Supernatural Survival: Mysterious Near Death Encounters

Written By Kaelyn Moore

From explorer Ernest Shackleton crossing the Antarctic, to famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, many famous stories of survival have included a supernatural being come to be known as The Third Man. Who is this presence that gives guidance and encouragement in extreme survival situations?

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This episode features stories of shootings, 9/11, and near death experiences, which may be distressing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

LA Based artist Coldie, was at a New Years Eve party in Old Town Sacramento years ago when this story starts. He was people watching as the street and shops filled up with bustling crowds underneath twinkle lights. Guests ranged from parents with children, to couples looking to get tattoos next store, to intoxicated guests lining up for pizza. It felt like the whole community was there.

There was an excited buzz to the air. And According to coldie, he never suspected anything out of the ordinary  was going to happen that night. And that’s when the shooting started

At first, he thinks it’s a kid hitting a stop sign, but when he sees a mom pick up her child and start running, he knows it’s much more serious. And soon, the other parents follow suit. 

He spins around looking for something to hide behind as the shots are getting louder. Whoever is doing this is getting closer. The only cover he sees is a wooden trashcan. It doesn’t offer much protection, but it’s at least something, and there’s no time to think twice.

just as he crouches down to hide., he hears a voice as clear as day scream “run downstairs now.” But the voice doesn’t come from anyone near him. It comes from inside him. It’s like someone is in his head, screaming orders at him. He doesn’t even take a second to think about it, he just moves. 

Coldie grabs his roommates who was hiding near him, and they run, completely uncovered towards the stairs. The whole time they’re worried they’re going to get shot, but the voice inside of Coldie is loud and it’s telling him to GO.

They make it downstairs unharmed and see There’s other people huddled, like a grandmother and her grandchildren. And together they all stand together in silence, listening in terror as the gun shots echo on the floor above them. But then, as fast as it started, it was over. The cops arrived and they were eventually safe to leave.

On the way out, he hears a girl crying, telling someone that a man was shot inside the building. The police ask where this man was. He was Crouching behind a wooden trash can. Coldie’s heart DROPS. She was referring to The same wooden trash can that coldie had been behind seconds before.

What unfolded that night  was there was a shooting at the bar next door, and the gunman fled the scene and open fired into the area that Coldie and his roommate were hiding in. It wasn’t targeted, it was random, but one of the people killed was standing in the place that the voice had told Coldie to flee from moments earlier. 

I heard Coldie tell this story at an art gallery, and it sent shivers down my spine. He called the voice his intuition, but many people have another theory as to what it was.

What if I told you that there are many documented accounts of people in life threatening situations being guided by other people that only they can see and hear who are trying to save them. I’m not talking about that gut feeling you get that something is wrong. I’m talking about a voice or presence of an invisible person, clear as day, telling you how to survive. So much so that there’s a term dedicated to it, THIRD MAN FACTOR.

Today, I want to tell you some of those stories. Because they’re so out of this world, you have to hear them to believe them.

Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore

This is a community for people who love to follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them. You can follow the podcast on Instagram and tiktok @heartstartspounding for daily doses of content, and if you’d like to get even deeper into the community, I have a patreon full of archived episodes and bonus content. Thank you to Haley, Amanda, Stephen, Britta, Christopher, Allyson, Vannessa, Jamie, Aaron, Hailey, Kara and Lauren for already being there. You guys rock.

What we’re talking about today has long been cited by people as proof of guardian angels. People in extreme, often life threatening situations are sometimes visited by a presence that helps them survive, so it’s no wonder that many believe this is an angel watching over them. Those that are less religious, however, have described it as “transfusion of energy, encouragement, and instinctual wisdom from a seemingly external source.” but almost everyone who has experienced this phenomenon agrees that it feels otherworldly, supernatural, if you will. 

Most of the stories I’m going to share with you today come from John Geiger’s book, the Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible. Let’s dive in. 

