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. I got way more responses than I expected, and they’re all as jaw-dropping and spine-chilling as you’d likely expect. Here are 21 stories they shared:
1.“I’m double-jointed, so when I was about 18 months old, I figured out how to squeeze out of my car seat. My mom was driving on the freeway and I managed to get the door open while she was going like 70 mph. My mom said she saw a hand and arm from the corner of her eye shut the door.”
2.“At midnight on Christmas Eve in 2009, I was driving in a blizzard in Lincoln, Nebraska. Three or four inches had fallen in an hour, and the snow wasn’t stopping. I got to my apartment complex, but my car couldn’t make it 50 feet up the thick snow in the driveway to my parking spot. My car slid backward and stopped in the street. I tried a second time to get up the driveway, but again, it rolled back to the bottom. I got out of the car to assess the situation and got back in, frustrated. At midnight on a holiday, help could take hours to arrive. This wasn’t life-threatening, but it would ruin my Christmas! Wondering whether to try again, I suddenly saw a dark figure at my window.”
“He gestured that he was going to push and then got behind the car. I gave it gas, and we got the car up the driveway! I drove to my parking spot, and then I went back to the sidewalk to thank the mysterious stranger. He had disappeared in the 30 seconds I had taken to park and walk back to him. There was no sight of anyone up or down the street — he just vanished.”
3.“I was about 12 years old. My mom left me in the car while she ran into the corner store. This store was connected to a few other businesses, one of them being a bar. As I was waiting, two men who seemed pretty old to me at the time (but were probably in their thirties) approached our car. They started complimenting me and asking me to join them for ‘some fun.’ I was very embarrassed and scared and said no thank you. I was a naive girl who went through puberty at a young age. The compliments suddenly turned mean and aggressive, and the men started trying to open the door and pounding on the hood. I was frozen and couldn’t say anything. I just sat there. I remember thinking that the back doors were probably unlocked and that I should lock them, but I was frozen with fear.”
“Suddenly, my mom came running out of the store. She started yelling at the men and caused a big scene. They quickly left. She got into the car with me, and I was so relieved. She told me she was so proud of me and how I had the smarts to keep honking the horn. I was confused because I did not honk the horn at all. She said in the store she heard a car horn honking and then someone just holding it down. She thought it was me and ran to help. It wasn’t me, and I didn’t hear any honking.”
—Shannon, Ohio, USA
4.“The summer before my senior year in high school, I was a counselor at a co-ed 4-H camp way up in the woods. The campers were from all over, but the counselors were recruited from my 4-H chapter, so we were all at least acquainted beforehand, if not actually friends. The camp kept us pretty busy. The only free time counselors had was at night after the campers were in their bunks. One night, I was returning alone from the main lodge. On the path, I ran into a friend from school named Bobby, who touched my arm and said, ‘Don’t go that way. The guys have something planned for you.’ Wordlessly, he accompanied me to my cabin by a different route, then walked off into the darkness. Now, Bobby was a standup guy from a religious family, and this was the sort of chivalrous thing he would do. The catch, which I didn’t realize until after the fact, was that he wasn’t not even in 4-H and was certainly NOT a counselor at camp that summer.”
—Anonymous
5.“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
6.“As a young, 16-year-old girl in the 1970s, I used to hitchhike to and from school in Northern California. On this particular day, I caught a ride home with a guy in his thirties who I’d never met before. We got to talking about gold panning, and he asked if I’d like to try that afternoon. With nothing else to do, I agreed. We drove out to woods, miles from anywhere or anyone, somewhere along the American River. The farther we got, the quieter he became. I remember thinking it was best to keep the conversation going, but I began to realize I was in real trouble, out in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger. How could I be so stupid? As we got out of the car, he’d gone completely silent. I knew then that I was going to die.”
“Suddenly, a family in a Jeep pulled up behind our car and just looked at us. No one said anything. They looked, and then turned around and left. The guy I was with then quickly said that we had to leave. All I could think at the time was, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!’ to those folks. We got in the car, and he took me all the way home, right to my door. I never saw him again.”
—Cy, Foster, USA
7.“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.”
8.“I was in high school at the time and was spending the evening at home. I had watched a scary movie, which usually never bothered me. I couldn’t shake the weird feeling I had, so I left my bedside light on before drifting off to sleep that night. Usually, I can sleep through anything. I live in California, so sleeping through earthquakes was normal for me. At about 2 a.m., someone in my dream had screamed at me to wake up, and I startled awake in real life. When I opened my eyes, I saw a hand opening my bedroom window.”
