These last few months, my Roman Empire has been “third man syndrome.” Also known as the “third man effect,” it’s a phenomenon that most commonly occurs in people who are in extreme distress, danger, or are about to have a near-death experience. The feeling is often described as the sense that another person is present, either giving them an unexpected sense of comfort, warning them of something awful that’s about to happen, or literally (and, sometimes, physically) stepping in to intervene and prevent harm. Some people say it’s like a disembodied voice or a gut feeling they can’t shake. Others…well…they are literally visited by a “third person” in the flesh.
People have come up with all kinds of explanations for the feeling, from paranormal to spiritual to psychological. However, the term itself comes from the T.S. Eliot poem, “The Waste Land,” which was inspired by the real-life experience of Ernest Shackleton — an Irish explorer who went on a near-death expedition in Antarctica in 1916. After their ship got trapped in ice, he and two other members of his crew made a 36-hour-long trek over mountains and glaciers to a whaling station. During that time, each member of his three-man team — Ernest included — kept feeling like there was a fourth man alongside them. T.S. Elliot wrote this stanza inspired by that phenomenon:
In case you’re confused on all the numbers going on here, the members of the real-life expedition felt a “fourth member” was present, but T.S. Eliot took some artistic liberties and changed the number of people who were present, making the “additional person” the “third man.” There doesn’t literally have to be two people present to experience the phenomenon, it’s just a term that seems to have stuck!
I asked BuzzFeed readers like you to share their own real-life “third man” experiences, and y’all certainly have some skin-tingling tales. Here are just 24 of them that had me questioning everything:
1.“I was 5 years old and in the backseat of the car while my mom was driving home from the store. I was so tired, so I rested my head against the car door and fell asleep. Suddenly, I heard someone scream my name and yell at me to wake up. I opened my eyes and asked my mom why she had yelled. She said she hadn’t. Just then, a truck slammed into our car, right where my head had just been resting against the door. Other than some bruising on my arms and legs, I was completely fine. My side of the car was smashed in. I’m sure I would’ve been dead if I hadn’t woken up and moved my head.”
—Jessica, Pittsburgh, PA
2.“When my oldest son was 4, I took him to a local rural creek to walk around. It was a secluded location with no one else around. While crossing the creek, I slipped and sprained my ankle so badly that my ankle bone rolled over and touched the ground. Knowing that I was in trouble, I immediately grabbed my son and got him to the car and home. My ankle was so badly torn that I couldn’t put weight on it for another two weeks. When we were talking about it later, my son casually mentioned that it was good that those two men were there to help me get to the car.”
—Jerry, Binghamton, NY
3.“My husband and I went out to lunch one afternoon. The restaurant had TVs hanging from the ceiling, and one of them was in the corner next to our table. As soon as we sat down, I kept hearing a voice telling me to go to the bathroom. At first, I ignored it. I didn’t need to go, but it was so persistent that I decided just to go and wash my hands. I was in the bathroom for about 30 seconds when I heard a huge crash. When I went back out to the dining room, I realized that the TV above our table had fallen and landed on top of the chair I had just been sitting in. Thank God I listened to that voice!”
—Christina, Savannah, GA
4.“I was taking a shortcut across a frozen reservoir on the way to a friend’s house. Suddenly, the ice cracked, and I started to fall through. I felt two hands slam into my back, and I skidded across the ice. I was soaking wet when I arrived at my friend’s house, cold and shivering. I told him the story as I changed into some of his clothes so we could throw mine into the dryer. My friend turned white, and his eyes were bugging out of his head. He guided me to the bathroom so I could look in the mirror, and I saw what disturbed him. There were two hand-shaped bruises forming on my back. 40+ years later, I still get chills thinking about it.”
—Mike, New Jersey, USA
5.“In 1996, I took a month-long cross-country trip. Once we hit Arizona, we stopped to visit the Grand Canyon. The place we pulled into was just a huge parking lot and the canyon ledge. My friends all ran to the ledge at the left, maybe 50 yards away. I found a ledge to the right that jutted out much further, so I thought I could get a really good picture looking back at the Canyon wall. I got a couple of good pics, then — because I was a chicken when it came to heights — I laid on my stomach and shimmied to the edge of my ledge to peek over. It was a vertical drop of several hundred feet, then a much further drop once you hit the rocks. As I was looking over the drop, I heard a very loud man’s voice shout, ‘NO!'”
“It shocked me enough that I backed up from the edge and stood up. I figured it was a park ranger telling me to stop doing what I was doing, but as I looked around, there was no one there. My friends were still 50 yards away. Nobody else was on the ledge, and our car was the only one in the parking lot.
