Episode 299 - Third Man Syndrome & Stories of Survival

Imagine surviving impossible odds with the help of a mysterious, unseen presence—someone who’s there just when you need them most. This is the Third Man Syndrome, a paranormal phenomenon that’s as comforting as it is spine-chilling. Is it a guardian angel, a spirit guide, our brain trying to keep us alive... or the grim reaper? Join us as we dive into tales of people saved from the brink by a spectral ‘third man.’ This episode covers incredible stories of survival: lost explorers in the icy South Pole, a mysterious figure leading 9/11 survivors through smoke-filled towers, and even a handprint in the sand from an invisible helper. 👀 Our journey starts with Sir Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition to the South Pole, where he and his men endured the unimaginable. Lost on an iceberg and pushed to the brink, Shackleton’s team encountered something… or someone… who wasn’t part of the original crew. Through hurricanes, frozen seas, and the desperate fight for survival, the men swore they felt a presence guiding them across the icy wasteland, pushing them forward when all seemed lost. Against all odds, every member survived, but none could ever explain the mysterious “fourth man” who helped save them. From sailors to climbers to everyday folks like us, these stories make you question reality—could we all have an unseen companion waiting to save us? And don’t miss our own paranormal ponderings, with plenty of shivers and laughs along the way. Movie mentioned: Tusk Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [email protected] Encounters episodes are released every Thursday at 9am PST/12pm EST. Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! This episode is sponsored by Jenni Kayne, Dinnerly and Manscaped. Jenni Kayne is our go-to destination for the very best of the season. Gift yourself and your loved ones the best gift of all - Jenni Kayne. From now through the end of November, our listeners get 25% off your first order when you use code TGOG at jennikayne.com Dinnerly is the most affordable meal kit I’ve ever come across with meals as low as $2.99 per meal. This holiday season, give the gift of great, affordable food with Dinnerly! Head to Dinnerly.com/offer/TGOG and use code TGOG for up to 27 FREE meals! Forget the cliché gifts like socks or ugly sweaters—gift your man with the ultimate grooming experience by MANSCAPED® and get him The Chairman™ Pro Package for the holidays. It’s a thoughtful and practical gift that he’ll actually use and love! Get 20% off + free shipping with the code TGOG at Manscaped.com If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you’re looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Two Girls, One Ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America.

• 0:06Corinne Vien?

  Where each week, we dive into all things strange, spooky, and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners.

• 0:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 0:19Corinne Vien?

  Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 0:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Shelley Jensen was about to retire early after selling her veterinary practice for millions. But a moment of vulnerability became a way to take away her rights.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Don't you see how destroyed I am as a person?

• 0:43Speaker 02

  Her husband fought to save her before Shelley lost her freedom forever.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  This is a life or death matter. My wife's life is at stake.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Free Shelley Jensen. Available now on The Binge.

• 0:59Corinne Vien?

  But there is this spooky phenomenon, this paranormal phenomenon. And it's sort of like that feeling, you just know that someone else is in the room with you. But there's a version of this energy that's not so spooky. It's actually very comforting, and it's called third man syndrome.

• 1:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 1:18Corinne Vien?

  And this phenomenon happens when people are often in times of peril, near death, and they feel another person there with them. In our darkest moments, there is light.

• 1:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're actually never alone, even when you shower.

• 1:32Corinne Vien?

  Yep. The ghosts are watching you.

• 1:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The ghosts are washing you. Okay.

• 1:40Corinne Vien?

  Let's go, boys.

• 2:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hello.

• 2:05Corinne Vien?

  Hey.

• 2:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 2:07Corinne Vien?

  Two Girls, One Ghost. I feel like two voices just came out of me there.

• 2:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh.

• 2:11Corinne Vien?

  Spooky.

• 2:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's Corinne.

• 2:13Corinne Vien?

  Hi.

• 2:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm Sabrina. And we're your ghostesses and we're gonna lead you through this spooky event of talking. That is today, today, tonight, whenever you're listening.

• 2:25Corinne Vien?

  Today, today, tonight.

• 2:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Tonight.

• 2:27Corinne Vien?

  Today, today, tonight.

• 2:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I have a ghost story.

• 2:29Corinne Vien?

  What, oh, really?

• 2:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Corinne Vien?

  Wow, from yesterday?

• 2:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, since yesterday, I have a ghost story. The spider's still dead on the ground, in case everyone was wondering.

• 2:37Corinne Vien?

  Well, in case anyone was wondering, I have a child and I

• 2:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You do?

• 2:40Corinne Vien?

  I vacuum every four weeks. So the spider's gonna be there for the next, like, 10 recordings.

• 2:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I was just, sometimes I wonder if, like, another spider will come by and pick it up and carry it on its back and be like, I got you, brother. We'll give you a proper burial.

• 2:52Corinne Vien?

  Or it'll be like, mm.

• 2:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sustained.

• 2:54Corinne Vien?

  Munchy, yummy.

• 2:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Crunchy.

• 2:56Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, I don't know, but R.I.P. spider. You'll be gone in a few weeks.

• 3:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes. I will keep y'all updated, because I know you're all very concerned. Two things, actually. So, one, I went to a doctor's appointment this morning and then realized my hairdresser was right next door and I was like, hey, you up? And she had an appointment available, so I went and got my hair done and

• 3:17Corinne Vien?

  I need to find a place. Where do you go?

• 3:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Her name is Melanie Blake. She's great. I got a ghost story while I was getting my hair done.

• 3:24Corinne Vien?

  From the salon or from her? Is it a haunted hair salon?

• 3:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's not a haunted hair salon, although the woman next to her is very like us, one of us, spooky. I like always wanna kinda pop my head in there and be like, hey. So someone else is there and they said that their dad, for years, has had dreams of this same man. His name is George. Continuously dreams about him.

• 3:45Corinne Vien?

  Hmm.

• 3:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And

• 3:46Corinne Vien?