“I sat up, and when the person opening my window realized I was awake, he backed away and ran off. I ran downstairs to wake my parents, and we called the police. The person was caught, and we found out that he had committed several rapes in our area in the past few weeks. He had planned out everything to get to me. He hid a ladder to reach my second-floor window and made sure it was unlocked. I am so thankful for whoever woke me up that night. It truly saved me. I will always listen to my feelings of unease.”
—Anonymous
9.“I’m a healthcare provider and was traveling to a satellite site in another state. While I was crossing a bridge over a large body of water, my phone — which had been sitting in its usual spot on the side of my car door — randomly dialed 911 and called my emergency contacts (in this case, my husband). I got a call back from the state police and apologized for the error. When I got to the site, my husband called me in a panic and said that he had gotten an emergency notification. I laughed it off as a weird glitch and went on with my day. A few hours later, my watch — a cheap smartwatch knockoff — started buzzing with a message telling me it was ‘time to get up and walk.’ I thought this was a little weird as I had never set up notifications, and it had never messaged me that before (or since).”
“I got up and walked for a bit but had a sharp pain in my left calf. I’m a major klutz, so I figured I pulled a muscle. I got in my car to go home, and once again, after five minutes of driving, my phone dialed 911. I was appalled and apologized profusely to the call taker. She laughed and graciously asked if I was okay, which I confirmed. I called my husband to complain, and the Angel on my visor — which was given to me years before by my mother — flipped off my visor and hit me in the chest. At this point, I jokingly told him that the universe was trying to send me a message and that I probably had a blood clot or something. My husband laughed it off, too.
The next day, the pain in my leg was excruciating, but I blew it off. That night, I started thinking about all the weird signs that had popped up and that maybe I should go to the hospital. I had a patient I could not miss the next day, so I was still going to go to work. Then, this urgent feeling overcame me that I needed to take care of myself so that I could be around for my youngest son.
I went to the emergency room that morning and was diagnosed with two large blood clots in my left leg and two clots in my lungs. Other than the pain, I had had no outward symptoms. The hospital staff were as blown away as was I.”
—TL Reign, Wilmington, DE
10.“I was dancing with my friend at a foam party, which is where they hang a machine from the ceiling that dumps TONS of bubbles onto the dance floor. The foam was super deep under the machine and the floor was super slippery because of the soapy bubbles. My friend slipped into the foam and I fell down to the floor, under the bubbles with her. When I tried to breathe, it was like I was drowning — the foam filled my lungs like water. I couldn’t open my eyes, my feet and hands kept slipping so I couldn’t stand up, and no one could hear us choking and screaming over the music. I was slipping all over on the floor holding onto my friend’s shirt. Just as I thought we were going to drown in the bubbles, someone pulled us up. It was as though we’d been lifted or pushed, because there was no way anyone could have grabbed me by the arm. I was way too slippery — my friend and I couldn’t even hold hands, our skin was so slick. I was lucky just to hang onto her shirt.”
“We came out of the bubbles, choking and gasping, covered in soap, clinging on to each other. When I wiped my eyes clear, there was no one there except the other people dancing around us. They were all oblivious to us, though — they didn’t even know we had fallen and no one had seen anyone pull us out nor did anyone ask us if we were OK! Needless to say, I never went to a foam party again.”
—Anonymous
11.“Many years ago, I stayed late working on a special project at my company and was driving home in the early morning hours alone. My husband and I had only one car, and I was using it. When I’d gotten into the car to drive to work that morning, I noticed the gas gauge was empty, but my husband insisted there was still enough gas to get me to work and back. Well, my car ran out of gas on the way home. I pulled over and used my flashing lights, hoping the police would stop to help me. In those days, there were no cell phones, so I had no way to contact my husband. After a few minutes, a car pulled up behind mine, and a man came up to my driver’s side window.”
“He wasn’t the police, but I rolled down my window a little. He seemed nice and offered to drive me home, which was just about three miles away. In this day and age, I would never accept this offer, but for some reason, I got the feeling it would be OK. He drove me home and, in the short distance, mentioned his name and that he worked for Eddie Bauer. He waited at my house until I got in, and I waved goodbye.
Of course, I thanked him, but the next day, I wanted to call him at his office and thank him again. The operator said there was no such person with his name who worked there. I believe God had sent me a guardian, and I’ll always be sincerely thankful!”
—Dottie, Kirkland, WA
12.“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
13.“This did not happen to me, but it happened years ago in my house to someone whose word I trust. She’s a young woman I know well. She used to clean my house for me, sometimes when I was not at home. After one of those times, she asked me if I had a ghost in the house. I told her not to my knowledge. She said she had been carrying the vacuum cleaner upstairs to the second floor when she lost her balance and started to fall backward. Instead of falling, she felt a hand push her back upright. I have known her since she was in preschool. She is intelligent and sensible, not given to wild imaginings or to making up stories. If she said it happened, I believe it did.”