Then, as I was walking over to join my friends, I heard a loud sound. The front part of that ledge I was lying on suddenly fell and crashed down into the canyon. I have no idea what that was, but I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t happened.”
—Kel, North Carolina, USA
6.“I’ve been saved from disaster a few times in my life. I lovingly call it ‘the voice,’ but it’s more like a thought that breaks through my own in the form of a short, loud command. I’ll share this one. One night, I was driving to my children’s school to pick up my oldest daughter, who was at a basketball game. There was no traffic and no cars on the road, and I was thinking how wonderful this was. It’s so quiet and relaxing to be alone in the car for a bit with none of my other children with me. A rare event! Then, a thought popped into my head: ‘Accidents happen.’ Not realizing yet that this was ‘the voice,’ I answered that thought with, ‘Yeah, but there have to be cars on the road!’ Then, I turned onto a narrow side street. Still, no one was around. Then I hear in my head very loudly go, ‘PULL OVER.’
“There wasn’t much room on this road, but I instantly pulled to the right as much as I could, which was only about a foot. Instantly, this huge SUV came flying towards me over the crest of a hill about a foot on my side of the road. ‘The voice’ saved me from a head-on collision! I was shaken, but now I believe without a doubt that ‘the voice’ is my guardian angel.”
— Maggie, Connecticut, USA
7.“In 1981, my parents took me to New York to see a couple of Broadway plays. One day, we were walking down a very busy street, and I walked behind my dad’s wheelchair so I didn’t get crushed. Being a curious kid in a big city, I fell further and further behind my parents. I was standing near the curb, and suddenly, a big ’70s Cadillac pulled over. A man in the backseat opened the door and grabbed my arm. At the same time, I felt and saw a man in a tan suit reach around my chest and pull me back, hard. The man in the car slammed the door, and the car peeled out of there. I turned around, looking for the man in the tan suit, but there wasn’t anyone there.”
“The area around me was empty, because everybody was surprised at what just happened. I asked, ‘Where is the man in the tan suit?’ And the people around me said, ‘We didn’t see any man, it just looked like you pulled your arm away.’ Then, my parents came running back to get me. Again, I still have no idea what happened. But my arms were both sore the next day in all three places where I was grabbed/pulled.”
—Kel, NC Mountains
8.“Several years ago, my husband and I were in a Lowes store. My husband had a history of heart issues and had a pacemaker as well as a defibrillator. He was 6’3″ and weighed over 200 pounds at the time. Suddenly, he told me that he was feeling unwell and knew he was going down. I looked ahead and saw a lawn swing on display. I told him to try to get to the swing. He didn’t make it and started to fall. The store had a concrete floor, and I knew I had to keep his head from hitting it. I was trying to hold onto his upper body and ease him down, but I was struggling, and there was no one around us. Suddenly, a pair of tan leather shoes — obviously expensive, handmade, and I assumed Italian — appeared, and two slender, tanned arms slid under my husband’s shoulders, just inches from the floor, and very gently laid him down.”
“I didn’t look up. I was so worried about my husband because his defibrillator hadn’t gone off. I remember saying thank you, but the man never said a word back. When I did look up, there was no one there.
A woman who had been coming into the store up front had seen me struggling with my husband and immediately pulled out her phone to call 911. Paramedics arrived almost immediately and store personnel came. The first question they asked was if his head hit the floor. I told them no, that a man had saved him at the last minute. They asked if I knew who it was. I told them I just saw his legs walking away toward the back of the store and that he never said a word. The manager came back to me a bit later and said they had asked every customer, but no one had claimed to have helped up or matched the description.
The woman who saw what was happening from the door and called 911 did not see anyone but me with my husband, too. Do I believe God sent an angel? You bet I do. My husband recovered and lived several more years. He passed away in 2006, 18 years ago. I miss him every day and still cry as I write of this experience, but I know he’s pain-free and happy now.”
—Mary, Littleton, Colorado
9.“My sister and I were teenagers, driving around town and drinking. We drank way too much that night we shouldn’t have been out driving. Her car was pretty much a piece of junk that would quit running at random moments. Well, that random moment struck as we were close to railroad tracks. The engine stopped and we rolled onto the tracks as a train was approaching. We were too drunk to realize we needed to jump out of the car and sat motionless on the tracks, staring in horror at the approaching train. Suddenly, the car started rolling, like someone was pushing it over the tracks. We escaped death by seconds. When the train had gone by, we looked to see who had saved us, but no one was there. That was the last time we were drunk enough not to be able to save ourselves. If it hadn’t been for the mysterious push from behind, we would have missed most of our lives and never would have had our children and grandchildren.”