  But had no idea who this was.

• 3:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Has never met him.

• 3:48Corinne Vien?

  Never seen before in their life.

• 3:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Never seen him before.

• 3:51Corinne Vien?

  Just a dream man.

• 3:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A dream man. But then, someone in real life asked him about George.

• 3:57Corinne Vien?

  Wait, excuse me?

• 3:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Corinne Vien?

  Like a stranger came up and was like, you know George?

• 4:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They couldn't remember all the specific details, but something in that vein. Yeah. Basically someone.

• 4:06Corinne Vien?

  Whoa.

• 4:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Someone else in the real world, whether they knew the person or not, knew of George and knew that he would know George.

• 4:13Corinne Vien?

  I need a million more details.

• 4:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know.

• 4:15Corinne Vien?

  I, ah, this person, if you ever run into them again, where you guys are both getting your hair done at the same time.

• 4:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And be like, tell me more about George.

• 4:22Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. Be like, you better have asked your dad about George. That's wild.

• 4:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 4:26Corinne Vien?

  It makes me so curious because I'm like, well, is George just someone?

• 4:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We're curious about George.

• 4:31Corinne Vien?

  We are. Curious George.

• 4:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We don't know.

• 4:34Corinne Vien?

  I have a million questions because it's.

• 4:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I have zero answers, aside from what I told you.

• 4:39Corinne Vien?

  Did you ask more questions? They just couldn't remember?

• 4:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And she was like, I, I don't know. Like, I just know that it's weird.

• 4:47Corinne Vien?

  That is weird. I'm really just curious about the other person.

• 4:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Like, how do they know George?

• 4:52Corinne Vien?

  But like, how do they know George? And how did they know that this person's dad knows George?

• 4:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And how do both of these people, like, is George this like sleep god?

• 5:00Corinne Vien?

  I don't know. Or were they all together in a past life?

• 5:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Maybe.

• 5:04Corinne Vien?

  And George told this other person? Ah, so bizarre.

• 5:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I have questions. If any of you dream of George, let us know. Who is George?

• 5:11Corinne Vien?

  Serious George dream, man.

• 5:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Corinne Vien?

  And my other one, we were talking about this earlier, but for some reason today, the energy is so incredibly palpable and thick. It feels like I'm moving through molasses. This is my second large coffee. Yeah. You texted me and you're like, I've been crying so much today and these emotions are not my own.

• 5:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They're not mine.

• 5:33Corinne Vien?

  And I was like, that's so wild because I, I like can't focus and I feel like a big, heavy, like it feels like.

• 5:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Weight.

• 5:39Corinne Vien?

  Dense weight.

• 5:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Corinne Vien?

  Just around my chest. It's like it exists from here to here.

• 5:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, it is. It's like, almost like a donut.

• 5:45Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Corinne Vien?

  So strange. Like, I, I really am having a hard time focusing and talking and listening to people today.

• 5:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Same. So sorry to all of you. We're gonna struggle a little bit.

• 5:56Corinne Vien?

  Great day to record two episodes. It's so weird. I've never had an experience this heavy. And like everywhere I've been driving, like, I feel like I need to get out of the car. I need to like ground myself. I want to just lay on.

• 6:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Grass.

• 6:08Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but at the same time, it like doesn't feel good outside either.

• 6:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, like there's no escaping it.

• 6:14Corinne Vien?

  Right. Like I was driving through some of the most beautiful parts of

• 6:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Same.

• 6:18Corinne Vien?

  This area and I should be like, wow, look at these mansions and the like blowing leaves and the trees and like, ah. But instead I was just like, oh my God, I feel weird.

• 6:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Heavy. Well, we have a really creepy video to talk about that someone shared with us last night.

• 6:34Corinne Vien?

  And we're going to share again tonight on Campfire Stories, which will be a few weeks prior, but that's when this episode comes out.

• 6:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is the Campfire Stories. If you're a Patreon member and want to re-watch it, you have the access and availability to go back and re-watch all of them. November 5th and we'll share it in the beginning of the episode.

• 6:50Corinne Vien?

  It was scary enough.

• 6:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You always look that way. And I'm like, what?

• 6:53Corinne Vien?

  Well, because I was going to talk about the candles. So it was scary enough that I think the ghosts in my house got scared because it was the last video shared in our live stream on Patreon. And we sign off like pretty much immediately after everyone was like, all right, like have a great nightmare. Goodbye. And I'm alone in here and I try to turn off the lights, which are like a battery remote and we turn them on and off constantly. They would not turn off. Click, click, click, click, click. I had to go through because obviously like, well, no, it's not obvious to people.

• 7:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So obvious.

• 7:22Corinne Vien?

  It's so obvious that we had to buy like six packs of these candles to have enough to go across like this. So I have six different remotes and I had to go through every single remote until I finally got the last one. So on my like 40th click, they turned off.

• 7:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The ghosts were scared. They don't want it to be dark in here.

• 7:37Corinne Vien?

  Whoever's attached to something in here did not. Yeah, the video was very freaky.

• 7:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Corinne Vien?

  Little ghost.

• 7:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  As context, our listener Madison has come onto Campfire Stories prior to this. And Madison said she would email like the whole story and we could share it in a future episode. But she had stayed at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Very haunted. We've done a whole episode on it. They did a ghost tour with their family and took a photo. And it looks like they very clearly caught what is a ghost caught on camera. And it's like the legs and feet of perhaps one of the ghosts at the hotel. Then she was talking to someone who works at the Crescent Hotel, telling them this story. And the woman she was talking to goes, hold on your butt, I've got something for you.

• 8:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And shared a video that another guest of the hotel had taken. Madison did not set up the video correctly for how scary it was. She was like, oh yeah, so the woman is panning, like talking about being at the hotel and like pans from her friend on the bed to the cooler where they had drinks. And you see a little ghost girl there. That's what Madison said. So I was expecting for it to pan and for us to see like, just like the glimpse of a little girl.