“I asked if she had been scared. She said no, she had felt very safe. She believed it was my husband, who had died in a plane crash many years earlier. She had never known him, but she was sure it was him. If he were able to manifest himself only once, that would have been the time he would have done it — to take care of someone I cared about.”
—Anonymous
14.“I was in my twenties and living in San Jose. My parents had moved to Mariposa and I was driving to see them and their new place. As I drove, I noticed my gas gauge losing gas quickly. I had to stop a few times to add gas. It was a VW bug, so it was not too expensive to keep adding, but I was concerned. I found out I had a hole in my gas tank and that the gas had just kept dripping out as I drove. On the last leg of the drive, I started to realize how dangerous this could be if it caught fire. So, I stopped on a big shoulder of the road to check it. I was surprised to see a big semi-truck pull over, too.”
“No one got out of the truck, and their windshield was tinted, so I couldn’t see who was there. I continued to check my tank and decided I could make it to my parents if I kept an eye and ear on the situation. Still, no one got out of the semi-truck. I felt as if I was being watched, but I wasn’t afraid. I felt comforted, actually.
I got in my car and drove off, watching the truck in my rearview mirror. It started up and began to follow me. When I got to a major turn on the highway, I looked back and the truck suddenly wasn’t there. It hadn’t passed me — it was just gone. I was a bit shocked that it had seemingly disappeared, but the comforting feeling continued. I made it to my parents safely and I will always be thankful to the driver in that truck who was watching after me. My guardian angel.”
—Lynne C, California, USA
15.“As a kid, I was in and out of hospitals for surgeries related to a genetic disorder I had. When I was about 9 or 10, there was this nurse who worked the night shift and would sit with me, telling me stories when my parents couldn’t be there. She was very young and looked like a teenager. Looking back, she appeared far too young to work at the hospital and was far too energetic to be working the night shift. She wore all-white scrubs and would braid my hair when I was lonely and couldn’t sleep. She’d sit with me for hours on end without having to go anywhere else.”
“One night, she stayed with me when my parents couldn’t. I felt a pain in my side and told her about it. It was the most intense pain I had ever felt at that point in my life. My call button wasn’t working, and there were no other nurses but her to help. She told me she was going to get help. About a minute later, a group of doctors and nurses burst into my room, asking who screamed. Apparently, they had been in a separate ward when they heard this high-pitched scream that almost sounded like singing coming from right outside my door. Everyone had heard it except for me.
As it turned out, I was having complications due to surgery and internal bleeding that very well could’ve resulted in permanent damage or death by morning. Later, when I asked what happened to the nurse, they were all perplexed and told me no one who matched that description worked there. They checked the schedule, and somehow, all of the nurses were under the impression that someone was acting as my bedside nurse even though no one was on rotation.
That really confused me. My parents remember coming in some mornings and seeing my hair in French or Dutch braids that they assumed I had done myself when I was bored. The nurse in white had braided them, as I was and am still hopeless at braiding. The strangest part was that my doctors would sometimes hear me talking to someone when they walked past my room, but they assumed it was my parents or that I was simply talking in my sleep. To this day, I know that was a guardian angel. I haven’t seen her since, but I know she’s still with me.”
—Anonymous
16.“In 2009, my husband and I both lost our jobs, then lost our home. The state insurance for our daughter had not started yet, so she was uninsured at this time. I had to go get a prescription for her that she really needed. I didn’t think it would cost too much, but it was over $300. I didn’t have the money and begged the pharmacy just to give me a few pills until we got her insurance, but they could not help. I sat down on a chair around the corner of the pharmacy, still in the store. I just started sobbing. I had been through too much, and this was it. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, someone came up to me and handed me $350 in cash rolled up.”
“I don’t remember what they looked like. I don’t think I even looked at them; I was crying so hard. I was so surprised. I said, ‘Thank you, are you sure?’ And they confirmed, saying it was for my daughter. I finally looked up…and no one was there. I went to the counter and paid for the RX. I looked around for that person, but I never found them. I still thank them when I think about it.”
—Anonymous
17.“I was in Florida on spring break in 1990 with a friend when I accidentally turned onto some railroad tracks in an unlit, unfamiliar, unpopulated area. My little Ford Festiva was stuck. A bus driver stopped and called police for help, as well as a tow truck. The officer got there quickly but told my friend and me to get our things out of the car and move back because a train was coming. As we heard the train horn, my friend and I were panicking, and I was crying, wondering how we would get back to Michigan and how I would tell my parents. It was then that a tall, thin, older man came out of nowhere. I cannot remember his face for the life of me.”