—Anonymous
10.“I loved the ballet, but was too poor as a kid to participate. So, you can imagine my delight when my husband purchased front-row, weekday tickets to the Chicago Ballet for my 35th birthday. I sped home from work, put on an elegant little black dress, donned the 4-inch velvet sling-back heels I’d saved for such an occasion, and grabbed my velvet shawl. We rushed into the city, parked, and scurried up the beautiful marble stairs to our seats in the magnificent Opera House. Five or six minutes passed before I realized I had forgotten to go to the bathroom all day. My husband saw the look on my face and frowned. He knew. I assured him it could wait, but I knew I’d have to fly down the marble stairs to the restroom on the lower level and back to my seat at intermission. And fly I did.”
“When the time came, my slippery sling-backs launched me forward on the second step. I can still remember, 35 years later, the feeling that I was going to die. I was going to land on my head or break my neck on those stunning marble stairs. Suddenly, someone grabbed me from behind and set me securely on step four. I heard someone say, ‘You’re okay.’ I turned to thank whoever had saved me, but no one was there. I asked others on the stairway if they had caught who it was, but no one had seen anything or anyone. My husband said I was still in shock when I returned to my seat.”
—Deborah, Phoenix, AZ
11.“My daughter was in a bad bike accident when she was 11 years old. She did not have a helmet on and went flying over the handlebars when she hit a bump in the road while riding her new bike. She said that she felt like her head WOULD have hit the concrete while going down…but that a strong hand held her head up and prevented a head injury. Her bike was totaled, but she was OK! To this day, she insists that it was her uncle who had passed a few years ago.”
—Anonymous
12.“I was 16 at the time and riding with my sister and my aunt heading to Nebraska to stay with my Grandmother for the summer. I was sitting in the backseat when I heard a voice say loud and clear, ‘Watch the road; you’re going to have a flat tire on the right side.’ About a minute later, we heard a loud pop. My aunt was confused, and I calmly said she had a flat tire. We pulled off the side of the road, and sure enough, we had a flat. She went about changing this by herself as my sister and I watched her mostly. We got back in the car and drove off. As soon as we were back on the road, I heard that same voice again. This time, it said, ‘You are going to be in a very bad accident before the night is through.'”
“I was questioning everything I’d just heard and was quietly going a bit mad, convincing myself that this was my own head saying this because of our flat tire. The trip itself was about eight hours long, and my aunt was nervous about driving with her spare, so she drove out of the way to a large town in Wyoming to have it fixed.
By the time it was done, it was midnight. We kept driving until we were near these three small towns. She lived in the middle one (which was on the way to our destination) and tried to talk us into spending the night at her house, saying she would drive us in the morning. It was now almost 3 a.m., and I started whining and begging her to keep going. We were almost there, and I couldn’t wait to see my best friend and start my summer. It’d been so long I wasn’t even thinking about what I’d heard in my head earlier.
Unfortunately, she caved, and we kept driving. Along came a car on a two-lane highway that was veering into our lane. We learned after the fact that he was a drunk military man who fell asleep at the wheel. He was about to hit us, and my only thought was that I was 16 and about to die. When the car came to a rest after the collision, I was in the front seat, and my car door had blown open from the impact. My only injury was a sprained thumb from grabbing the console and holding on. There were no seat belts in this day and age.
A car with two young women showed up a few minutes later, and they caught the guy as he drove off and left us. My aunt was in the hospital for most of the summer with some severe injuries. My sister was asleep in the backseat and had her head cut open and whiplash, as her head was on the side that was hit. The pillow she was resting her head on saved her, I’m sure.
This experience definitely changed my life. It knocked the selfish, self-centered young woman I was right out of me, and I lived with guilt for years. I paid a heavy price for not listening, and now, in my 60s, I have learned my lesson. Now I know to listen, but I don’t think I have heard or needed to hear that kind of warning again.”
—Gretchen, Oregon, USA
13.“One night, I was at a party with friends. I drank a little too much and wound up leaving the party alone and walking out into the night. I was walking down the side of the highway around 1 or 2 a.m. when a van pulled up with two men in it, asking me if I wanted a ride. I said OK and opened the door. As I started to get into the van, I suddenly saw police lights flashing behind me. The officer called out my name and said, ‘Come with me, your friends are worried about you.’ So, I got out and he drove me back to the party.”
“When I walked back inside, I thanked my friends for calling the police. None of them had called. I don’t know how the police officer knew where I was or what my name was that night, but he was there. He was definitely my guardian angel, and I believe something bad would have happened to me that night if he hadn’t been there.”