A few months ago, the following story was posted by Reddit User RocketKT69. They wrote:

I was in a really terrible car accident a few years ago and I was stuck in the car, they had to cut me out. During it I came to and there was a woman who had climbed into the rear seat behind me and was holding my shoulders telling me I was going to be okay and that help was coming, I thought she stayed with me until I blacked out and woke up to a fireman cutting the door off and pulling me out. The firemen, paramedics, and my mother who had gotten there quickly all said there was no woman at all, that traffic had gone around and no one had stopped because the fire department was only a few blocks down the road. I can still hear her voice, I know she was touching me, but no one saw her. Freaks me out still.

When I first read this I thought, ok in a situation like that you’re running on adrenaline, maybe you have blood loss. Hallucinating seems like something that could reasonably happen. The comment was flooded with people who had experienced something eerily similar, like this person.

“I had a very similar experience (terrible car accident, had to be cut out, came to and a woman was there comforting me), but she didn’t sit in the car with me. She was outside the car, but sat next to me and told me help was coming and everything would be ok. 20 years later and her calming presence is still so vivid to me”

Another comment read-

“Holy crap, literally the exact same thing happened to me. I was in a terrible car accident (a tree fell on & crushed the car I was driving) and as I was coming to, there was a woman kneeling outside the car, holding my hand and telling me everything was okay and I was going to be okay. The next thing I knew, a cop was holding up the roof of the car with one hand, holding my arm with the other, and telling me that he was going to pull me out “on 3” as someone cut through the side of the car. I don’t know who that woman was or where she went (or if she was even there!), but I’ll never forget her - as you said - “calming presence.” I totally believed everything would be okay because of her.”

What these people are describing is known as the Third Man factor, or technically in this case, the Third Woman factor. I was shocked learning about this because I had never heard of it before, but the more I looked into it, the more stories I found from people who had been visited by a ghostly presence in a time of crisis. 

This phenomenon has been documented throughout history, and has even impacted some very well known historical events that you may not even realize

Take Charles Lindberg, for example. Lindberg was a famous aviator known for being the first to fly non stop from New York to Paris, a flight that took, can you believe this, 33 hours in 1927. It was actually on this very famous flight where Charles reported that he experienced something supernatural.

Lindberg was just 25 years old when he attempted to fly solo to Paris in an aircraft called the Spirit Of St. Louis. Spirit of St. Louis was a tiny monoplane that could only go 133 mph and cruise at a maximum of 16,000 ft. It was so tiny that Lindberg couldn’t even stretch his legs out in the plane, yet he wanted to make the two day one night  journey across the atlantic in it.

The night before his flight, Lindberg could hardly sleep. He was restless, and it was reported that he only laid down for a few hours, max. He had to be up early anyways. The day of his flight, he took off from New York around 8am, and within a few hours of being in the air, he began to feel extremely tired. 

He tried to shake it off, flying was a relatively new invention. It wasn’t like there would be airports he could land in if he needed to rest. Plus, that would have ruined the entire point of the flight, which was to do the whole trip in one go. at one point, in a desperate attempt to beat the exhaustion, Lindberg descended to about 10 feet over the atlantic ocean to break up the monotony of flying over open water with no horizon in sight. He was so close to the waves he could feel the ocean spray on his face, coming in through gaps in the side of the plane. But soon clouds rolled in, and Charles was surrounded by a soft gray on all sides, nothing but the lull of the gentle engine and rolling waves keeping him company. It was then he knew, he was going to fall asleep.

But Lindberg knew that sleep meant death. He’d either A. Crash the plane right into the water and sink to the ocean floor or B. drift off course

Ok, that doesn’t sound like as big of a deal, but All things considered, Navigation was not Lindberg’s strongest suit. I know, you would think someone who was jetsetting on the most important flight of his time would have some navigation equipment on him. But, he didn’t. He hadn’t brought any radio equipment to help him navigate because he found it heavy and unreliable, and he wasn’t good enough at navigating with the sun and stars to rely on them, so he had to pay immense attention to his location at all times. 