• 8:50Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 8:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This girl is sprinting, sprinting her ass off. Horror movie style across the screen.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  Girl's trip, most haunted hotel in America. And my nightstand on the creepy door is my ice chest. So early bedtime, looking for ghosts.

• 9:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And if we slow it down, we'll play it for you here. And if you're watching the YouTube video, as you slow it down, like you can see the ringlets of her hair. You can see that she's wearing a white dress. I also today, this morning, of course, I was showing my hairdresser. I went frame by frame, you can see her shadow on the wall.

• 9:30Corinne Vien?

  Oh, that gave me chills.

• 9:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like right before she enters frame, you see her shadow on the wall first.

• 9:35Corinne Vien?

  Oh my god.

• 9:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And then you see what's like a blue bow. Oh, I'm getting so many chills. You see like a blue bow in the back of her hair.

• 9:43Corinne Vien?

  Holy shit. If anyone's listening and doesn't want to watch, I feel like watching it kind of gave me a similar chill and fright to that classic video where people were like, look at this car driving down the windy road and then that face comes out there.

• 9:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, yeah. Except for this is, it's not a jump scare. So it's not like the face that comes at you.

• 10:03Corinne Vien?

  No.

• 10:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Comes at you. It's like, like a little kid darted through the frame.

• 10:07Corinne Vien?

  It's just so.

• 10:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Came out of nowhere and ran into the wall.

• 10:10Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 10:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep, literally ran into the wall.

• 10:11Corinne Vien?

  And she's on a bed.

• 10:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, yeah.

• 10:14Corinne Vien?

  Ran into the nightstand and disappeared.

• 10:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We'll put it on our social media too. And if you're ever curious for any ghostly photos or videos that we've ever talked about, maybe not ever, because we're not perfect and we don't get them all.

• 10:26Corinne Vien?

  No, but we've posted, we've posted the majority of them. And then we noticed that there were a lot of people that asked like, oh, I'm trying to scroll back really far on your Instagram to find these photos. So we've done a bunch of roundups and we've pinned a bunch, or I guess added them to collections on our Instagram.

• 10:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We have a highlight reel.

• 10:41Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, yeah. Highlight reel. That's what I was.

• 10:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Highlight reel. Collections.

• 10:44Corinne Vien?

  Collections. I think that's TikTok.

• 10:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is it? Yes, it is. Yeah. We don't really understand TikTok. Trying to figure it out.

• 10:51Corinne Vien?

  Mm-mm. But I have an interesting thing to talk about today.

• 10:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, oh, like the topic. I thought you were gonna like, tell me something new.

• 10:58Corinne Vien?

  No, but we should get into it because I mean, I don't know how long it will be for me to say all of these words that I've written down, but I do feel like this is a long one. Because it took me a long time to write it and it's many pages long.

• 11:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 11:09Corinne Vien?

  So we'll dive into it. Watch us be like 20 minutes long.

• 11:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, well, then we can chit chat and make it longer.

• 11:15Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. But there is this spooky phenomenon, this paranormal phenomenon that I recently heard about, or I guess like within the past couple of years, but hadn't done much research into it. And it's sort of like that feeling, you know, when you, you just know that someone else is in the room with you. Like for paranormal experiences, we know when we're not alone. But I think for anyone who hasn't had a paranormal experience, it's kind of similar to knowing when someone's looking at you and you know to look up and you see someone staring at you.

• 11:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is it similar to like the same idea as like entering a room where someone has just been fighting, even though you haven't seen or heard the fight, but you feel the tension? Is it similar?

• 11:55Corinne Vien?

  Yes, yes. There's an energy in the air.

• 11:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 11:58Corinne Vien?

  But there's a version of this energy that's not so spooky. It's actually very comforting and it's called third man syndrome.

• 12:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 12:08Corinne Vien?

  And this phenomenon happens when people are often in times of peril, near death, and they feel a third, or I guess it's a second person, but it's called third man syndrome, another person there with them.

• 12:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is it not the Grim Reaper?

• 12:24Corinne Vien?

  I literally wrote that in my part. I was like Grim Reaper. Everyone's like Angel. I'm like Grim Reaper, just waiting.

• 12:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And also, we did a whole episode on the Grim Reaper where the Grim Reaper is not bad.

• 12:34Corinne Vien?

  No, he's kind of there to help you move on.

• 12:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Corinne Vien?

  He's not there to ki- he's not killing you.

• 12:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, he's literally there to guide you to the other side.

• 12:42Corinne Vien?

  Exactly.

• 12:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:43Corinne Vien?

  I'm not sure, but this is the Third Man Syndrome.

• 12:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cool.

• 12:46Corinne Vien?

  Third Man Syndrome is a feeling of an unseen presence. It's a strange experience reported by many people in very extreme situations, especially during life-threatening events. And I thought, let's talk about this because we just are coming off of a month of demonic activity, and this seems a little bit more lighthearted, even though we are going to talk about a lot of people almost dying.

• 13:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Almost dying, though, not actually dying.

• 13:08Corinne Vien?

  Not actually dying.

• 13:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There we go.

• 13:09Corinne Vien?

  Positivity.

• 13:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Some people die. Well, a lot of people do die, and the truth is, everyone dies.

• 13:17Corinne Vien?

  Everyone does.

• 13:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like the book Everyone Poops. Everyone dies.

• 13:19Corinne Vien?

  Everyone dies. So, let's explore the mysterious worlds of the Third Man.

• 13:26Corinne Vien?

  And we will start with the basics. Third Man Syndrome is a term used to describe the sensation of a presence, often described as comforting, a guiding figure. It appears to help people during moments of extreme peril or isolation. So think like car crash, hiking accident, or lost in the woods, being shot. You know, like moments where you're so fearful, or like you're on the brink of death.

• 13:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, so it's like listeners have submitted stories where like they got in a car accident, but they really felt like a loved one or a family member was there in the car with them, almost protecting them.