—Anonymous
14.“It was the summer of 1986 and I was about 5 when this happened. My father was a marine and the marines brought their families together for a day of hot dogs, baseball, and fun. The park we were at had a paved walking trail that was basically just a really big circle around the park. Little 5-year-old me had my hot dog and went for a walk on the trail. At the furthest(ish) point on the trail from where everyone else was, I began to choke. I took a bite of hot dog that was to big and was having difficulty chewing it, which led to me accidentally swallowing before it was ready to be swallowed. I knew I was done for. I stood there, looking at the ground, hot dog in left hand, and right hand where I felt the stuck dog right below my voice box. I was trying my hardest to push or vomit it out. I began to think, ‘I’m gonna die.’ That very second, I felt the urge to look up. To my left not three feet away was a tiny little old lady.”
“She was the straight up stereotypical image of a sweet little old lady sitting on a bench, smiling at me. I quickly motioned to her that I was choking and needed help. In her soft sweet smiling old lady voice, she said, ‘Oh I know, I know. You need to just relax, everything is going to be fine.’ Seeing her happy calmness made her instruction to just relax seem like a good idea, so I did. The moment I began to relax was the moment I felt the hotdog moving back up my throat and back into my mouth, then onto the ground at my feet. I was in shock seeing a literal half of a hot dog on the ground and couldn’t believe I took that big of a bite.
I’m not sure how long I was staring at that hot dog, but it couldn’t have been more than a second or two. When I looked up again, there was no bench and there was no old lady. I just lost it crying, standing there until one of the other marines noticed me and came to check on me. When he asked what was wrong, I blubberingly mumbled out through tears what happened. He stood up quick as spit sizzles, looking around for the old lady, then walked me back to the rest of the families.”
—Anonymous
15.“One night, I received a phone call from a family member who had previously tried to assault me. He knew where I lived and that I was alone that night, as my husband was working a night shift. He started saying some horribly creepy things to me, and I was terrified because he lived nearby. Suddenly, a deep man’s voice said, ‘It will be OK.’ I heard it as clearly as if there was someone in the room with me. The creep on the phone said, ‘Who’s there with you? I heard a man’s voice!’ and hung up. I never heard from him again.”
—Anonymous
16.“I was living in Richmond, Virginia, in the late ’90s with my two sons and daughter. My daughter was 18 months old. One day, we were walking to the pool. As we were approaching it, I noticed that we were alone. I had the kids in front of me and behind me, and all of a sudden, my daughter let go of her brother’s hand and dove into the pool. It happened so fast, but as soon as she dove in, a lady with golden hair and blue eyes dove in after her and recused her before she hit the bottom. None of us could swim. I was dumbfounded when I reached the pool, and she just handed my baby to me, soaked right down to her diaper. Then, she disappeared. To this day, I don’t know where she came from or went. And when I looked around, nobody else was there to help us. We ever went back there again.”
—Anonymous
17.“I developed PTSD before I learned to tie my shoes, and as a result, I had a lot of ‘behavioral problems’ as a child. This resulted in me spending much of my elementary education in isolated suspension. Essentially, I was put in a very small room in the administrative office, which had a big glass window. There were two desks in there, and I became close friends with a boy from another class in my fourth and fifth grade years, because he was usually in ISS with me. Well, turns out he never existed.”
“More than 20 years later, I still remember him better than most of my classmates. I can remember him comforting me as I cried, as I told him about my home life and secrets that I still haven’t told anyone else. I went to a different school for sixth grade, but came back to high school in the same town. When I asked about him, no one knew a thing about who he was. This was a school where graduating classes were rarely ever over 100. He wasn’t in any yearbooks, even in the ‘absent for photographs’ section.”
18.“I was driving back to college my freshman year and got totally lost in a heavily wooded area. This was before GPS and cell phones, so I was just stuck on these roads alone. I couldn’t find my way to the highway I was looking for and as the sun set, a huge storm broke out and it started pouring rain. The rain was so heavy I could barely see the road. Suddenly, a house with all the lights on appeared. It was the only house I had seen for miles, so (against my better judgment) I parked the car and went running for the door. The house had a fence but no gate to open so I hopped the fence and started banging on the door asking for help.”