On top of all of this, the soft grey clouds bloomed into an ominous, all encompassing fog. his wings started icing from being coated in ocean spray. and now, he was sure he’d fall asleep.

But right when he felt his most exhausted, about 22 hours into his flight, Charles felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he felt as if someone was standing behind him. He said quote:

The fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences, vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding, weightless with me in the plane. I feel no surprise at their coming, theres no suddenness to their appearance. Without turning my head, i see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision.”

And sure, this sounds like intense sleep deprivation, which can cause hallucinations, but in this dire moment, the ghostly presences start helping him navigate. he said they were

“Conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of important unattainable in ordinary life. 

Charles had assumed that by now he was at least 50 miles off course. later that day, though,  he looked down and saw a fishing boat in the water, meaning he was close to land. In that moment, he said the feeling of tiredness was gone, and with it, the presence of the phantom copilots. 

Charles made it to land to see that he was barely 3 miles off course. The advice he had been given was correct, and he safely made it to paris, circling around the eiffel tower a few times before landing in front of a cheering crowd of 150,000 people. 

A book written shortly afterwards about the historic flight had no mention of Lindberg’s experience with the presences. He actually didn’t speak publicly about what he felt on that flight for nearly thirty years, he was nervous he’d sound crazy.  However, he eventualy wrote in the Saturday Evening Post on June 6th, 1953 that, quote,

“I’ve never believed in apparitions, but how can i explain the forms I carried with me through so many hours of this day? Transparent forms in human outline- voices that spoke with authority and clearness.”

Some people will hear that story and will just claim sleep deprivation. But let me ask you this. When has sleep deprivation actually helped you operate heavy machinery? Lindberg, in his sleep deprived state thought he was much more off track, but the advice from the apparitions put him back ON track.

so maybe this some sort of intuition proxy that’s only visible when our bodies are pushed to the extreme. Scientists looking into the phenomenon have some theories that this is due to a miswiring in our brains sense of self.

Typically our brain does a good job of knowing where our body is situated at all times. Without looking at your leg, you can tell that it’s under your seat, touching the floor. But every now and then, your brain can misfire and you can think there is another presence there, when it’s really you’re own body that your brain is measuring.

An example of this would be a 41 year old man that’s referred to as “PH” in a study. PH was admitted to a hospital with dizziness, fatigue, and seizures. One night, after being admitted, he awoke in the hospital feeling like his body had been split into three parts. He could feel his left side, which felt normal, his right side, which he said felt bizarrely detached, and then, juuuuuust beyond his right side, he could feel the presence of another being. This being felt like a mirror of PH, because anytime he moved, the figure moved in the exact same way. And PH couldn’t get a good look at the presence because when he’d turn his head, so would the being. Eventually, doctors were able to figure out what was causing this sensation, PH had a rather aggressive tumor on the left side of his brain that was damaging the  posterior insula and the temporoparietal junction. These areas of the brain orient where your body is. If they’re damaged, where you are and where your brain THINKS you are will be off, hence PH thinking he was laying next to himself. 

You…. probably don’t have this. I just need to say that because anytime I hear any medical diagnosis, I assume I have that thing. But this is pretty rare.
But it gave doctors great insight into WHY people feel a presence when no one is there. I’m not suggesting that everyone who experiences this ALSO happens to have an agressive brain tumor at the time of their near death experience. But There may be something happening to this same part of our brains in extreme survival situations. 

Sure, maybe, but that still leaves us with so many questions. Why doesn’t this same mechanism happen to everyone in these situations? And wouldn’t each person’s experience with the presence be something only they experienced because it was their brain making the hallucination?

I want to tell you a story now where three people all experienced the exact same thing. So either their brains all played the exact same trick on them at the same time, or there was really something there. This is the story of Ernest Schackleton, the first wildly reported case that actually lead to the naming of the third man factor. 

