of others. Perhaps this feeling reflects a
mode or psychological context of “being with others,” bringing our social selves into prominence
and acting appropriately and refraining from acting inappropriately in the presence of others.
Finally, in extreme situations the need for companions activates the feeling of presence. This
would certainly be comforting in extreme and unusual environments and, to that extent, could be
construed as incidentally functional.
The Third Man Factor is an engaging book, full of adventure, especially of
mountaineering (the cover appropriately portrays two figures walking along a ridge high above
the clouds). Over 40% of all cases cited involve experiences in mountains. Regardless of
differing titles, many chapters have a feeling of familiarity. One chapter, entitled “The Widow
Effect,” is 37 pages long but has slightly less than five pages devoted to the sensed presence
experiences of widows (and a widower). The rest of the chapter is devoted mainly to more
mountaineering adventures. Nonetheless, I do confess that I find the mountain climbing stories to
be much more gripping than stories about grieving widows. From my perspective, Geiger has
performed a most valuable service by pulling all of these accounts together in single volume
providing a good reference source for modern examples of the companion version of sensed
presence phenomena. I expect I will refer back to this book many times in the future.
JAC
1 Suedfeld, P. & Mocellin, J. S. P. (1987). The sensed presence in unusual environments.
Environment and Psychology, 19, 33-52.
2 Suedfeld, P. & Geiger, J. (2008). The sensed presence as a coping resource in extreme
environments. In J. H. Ellens (Ed.) Miracles: God, Science, and Psychology in the Paranormal.
Vol. 3. London: Praeger.
3 Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems: 1909-1962, Notes on “The Waste Land – What the Thunder
Said.”
4 Op. Cit. Suedfeld & Mocellin.