• 13:59Corinne Vien?

  Yes. Yeah, people attribute this to like spirit guides or angels and stuff like that.

• 14:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 14:04Corinne Vien?

  So the presence is typically not physically visible, but those who experience say that it feels so real and it often feels life-saving, and they often attribute that person or that presence to being the reason that they are alive today.

• 14:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So Guardian, how come it's third man, not second man?

• 14:21Corinne Vien?

  I'll tell you.

• 14:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, thank you.

• 14:23Corinne Vien?

  So this begins, I'll tell you in three minutes. This begins, kind of, sort of, begins with a man named Sir Ernest Shackleton. He was a famed British explorer. And if you're watching on YouTube, I have a ton of photos from Frank Hurley slash Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge slash Getty Images. Just, those are some of the providers of the images. And there's a ton of photos because we're about to explore a polar explo- exploration? Explo- expedition?

• 14:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jesus. I had no idea where you were going with it.

• 14:57Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my God. I need a third man to come take me over. Help me through this episode. Please.

• 15:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We're near death recording this podcast.

• 15:07Corinne Vien?

  I feel it. Oh, my gosh, okay. Anyway, there's a lot of photos that were chronicling this journey that I'm about to tell you about with Sir Ernest Shackleton. So it's kind of interesting because they're historic photos and they document a just wild story of survival.

• 15:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 15:22Corinne Vien?

  So Shackleton had previously led an expedition. I was at exploration again. I wrote down the word expedition, expedition. Shackleton had previously-

• 15:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They are synonymous of each other.

• 15:32Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:35Corinne Vien?

  This is the worst episode we've ever recorded. Shackleton had previously led-

• 15:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's weird, I think we've gotten worse at speaking, being together. I don't know what it is.

• 15:44Corinne Vien?

  It's because, and sometimes with Brian, I feel like Brian witnessed something, or maybe, never mind.

• 15:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Am I Brian? Do you not know the difference?

• 15:52Corinne Vien?

  No, no, I was thinking the Brian was witness to it, but I think it was when we were recording, when we both just looked at each other and like had a conversation in silence. I think we're getting to that point where it's like, we don't actually have to use words. So when we're trying to use words, it's hard.

• 16:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We have literally, one of the episodes where you pre-recorded, uh, before your maternity leave, we talked about how when we're going to be in person together, we want to start to telepathically communicate. And I think we've done it.

• 16:16Corinne Vien?

  We're twins. We have our own little language.

• 16:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I love it.

• 16:19Corinne Vien?

  It is crazy, though.

• 16:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know.

• 16:21Corinne Vien?

  There's something kind of romantic about it.

• 16:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We have romance over here.

• 16:25Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, we share a glance and there's so many words.

• 16:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know, we're getting so off track, but I'm pretty sure like there's a group of people who listen to our podcasts who like have a fan fiction about you and I being in a relationship.

• 16:36Corinne Vien?

  Really?

• 16:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 16:37Corinne Vien?

  Send me the pages, I'll give notes. Shackleton had previously, Jesus Christ, I can't even say the word. Shackleton had previously led an expedition that earned him knighthood because he went to Antarctica. It was super famous. It was super successful. We learned about it in frigging history class in like middle school or elementary school or whatever. So now they're like, oh, you're so great. Let's give you the title sir.

• 17:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sir.

• 17:02Corinne Vien?

  That's all it takes. Shackleton.

• 17:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  To become a sir.

• 17:04Corinne Vien?

  Just surviving Antarctica.

• 17:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 17:07Corinne Vien?

  Yes. So then he decided, wow, this made me kind of famous and I sort of liked it. So let me head back again.

• 17:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This made me famous and I kind of liked it.

• 17:16Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 17:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Does he also, I feel like to earn the sir title, you also need a pretty cool mustache. Did he have a mustache?

• 17:23Corinne Vien?

  No, he didn't. And there is a photo.

• 17:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 17:26Corinne Vien?

  That we will show in the YouTube video. Here he is.

• 17:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm. He looks so serious.

• 17:31Corinne Vien?

  He does. He looks kind of like a movie star, I feel.

• 17:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Well, he is a sir, so that's pretty legit.

• 17:36Corinne Vien?

  And he is famous.

• 17:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. So.

• 17:38Corinne Vien?

  He's got all of the criteria to be in the movies. So knighthood is not enough for him. He's like, I need to go back and I need to survive again in the coldest area that I could possibly be in. So he decides to head out to the icy continent on a 1,700 mile transcontinental journey with the hopes of reaching the South Pole, which he'd failed to reach twice before.

• 18:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. I think I need a map. How far of a journey is it?

• 18:04Corinne Vien?

  He's from England.

• 18:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So he's going by boat? What's he taking?

• 18:08Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What's his motor transportation? Okay.

• 18:10Corinne Vien?

  So I'm going to answer that in the next sentence.

• 18:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Great.

• 18:12Corinne Vien?

  Believe it or not, I will get through the sentence.

• 18:17Corinne Vien?

  Shackleton's crew included 27 men plus one stowaway who became the ship's steward, 69 dogs and a tomcat named Mrs. Chippy.

• 18:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mrs. Chippy.

• 18:28Corinne Vien?

  Favorite character so far. Or whatever going on.

• 18:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Are these like sled dogs?

• 18:32Corinne Vien?

  Yes, exactly. Yeah, you're on it. So this voyage on the ship would become the now famous 1916 expedition for their ship. The Endurance became entrapped in ice and wrecked along the way.

• 18:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh.

• 18:46Corinne Vien?

  Shackleton and his men sat on this ship for an entire month before they realized like, oh shit, we're gonna be secure for a long time and probably die if we don't come off of the ship. And we're not gonna survive this. And they're just kinda like putzing around, they set up camp, they're trying to figure out what to do. And the hull of the ship is becoming more and more crushed. And eventually it's looking like it's about to sink. It literally began to sink. And this is when on February 24th, Sir Shackleton was like, hey, boys, let's go.