In 1914, British explorer Ernest Shackleton set out to do something that had never been done before. He wanted to Cross the entirety of Antarctica on foot. To do this, he recruited 58 men and two ships, and sailed them to antarctica from the british isle of South Georgia, a small island east of the southern most tip of south america. 

Ernest’s plan sounds far fetched even by today’s standards. But this was the golden age of exploration. He had to do something to make a name for himself. 

He was going to sail the two boats down to Antarctica and park one on either side of the continent. Shackleton’s boat, the Endurance would drop off half of the men who would start walking, on foot across 2,500 miles of freezing, icy tundra. The other boat, the aurora, would park it  on the other side of the continent with food and fuel for months, waiting for the first group to make it. I respect that everyone is on their own journey but this sounds miserable. Anyways

Trouble struck almost immediately upon The Endurace arriving to the coast of antarctica. The ship left for Antarctica on December 5th, and by January 19th, 1915, while it was approaching the antarctic coast,  the Endurance was completely frozen in place. 

But what do you do when your wooden ship freezes in place thousands of miles away from civilization? you wait for the ice to thaw, which in this case didn’t happen until September of that year. So they were stuck on the ship in place, waiting, for nine months. But then, when conditions did improve, the pressure that the ice had put on the ships hull had been released, and in it’s place were holes that the newly melted ice could fill with water. By november, the crew was on a floating piece of ice just off the coast of the empty vastness of antarctica, watching their ship, their vessel home,  sink beneath the waves. 

Ernest ordered his crew into the lifeboats they saved from The Endurance. The goal now was to get back home safely, and their supplies were quickly dwindling.  It still took Shackleton and his men a few months to leave from the ice block they were floating on. I know, Ernest lets see some hustle, my guy!! But he was hoping that the ice would float them as close to Elephant Island, another remote island just off of the tip of Antarctica, as possible. By the crews calculations, Elephant island, a small island of just rock, no people, was now the closest bit of solid ground to them.

Finally, just over a year after they departed, Shackleton suspects that they’ve floated within 30 miles of Elephant Island, so the 28 men load up and set sail, but after the first full day, they recalculate and find that they have been dragged severely off course by the current. It was now going to take another seven days to get to Elephant island. And there wasn’t even going to be anything there for them. They already hadn’t touched the earth in over a year, and the journey ahead kept looking longer and longer. But finally, they reach Elephant island after 497 days of their initial departure. And if you thought it was dire before, oh you just wait. 

Shackleton figured they would stay on the island through the winter and wait for a whaling ship in spring to come save them. But when he looks at their supplies he realizes they’ll for sure be dead by then. He was going to have to figure out how to go get help and fast.

He decides that desperate times call for desperate measures, and he gathers all of the men around to declare that he and five other men were going to make the 800 mile journey to South Georgia island to get help. In just a life boat.

The other men in the crew were shocked. The ones that had the energy to protest, did so. Some even called to just let them die, they were exhausted and there was no hope. But that wasn’t shackletons nature. To shackleton there wasn’t any feat that the human spirit couldn’t overcome. If a path ahead was reckless, he was determined to find a way home.  and now he was going to save these men.

I think its also a fun time to remind everyone here that this man also got everyone in this mess in the first place so. He better be feeling all these things.

The fearless leader and the 5 men he recruited journeyed for 17 days against the raging sea. By day three, all of them were exhibing signs of frostbite, and a keg of freshwater they had brought to drink from had fallen overboard. Ice clung so hard to the sides of the boat, it was almost constantly at risk of capsizing. 

At one point, shackleton called to the men, “it’s clearing, boys” . he saw a break in the weather, a small line of white in the distance contrasted against a sea and sky of dark grey. But horror filled his heart when he realized it was not the sky. The line of white was actually the cresting of a rogue wave barrelling towards them. The men somehow managed to stay afloat but were completely soaked by the wave.