“A woman opened the door and invited me inside. The house was empty except for a big bean bag chair in the kitchen. She said they had just moved in and her husband had left to get something, so it was just us. I was soaking wet, so she offered me a change of clothes and poured me a cup of tea. She let me use her phone to call my parents, but they didn’t answer, so I left her number on the machine so they could call her back and thank her. She said I was really close to the highway but understood I had already had a rough night, so she offered to drive and guide me to the highway so that I wouldn’t get lost again. Turns out, if I had just kept driving another minute up the road, I would have hit the highway. My mom called the number I gave the next day, but we got a error saying the number did not exist. Despite having driven that road many times later in my college career, I never saw that house again.”
—Johanna, Georgia, USA
19.“My husband and I were lost and driving one snowy, icy night. We happened to turn on a road that was downhill to some train tracks. There was a train coming and we were sliding down the hill. We braced ourselves, preparing to be smashed into by said train, and suddenly, our car was pulled backward uphill just as the train was about to hit us. After this occurred, we both had this weird feeling, like someone was in the back seat when, in reality, there was definitely not anyone else in our car at all. I’m not exactly sure who was with us that night, but I am so grateful they were. They saved our lives for sure.”
—Nicole, USA
20.“The year was 1984. I was working in New York City and walking on my lunch hour along Fifth Avenue. The avenue, of course, was very crowded. Suddenly, I felt a man take my shoulders and lead me quickly across the street, exclaiming that a van was about to hit me! All I could make out about the man was that he seemed odd-looking and out of place in the city. When I was safe across the street, I turned to thank him, and he completely disappeared. I even asked a woman who was alongside me, and she said she hadn’t seen anyone! Now that to me was definitely my guardian angel!”
—Carole, Staten Island, NY
21.“When I was young, around 9 years old, I had to have pretty major surgeries for a birth defect. I was feeling sick, in pain, and frustrated about not being able to sleep or get out of bed. When I rang the bell for the night nurses to help me to the toilet, a smiling man dressed all in white would come straight away and help me. He was so happy and peaceful, with the biggest smile and a bright aura to him. He always came straight to me as soon as the bell rang. The next day (after the second night of his help), I asked another nurse if he would be on duty that night. The staff were very confused, even after my description of him. She told me there weren’t any male staffers on duty those past two nights and that none of the porters or other staff wore all white or would have been answering bells on the ward.”
—Anonymous
22.“I once fell about 10 feet from a ledge overlooking a lake. The ledge was above large rocks and, as I fell, I was sure I was about to be gravely hurt. Suddenly, I felt a large hand on my back that caught me and pushed me against the wall. Surprised, I turned around to thank my savior…and no one was there. I was dangling over the rocks, feeling the hand as it pushed me straight against the wall until both my feet where secured. I cannot explain what happened that day, but I know there was someone/something there that saved me.”
—Anonymous
23.“When my husband was in his 20s, he fell asleep while driving and crashed into a telephone pole. He was hurt and remembered a teenage kid knocking on his window and telling him he called the police and not to get out of the car because there were live wires everywhere. When my husband was finally rescued, there was no sign of the kid. The police said that no one had called them — they just came because the power was out. Not only that, but they said there was no way anyone could have gotten close to the car on account of the wires, and if my husband had tried to get out of the car, they probably would have probably killed him. My husband so vividly remembers the kid, he believes he was real, but his mom believes it was his guardian angel.”
—Anonymous
24.“Back in the mid ’90s, I was down by the projects near Port Elizabeth. It was like 2 a.m., and I was trying to find a friend who was down there. I had pulled to the side of the road to use a payphone that was all by itself under a street light. I went to the phone, dropped my quarters in, and started to dial. As soon as I did, I heard a harsh whisper that said, ‘Get out of here.’ I looked around, and there was no place close enough for someone to hide and whisper to me, so I shrugged it off and started to dial again. That was when I heard it again. I hung up the phone, retrieved my quarters, and looked around a second time. There was nothing, nobody — just a dark, deserted street in the bad part of town. I shook it off again and deposited my quarters. I started to dial the number and heard it whisper a third time, very aggressively, ‘Get out of here NOW!'”
“Now I was spooked. I noticed a car approaching and got a really bad feeling, so I jumped in my car and took off. I left the quarters and just bolted. Not long after that, some guy tried to use that same payphone and was killed in a drive-by shooting. I am convinced that if I had stayed, it would have been me. It occurred within minutes of me departing.
Over the years, I have thought of that incident semi-regularly, and I can still hear that whispered, harsh warning to get out of there now.”
—Kevin, Phillipsburg, New Jersey
Thank you to everyone kind enough to share their stories! Have you ever had a “third man syndrome” experience like these? If so, I’d love if you’d tell us your story in the comments below or via this completely anonymous form.
Note: Submissions are edited for length and/or clarity.
If you enjoyed these stories, you can read a bunch more of them here.
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