• 19:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 19:14Corinne Vien?

  Dun dun dun dun. Let's go, boys. So he ordered the abandonment of the ship after completing his musical number.

• 19:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes, of course. He had to do a kick line first.

• 19:26Corinne Vien?

  He did, yeah. Shania, he had, why am I picturing him in pasties? Little black pasties with pearls connecting them.

• 19:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So this, we're telepathic again.

• 19:35Corinne Vien?

  Everyone's down on the ice and he's, he's, yeah, they're praying to him. Like a prayer comes on in the background, he's like, no, not that song. Different one. He ordered abandonment of the ship. All of the guys gotta leave, all of the animals have gotta leave. And thank God they did because the ship literally sank. And it would be missing for many, many years. So he and the others hopped onto these tiny little rowboats. And then they rode through the icy, freezing waters to a giant iceberg.

• 20:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my God.

• 20:04Corinne Vien?

  They pulled their boats up onto the sheet of ice. And they were like, if we get on the sheet of ice, perhaps it will float and bring us to where we need to be.

• 20:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is Elf.

• 20:12Corinne Vien?

  Literally. And the narwhal comes up.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Bye, buddy. Hope you find your dad.

• 20:19Corinne Vien?

  Hope you find your dad. And Palet or Palet, I'm not really sure how to pronounce it. Palet Island, it was about 250 miles away. And they were like, we think that this sheet of ice appears to be riding a current that is gonna get us there. So let's hop on and just ride a sheet of ice.

• 20:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This feels fake.

• 20:37Corinne Vien?

  It does. It's a wild story. It gets like so much crazier.

• 20:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You know what it crazily reminds me of? And I don't even know if you would have seen this. I had never seen it. The movie Tusk.

• 20:48Corinne Vien?

  No. But I have seen clips of it from TikTok and it looks extremely disturbing.

• 20:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It is the most disturbing movie I've ever seen. Yeah, Payne showed it to me. It is so disturbing, but what's the guy, the actor's name?

• 21:02Corinne Vien?

  Is it like Nicolas Cage or something?

• 21:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, no, what's his name?

• 21:06Corinne Vien?

  That's the one where the man becomes a walrus.

• 21:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, Justin Long. Okay, so in this movie, Justin Long is a podcaster. He's kind of a douchey podcaster, but he-

• 21:16Corinne Vien?

  He's been playing some douchey characters recently.

• 21:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I think it's, he plays it well. Yeah, he did it in Barbarian, too.

• 21:21Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Um, but he encounters a man, an old man, who has an adventure similar to this. Like, he was abandoned on a ship and he hopped onto an iceberg to survive.

• 21:33Corinne Vien?

  How in the world does he become a walrus?

• 21:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I can't ruin it.

• 21:36Corinne Vien?

  Now I have to watch.

• 21:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You have to, because we need to talk about it. It's so bizarre.

• 21:42Corinne Vien?

  This is one of those things where, like, my brother had seen, what is it? A Siberian film or something like that?

• 21:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, and you, yeah.

• 21:50Corinne Vien?

  I've never watched- Never watched that, but that's what my brother said. He was like, "This is the most fucked up movie I've ever seen in my life. Like, this is so disturbing."

• 21:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is not like that.

• 21:58Corinne Vien?

  He didn't tell me any other information, and so then I watched it and it, like, I probably should go to therapy for it.

• 22:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't think this is like that. It's just weird in the sense of, like, oh shit.

• 22:08Corinne Vien?

  This man became a walrus.

• 22:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 22:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Interesting.

• 22:11Corinne Vien?

  Spoiler alert, none of these guys become walruses, but they do hop on a sheet of ice and they try to ride to safety of this island. Well, I don't know if you can call it safety. It's a treacherous journey.

• 22:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Safer than, I guess, an iceberg in the middle of the ocean.

• 22:23Corinne Vien?

  Right, yeah, yeah. They're trying to survive and they're trying to find other humans to help them, basically. So, they get on this ice, but the ice is not going fast enough. It is the slowest frickin' sheet of ice in this entire sea.

• 22:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  How rude.

• 22:33Corinne Vien?

  So, they drag their little dinky lifeboats back into the water and they find another sheet of ice. And this one is cruising a little bit faster.

• 22:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sorry, it just sounds so comical.

• 22:44Corinne Vien?

  I know, it's kind of like ice sheet hopping. They're like, "This porch is too cold. This porch is too hot."

• 22:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is wild.

• 22:51Corinne Vien?

  Well, this sheet kind of feels just right.

• 22:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 22:54Corinne Vien?

  So, they have some success. They are dragged about 60 miles away from their target island. But now, in order to get the rest of the way, they would have to take their little tiny lifeboats. But it is impossible, because those 60 miles are covered by this, like, broken, slushy, impenetrable ice.

• 23:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Not thick enough probably to walk. Like, they would crush through.

• 23:17Corinne Vien?

  100%.

• 23:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Also, what about supplies? Do they have food?

• 23:20Corinne Vien?

  They do.

• 23:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 23:22Corinne Vien?

  Not a ton, but they do. They couldn't get to this island. And so it's now April ninth. So it's been basically like six or seven weeks since they've abandoned their ship. And these men, they could not get any more unlucky. There was a large cracking sound suddenly underneath them, a vibration goes through the ice. And the sheet of ice in which they are standing on and which they have taken up home has now split in two. So they have to get in their boats. But they can't go to the island that they thought they were going to go to. So for five days, they go in a different direction. And they row to the nearest shore, which happens to be Elephant Island. And it's been six weeks. They are now three hundred and sixty miles away from where they had left their boat. So they are super far.

• 24:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They traveled three hundred and sixty-three miles on a sheet of ice, basically.

• 24:11Corinne Vien?

  On boat.

• 24:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Little tiny lifeboats.