Finally, almost 3 weeks on the open sea, they hit land. The men fell to their knees and tried to regain feeling in their numbed extremities. They had made it to the island, but the british whaling station they had set out to find was on the OTHER side of the island, twenty four miles away.

Shackleton gave his men time to hydrate from a freshwater stream on the island and feast on albatross chicks, but he couldn't stop thinking of the 22 other men that he had left behind. The ones that were counting on him to see their loved ones again. And if they didn’t, it would be all his fault. On May 19th, 1916, yes we are in 1916 now, a year and a half after they left South Georgia island the first time, Shackleton and two of the men, Frank Worsley who was the captain of the Endurance, and Tom Crean, the second officer, set out to get to the other side of the island on foot. All they had on them for tools were 15 feet of rope, and one carpenter's adze, which is kind of a mix of a pick axe and a regular axe.

But they were off, across ice ridges and frozen tundra. Trekking in freezing conditions throughout the night, and in limited visibility fog.

At one point, the three men got to an ice ridge they couldnt see the bottom of, it was a long ice luge that went into an abyss. But a dark, enveloping fog was powering towards them, and there was no way for them to go around the ice. They made the decision to jump, fearless, into the dark nothing. For 30 seconds it was extreme speed and pitch darkness. But then, 300 yards later, they reached the end and were out on the other side of the ridge. The men dusted the snow off of themselves and trekked on, no time to even processed how that could have been the end of the entire rescue mission as well as the lives of all of their men.

Shackleton could feel that they were all on the brink of death. On May 20th, at about 5 in the morning, they stopped to take a quick rest. Worsley and Crean fell asleep within minutes, but their leader stayed awake. He knew to fall asleep was to die, so he waited five minutes, and then woke the two men. They asked how long they had been asleep for. Thirty minutes, he replied. This simple trick made the men feel rested and more energized from their nap. And so, they forged on. 

It was here, on the brink of death, years into a fruitless mission that Shackleton started getting the feeling that there was another man on the journey with the three of them. While the men were trekking across the tundra, there was an unmistakable other presence with them. He could tell that this wasn’t the presence of another one of his crew, however, because there was something strangely devine about the feeling, almost as if it were an invisible string pulling them in the right direction, helping them.

An hour and a half after the nap, the men heard the familiar sound of a train whistle. They had made it. Not only had the three of them survived, but all 22 men that were left behind on Elephant Island, as well as the two on the other side of South Georgia island were rescued.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that Worsley approached shackleton nervously and asked if he ever felt that there was another man with them on their journey. Worlsey, too, had felt the fourth man’s devine presence but didn’t know what to make of it. And then Crean came forward to confess the same thing. All three men felt as if they were not alone on the trek, they had all experienced the same exact feeling of the divine presence

The story became so famous, that TS. Eliot referenced it in his poem The Wasteland. The reason this phenomenon went on to be called the third man, is because TS Eliot forgot there were three people in shackleton’s group and it was technically the fourth man they felt. So the presence was forever memorialized in his poem as the third man.

Some scientists believe that the presence is only visible to those with a strong will to live. This is why these presences appear to some people in life or death situations, but not everyone. We know Shackleton had a strong will to live, and perhaps he smartly chose the two other men on his expedition that shared his fortitude. Perhaps if he chose another, weaker man for the journey that person would not have experienced the “third man”.

I do not have this will to live. I love to lie down. As I was reading shackleton;s story, I couldnt help but think that Maybe I’m not the person who would be saved by a third man.

But before we go today, I want to share with you a final third man story that I just can’t stop thinking about. It’s about a normal guy, going about a normal day when all of a sudden he has to do something extraordinary. And this takes place on 9/11, a day when many normal people showed extraordinary strength and resilience. That can be distressing for some, so just a heads up.