“He took my hand in a calm, reassuring voice and said, ‘Don’t worry, honey. Everything is going to be OK.’ Just then, the tow truck driver pulled up, and we saw the train heading toward my car. We watched in horror as he pulled his truck on the other side of the tracks and attempted to hook up my car as the train was almost on us. The train barreled by, and my friend and I were full-out crying, thinking he had been killed. Nope. After the train finally passed, he and my car, unharmed, were standing safely on the other side of the tracks. I looked around to say thank you to the very nice man, but he was nowhere. There was literally nothing around there, nowhere to go. When I asked where he’d gone, the bus driver, officer, and tow truck driver didn’t know what I was talking about.”
—Michelle, Dallas, TX
18.“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
19.“I was taking my mother to a doctor’s appointment at a hospital. It was a campus-style hospital, so there was not an obvious place to go. When we finally found parking, we had to walk quite a ways to the building that we needed to be in. We were walking down the sidewalk, which was along a busy street. My mom was in front of me, walking at a somewhat slow pace due to her injuries, and I was trailing behind. Now, for me, when I think to myself, it’s almost like I can hear my voice in my head. I began to have ‘thoughts’ as we walked, but this time, the voice was not my own. The voice said, ‘Turn around.’ I began to think how peculiar that was, doing my best to ignore what was going on and finish the task at hand. ‘Turn around!’ The voice was louder and accompanied by this urge to follow its direction. I still did my best to shrug it off. ‘TURN AROUND!'”
I finally gave in, and when I did, I saw a car immediately jerk from the lane that it was in and hop onto the sidewalk on the side that we were walking on. I was able to push my mother onto a grass hill that was between us and the hospital parking lot and get myself in front of a telephone pole when the car smashed into it, narrowly missing both of us.
I ran over to the smashed car and opened the door to find an older woman with a head injury who was obviously very confused. I immediately called 911 for the woman and waited with her until someone was able to come and render aid, which still took over 30 minutes despite the fact that we were literally outside of a hospital. I don’t know who or what it was that was speaking to me that day, but I have never heard the voice before or since.”
—Anonymous
20.“I’m nearly 75 years of age, and haven’t thought of this incident for years. I was raised in North Alabama, the youngest of three brothers. Our family would often vacation on the panhandle of the Florida Gulf Coast near Destin and Panama City. On one occasion (I was maybe 6 or 7 years old), we stopped for a picnic at a public park near a backwater estuary. I was wading and stepped off into water deeper than I realized. I turned toward the shore and tried to clamber back, but knew I was literally over my head in water. Suddenly, I felt hands under my armpits lifting me into the shallow water, until my feet touched the bottom. I immediately turned to see who was there, thinking it was one of my brothers, but there was no one else in the water. I didn’t say anything to anyone at the time, not knowing what to say. To this day, I can’t quite grasp what really happened.”
—Anonymous
21.“I was 34 years old and new to California. I rented a room in what looked like a nice neighborhood, and it was, except it was in a bubble and surrounded by rival gang territory. I did my laundry at a laundromat about three blocks from my residence. It always seemed like such a nice, quiet part of the neighborhood, and I had gone several times without any problems. This particular Sunday, the laundromat was open but empty. I had finished two washing loads and started to load a dryer. As I turned to get the second load from its washer, I noticed a car parked in the parking lot some distance from my car. Two large guys got out. One walked up to the only door of the laundromat, blocking my only exit. The other guy stayed by the car, standing by the driver’s side door. Then, a large woman got out of the back seat. She entered the laundromat and hoisted herself up on one of the washers by the wall of windows that faced the parking lot, folded her arms, and stared at me.”
“All the hairs on my neck stood up and I started hyperventilating. I knew I was in trouble. I started grabbing my soaking wet clothes out of the washer and stuffed them into a pillow case. Then, I went to the dryer, opened it, took the still-wet clothes out, and stuffed them into another pillow case. Just at that moment, a man who looked to be in his thirties suddenly appeared behind the man blocking the door. He was carrying a toddler. He pushed past him and started putting dollar bills in the coin machine by the door and looked at me with a strange look in his eye. I just knew I was meant to follow him.
Sure enough, he got his change and stood by the man until he stepped aside. The stranger, his child, and I walked out the door together, me first and then the man and his child. I got to my car, threw the wet pillowcases with clothes in, ran to the drivers side, locked the doors, and drove off. I looked for the man and his little girl as I left, but there was no one there. I saw no other cars and absolutely no people anywhere, just the man who had been blocking the door, the woman who was now standing outside, and the guy who stayed at their car.
I quickly drove to my residence, following a route that I knew had open stores to make sure no one was following me. I arrived safely, told the owner of my residence what happened, and moved to a different area of town that week.”
—Anonymous
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.