• 24:13Corinne Vien?

  Died at this point. No.

• 24:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's crazy.

• 24:16Corinne Vien?

  Yes. They did take the majority of animals with them, but I will say this. Some of the dogs that were not, some of them were not strong enough. And they were a little sick and they did shoot them.

• 24:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sad.

• 24:29Corinne Vien?

  It is sad, but I.

• 24:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But they didn't eat them.

• 24:31Corinne Vien?

  They didn't eat them. And also I would rather them shoot the dogs than just like abandon them and leave them for like a polar bear to come attack.

• 24:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or let them like slowly die in pain.

• 24:40Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 24:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Corinne Vien?

  So they get to Elephant Island, but they soon realize that Elephant Island is isolated. It's not on any shipping routes. No one is going to find them there. And they will probably die because their rations are becoming depleted. They don't have enough supplies to let them live there forever.

• 24:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel like this is the first draft of the TV show Lost.

• 24:59Corinne Vien?

  I still haven't seen Lost. I need to.

• 25:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Might be late to the game.

• 25:03Corinne Vien?

  So they know that they cannot stay here on Elephant Island. So back into their tiny little boats, they go again. But with limited provisions and now the burden of the larger crew seems to be too much. So they make the decision that a small group of them is going to break off and that small group is going to move forward and try to find help. The rest of them are gonna stay behind and stay on Elephant Island.

• 25:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, so move forward is going towards their original plan, but they're actually gonna go try to find help.

• 25:35Corinne Vien?

  They're gonna try to find help.

• 25:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 25:37Corinne Vien?

  Yes. So there's six of them that decide to continue and they leave Elephant Island on the little boats and they're heading to South Georgia Island to seek help from a whaling station.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Shelley Jensen was about to retire early after selling her veterinary practice for millions. But a moment of vulnerability became a way to take away her rights.

• 25:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Don't you see how destroyed I am as a person?

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Her husband fought to save her before Shelley lost her freedom forever.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  This is a life or death matter. My wife's life is at stake.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Free Shelley Jensen. Available now on The Binge.

• 26:17Corinne Vien?

  So they know that there's gonna be people there.

• 26:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 26:20Corinne Vien?

  So the six men, they spent the next 15 days with only four weeks of supplies with them left, or like packed with them, sailing towards South Georgia Island, which I believe was some 720 miles away from Elephant Island.

• 26:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is bananas.

• 26:37Corinne Vien?

  I know. And it's not like they had a GPS. Like, this was map days.

• 26:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They don't have anything. It's a compass day.

• 26:44Corinne Vien?

  Like, I just picture the skies being so white and bright and everything looking exactly the same because you're just like existing in this ocean of ice.

• 26:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's freezing too, probably.

• 26:51Corinne Vien?

  How are you not completely turned around all the time?

• 26:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, gosh.

• 26:53Corinne Vien?

  I know. So during this time at sea, not only are they in some of the most dangerous waters in the world, but they're in these, this tiny, tiny little boat.

• 27:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Corinne Vien?

  And now, on top of that, a hurricane comes through. This hurricane should have sunk their boat and killed them, like 100%. It is near impossible for them to have survived this. Nearby, there was a 500-ton steamer that literally sank in the same ocean waters. But somehow, this tiny little dinky lifeboat and these six men do not die.

• 27:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  For a moment, I forgot that this is the Third Man Syndrome episode because it's so bizarre and I had to remind myself that, like, there's a presence here. You set us up with the beginning of the Third Man Syndrome, meaning there's something helping and guiding these people.

• 27:37Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 27:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 27:38Corinne Vien?

  And this photo I had put into YouTube, but I'll show you why I'm calling it a dinky little lifeboat because like that's basically a canoe.

• 27:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's tiny.

• 27:49Corinne Vien?

  It's tiny.

• 27:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Also, think about how exhausting it is, the energy they are exerting in order to travel 700 miles.

• 27:56Corinne Vien?

  It's uncovered too. Like, it's not like they can just like go under.

• 27:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Do they take shifts to nap?

• 28:01Corinne Vien?

  I have no idea. I do know that actually during this time, I mean, it took them like 15 days to get to the next spot that they were trying to go to. But there were many days where none of them slept at all and they were starting to go pretty delirious.

• 28:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Corinne Vien?

  Which makes sense.

• 28:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Of course.

• 28:18Corinne Vien?

  So after 15 days with only four weeks of supplies left and surviving a hurricane, they get to the island that they're supposed to get to. But it is so windy and they, the side of the island that they got to, you basically like almost couldn't get onto shore. There were so many rocks, the waves were crazy. They were, they were like, if we attempt this, we're gonna crash our boat and just sink it and die because we're not gonna be able to like

• 28:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Corinne Vien?

  stick onto the rocks and scale them. So they waited one more day and somehow miraculously the next day, they were able to actually land on shore, which again, like they probably shouldn't have been able to, but somehow they gone onto the shore.

• 28:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jesus.

• 28:57Corinne Vien?

  And so then getting onto shore is not like getting to safety at all because they're on the complete opposite end of the island that they should be. And by foot, without any proper equipment to traverse this terrain, this group of men now have to go all the way across this island. They're like, hey, we might have to break up this group of six. And so they basically split in half. Half of them stay behind with the boat on the south part of the island and the other half move, or maybe it was north and south. I don't, I don't remember.

• 29:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They go to the other side. Yeah.

• 29:28Corinne Vien?

  They go to the other side.

• 29:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Geez.

• 29:29Corinne Vien?

  So before the group with Shackleton, the two men with Shackleton go to traverse all of this island, this icy island to find help, they take nails and they stick them through their shoes, through their boots to try to give themselves some sort of traction to like actually be able to walk across the ice.

• 29:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, that's smart, but I also imagine that like there's some part of the nail that's going back up and like causing a lot of pain on their actual foot.

• 29:56Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 29:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Geez.