It was 8:46am on the morning of September 11th, 2001, when Ron DiFrancesco watched a plane hit the north tower of the world trade center. He was sitting at his desk on the 84th floor the South Tower when it happened.

Ron looked around at his Euro Brokers colleagues in confusion. Most of his coworkers looked concerned, and a few of them made their way to the elevator to get out of the building. But a voice came over an intercom system reassuring everyone that they were safe. The south tower was secure and anyone who started evacuating was welcome to return to their desk. Ron watched gray smoke pour out of the north tower as he remained in his desk, and continued to work. 

But shortly after, he got a phone call from a friend in Toronto telling him to get out, now. Ron made the split second decision to grab some of his things, and head for the elevators. It was better to be safe than sorry, he thought.

  just as he made it to the back of his office, 17 minutes after a plane struck the north tower, united airlines flight 175 slammed into the south tower, slicing through floors 77 through 85. 
Ron was thrown into the back of his office, but he was alive. he knew he had to make it down the stairwell, and fast, but as he opened the door to the one emergency stairwell that wasn’t destroyed by fire and debris, he saw people running up, not down. They told him that he had to go up, there was too much smoke and fire below, he’d never make it out. So Ron and a small group from his office turn around and go up, hoping to make it to the roof for a heliocopter rescue.

as Ron is ascending, the stairwell keeps becoming more crowded. And he realizes that the doors to the upper floors are all locked. The locking mechanism had malfunctioned and now everyone in the stairwell was effectively trapped. In this moment, Ron starts panicking. He thinks of his family and deep down he knows that if he keeps going up, he’ll die. So there, on what he estimated was the 91st floor, Ron Starts going down.

the issue of smoke and fire that kept him from going down in the first place is now worse, much worse, and ron cant see much down the stairwell. As he starts his descent, he sees that there are people passed out on the floor around him from the smoke, a few people are still awake but they’re in rough shape. A few floors down, overwhelmed by the thick, clotted air, Ron joins them on the floor. He watches a few of the people around him slip into unconsciousness and waits for himself to do the same, when all of a sudden he hears someone. 

Get Up, Ron. 

There was someone in front of him, beckoning him to get up. Hey, you can do this! It shouted. 

And then, he felt his body be lifted and guided down the stairs.

Ron was with it enough to know that there was no physical person in front of him, yet he had the sense that he was being lead by someone. An angel, he suggested

The journey became more hazardous the further he went, he dodged flames and jumped over burning debris. But the encouragement and gentle nudging didn’t stop. He was being told where the danger was and where to look out for. And then, around the seventy sixth floor, Ron reached a smoke free area below the fire of the impact, and he felt the being disappear. He said 

“I think at that point it let me go”

Fifty six minutes after the plane hit the south tower, Ron exited the building. The last thing he remembers before waking up in a hospital was an ungodly roar coming from behind him as the tower collapsed floor by floor. Only four people including Ron made it out from above the 81st floor. And Ron was the last person who made it out of that building alive. 

Ron forever attibutes his survival to the divine intervention, a theme that is common amongst survivors of that day. But Ron wasn’t Shackleton. He wasn’t an adrenaline seeking global adventuror. He worked a 9-5. He had a family. He was a normal guy.

This is a situation where no matter what the answer is, science or divinity, there’s something strange going on. Either people really are being visited by divine beings who guide and comfort them in dire situations, or there’s this person living inside of us, at all times.

For Coldie, he always attributed it to his intuition, and it inspired him to do an art series called Trust Your Intuition based on that night. 

But I don’t think calling it our intuition really explains whats happening here. Intuition feels like part of it. Maybe Lindberg’s intuition was telling him how to navigate. But was it intuition comforting people in those car wrecks, telling Ron exactly where the fire and smoke was in the building, pushing shackleton forward? We may never know. 

This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Music by artlist. Have a heart pounding story you’d like to share or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Greyson Jernigan and the whole team at WME, as well as ben jaffe. Until next time wooooooooooooo

Kaelyn Moore
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