• 29:58Corinne Vien?

  The journey to the whaling station would last thirty six hours and no one slept during these thirty six hours.

• 30:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  After fifteen days of traveling.

• 30:08Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  After however many months.

• 30:11Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. In the Arctic seas.

• 30:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is giving me an eye twitch, like I'm stressed for them.

• 30:18Corinne Vien?

  I can't even believe they survived like even a few days.

• 30:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm also surprised that everyone at this point, aside from a few of the dogs, have survived.

• 30:27Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. I don't know what happened to the tomcat. Hopefully the cat survived too. So in his account, Shackleton noted that he, along with his three other companions, felt an additional unseen figure walking beside them, encouraging them to push through despite their exhaustion and their near death condition. And in his nineteen nineteen book called The South, he wrote, quote, "During that long and racking march of thirty six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three." They called it the fourth man, since there were already three of them and they all seemed to feel another presence there.

• 31:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Corinne Vien?

  The presence helped guide them and encourage them, and the men did make it to the whaling station. And then they were like, hey, we have to go save the rest of our whole crew that we left on Elephant Island. And that's, you know, seven hundred plus miles away.

• 31:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Plus the other three that they left on the other side of the island.

• 31:23Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, and they did, I think maybe it was just two. I don't remember numbers. Six total and then the rest. That group of six made it and then they went and got the rest of them. But there were three failed attempts to even get the rest of the men that were left behind on the island, but they did eventually recover everyone four and a half months later.

• 31:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Everyone.

• 31:44Corinne Vien?

  Every single person survived.

• 31:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Everyone.

• 31:48Corinne Vien?

  Including the frickin' stowaway. Imagine being a stowaway on this journey.

• 31:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like shit, you picked the wrong ship to stow away on.

• 31:56Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, classic.

• 31:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Holy shit.

• 31:58Corinne Vien?

  Titanic move, right?

• 32:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, so not a single person died from this expedition. The ship, the Endurance, was lost to the seas for 106 years until March 9th of 2022, when a team of scientists and adventurers found it at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, 10,000 feet below. So this in and of itself was a miracle. I actually have no idea.

• 32:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I would love something from that boat. Like, there's something really magical about this whole expedition and the fact that they survived that I, I almost feel like it would be

• 32:29Corinne Vien?

  I know.

• 32:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  an honor.

• 32:31Corinne Vien?

  Well, you know, the Titanic expedition that's in Boston right now, they have an actual piece of the Titanic that they are allowing everyone to touch.

• 32:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You can touch it?

• 32:37Corinne Vien?

  You can touch the Titanic. And now there's this like metal eating bacteria. I didn't even go to the museum. My dentist was talking about it. There's a metal eating bacteria that's eating away at the Titanic. So they think in like 50 years, the ship isn't going to exist. So they're, the only expeditions now to the Titanic are basically to recover and try to retrieve as much as they can.

• 32:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  As much as possible.

• 32:57Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, because it's not going to exist soon. Crazy.

• 33:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jeez.

• 33:01Corinne Vien?

  So all of this is a miracle. It's a miracle that they were able to find the ship. It's a miracle that all of the guys survived. Like, this whole thing just shouldn't have existed.

• 33:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Corinne Vien?

  In the way that it did, it truly was miraculous. But Shackleton and his crew were not alone in experiencing this extra guiding presence that they cited as being their sort of like guiding force and extra encouragement. His account encouraged survivors who experienced something similar to start coming forward and share their stories. And so began kind of these accounts of

• 33:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is the first I survived?

• 33:33Corinne Vien?

  This is the first I survived, yeah.

• 33:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wow.

• 33:36Corinne Vien?

  Basically.

• 33:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So it's not just people from his expedition. He's asking like worldwide, globally, has anyone else experienced some type of force in a dire situation that you did survive?

• 33:46Corinne Vien?

  But I don't think he like proposed the question, but he wrote a book in 1919. And I think that that book kind of, I mean, that was before like the world wars happened and

• 33:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 33:55Corinne Vien?

  and stuff like that. And I think that he kind of set the foundation for a lot of other people to assign a name to this feeling.

• 34:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wow.

• 34:03Corinne Vien?

  Or like at least cite someone else who

• 34:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 34:05Corinne Vien?

  experienced something similar.

• 34:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Corinne Vien?

  Because the name didn't really come until years later, when inspired by Shackleton's story, T.S. Eliot wrote a poem called "The Wasteland," in which he coined the term "third man syndrome." So he writes, "Who is the third man who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together. But when I look ahead up the white road, there is always another one walking beside you, gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not know whether a man or a woman, but who is that on the other side of you?" So he basically coined the term "the third man" in this

• 34:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gotcha.

• 34:41Corinne Vien?

  poem, which is why we now have third man syndrome

• 34:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gotcha.

• 34:44Corinne Vien?

  today.

• 34:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So is it like, because again, like the third man, I understand that T.S. Eliot coined it, but like in that poem, is he saying like, is he writing like as if it's you and me together, Corinne, and he sees a third man in their presence?

• 34:59Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 35:00Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 35:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 35:01Corinne Vien?

  So he took some creative liberties to eliminate some extra people from Shackleton's story

• 35:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 35:07Corinne Vien?

  for the sake of his poem.

• 35:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. But I guess it's this idea that like everyone perhaps has a shadow of sorts. So like when you're one on one with someone, like maybe there is a presence always with others and with you.

• 35:21Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But like you can't perceive your own and you're seeing someone else's. I don't know.

• 35:25Corinne Vien?

  Oh, interesting. I don't know.

• 35:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't know.

• 35:27Corinne Vien?

  I don't know what T.S. Eliot meant by his poem. I didn't read the whole thing.

• 35:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  T.S., can we talk to you, please?

• 35:32Corinne Vien?

  T.T. But the idea of this invisible companion appears to provide a lot of strength in these dire moments, and this has sparked fascination, research, and a lot of speculation. So Shackleton's story is arguably one of the most famous, and it was like attributed as being the first, but it's not really the first because people also are like, okay, well, if you look back at pretty much any religious text.

• 35:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 35:55Corinne Vien?

  There's all of these talks of Other beings and gods and angels and energies and

• 36:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 36:01Corinne Vien?

  Different things that people attribute to being the reason that they survived or like feeling

• 36:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Protection.

• 36:06Corinne Vien?

  Their presence.

• 36:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, we always talk about

• 36:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Guardians.

• 36:09Corinne Vien?

  Guardians and spirit guides and all of that's the same thing. It's just kind of like rewrapped and rewritten in different forms.

• 36:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 36:15Corinne Vien?

  However, it wasn't until the 20th century that these experiences started being studied more scientifically. So anecdotally, it was told religiously and spiritually, people have always talked about this, but scientifically, it started to be studied in the 20th century.

• 36:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hell, yeah.

• 36:34Corinne Vien?

  It was first clinically documented in the 1940s and it was really just a population of climbers and adventurers that were mostly being studied. And this was the largest group to contribute to these stories of the third man syndrome, which makes sense. They're like always in

• 36:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like near death experiences. Yeah.

• 36:50Corinne Vien?

  A man named Reinhold Messner, one of the greatest mountain climbers in history, was climbing Tibet's Daimer Mountain. And he was climbing with two other people and they were using these crampons and axes and they were just barely biting into the ice. Like they were like barely hanging on.

• 37:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jesus.

• 37:07Corinne Vien?

  Basically near death.

• 37:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like that Free Solo documentary.

• 37:10Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it was not looking good for Alex or for Reinhold.

• 37:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Corinne Vien?

  But suddenly Reinhold said that he sensed a third climber next to him descending with them, all of them. And he said that this climber felt just a few steps away from him, was just out of his field of vision, but he was so certain that there was someone there. Like just out of reach, just out of sight, also climbing and descending at the same time as them.

• 37:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So wild.

• 37:37Corinne Vien?

  I know. Mountaineer Frank Smith, he had a similar experience. He chose to continue on in poorer conditions in an attempt to summit Mount Everest. So he was with the crew. It became too dangerous. The rest of the crew was like, see ya, we're not risking our lives. And he was like, oh, I just need to try. Like, we're so close to the summit, which is exactly what happens to so many people who never make it. Like, they just push themselves a little bit further. Luckily for Frank, he did survive. He didn't make it to the top, but he went solo. Jumping to summit.

• 38:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jeez.

• 38:08Corinne Vien?

  And while he missed the summit by only three hundred and forty some meters, he never felt alone the entire time he was alone after the rest of the group had left him. He could have sworn there was another person with him and he felt so, so vehemently like that correct in this assumption that there was another person, that there was one point in his climb where he stopped to take out some food that he had. It was like a bit of cake or whatever. And he literally turned to offer the other climber that he thought was like behind him some cake. Cause he thought like, oh, there's another stranger that's also pushing to make summit. And there was no one there.

• 38:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's so weird because this makes like, it just makes me wonder like, why these people? Why not everyone? Or do we all have this? And it's just like, sometimes they're more present or I don't know.

• 38:58Corinne Vien?

  It might just be who accepts what they feel. Cause you're reminding me of that like classics philosophical story or whatever. But basically the story is like, oh, the man is like in a lifeboat or there's something where like he's near death.

• 39:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:12Corinne Vien?

  Oh, no, I think it's he's stranded on an island. Sorry, I'm telling this horribly.

• 39:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I have no idea.

• 39:15Corinne Vien?

  This man is stranded on an island and he asks God to save him. And there's like all of these things that happen, like a, a lifeboat comes and he rejects it. Like there's, there's all these situations that come and he's like, I'm waiting for God to appear and like pick me up and bring me back. And when he dies, he asks God, why didn't you save me? And God's like, I sent you a lifeboat. I sent you this.

• 39:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like I did everything to save you.

• 39:38Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. This is reminding me of that. We're like, maybe, maybe everyone does have this. It's just not always so intense that we're able to feel it.

• 39:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 39:46Corinne Vien?

  Or feel confident enough to make the assumption that it is this extra person.

• 39:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, then it also opens up like a whole other conversation of like, is it one person on this expedition or on this voyage who has a really strong spirit guide and guardian who's with them? Or going back to Sir Sheckleton, like, was there like one person who had a really strong guardian?

• 40:07Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Who helped protect everyone? Or with this Everest story, is there someone who did pass away and die on Everest? Because there are a lot of deaths that have happened on Everest.

• 40:17Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, that there's this energy and this spirit who's trying to prevent further deaths and wanted to guide him.

• 40:23Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 40:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Through the rest of his journey. Or is it a third man syndrome, which is like a one single entity? I don't know.

• 40:30Corinne Vien?

  Or is it like a, are we all saving ourselves? Is it our own hallucination in a time of peril?

• 40:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We're all a little bit crazy.

• 40:37Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. It is, that's, I guess, the thing with the third man syndrome is there's so many different examples, and I'm going to tell a bunch, which doesn't really answer any of those questions, because there are some tweaks to everyone's story where it's like, is this someone we know? Is this someone that we don't?

• 40:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Welcome to Two Girls, One Ghost and the World of the Paranormal, where we know nothing.

• 40:54Corinne Vien?

  No, we don't.

• 40:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But we love to explore it.

• 40:56Corinne Vien?

  Yes. Another encounter with this mysterious guardian, the third man, was experienced by James Sevenye?

• 41:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sevenye?

• 41:04Corinne Vien?

  Sevenye. Sevenye?

• 41:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sounds like a name.

• 41:07Corinne Vien?

  He was caught in an avalanche while climbing the Canadian Rockies, and he and his friend, Richard Whitmire, were climbing Delta Form. And so the two men, they're tied together and they're trying to traverse over some ice when some other falling ice comes and catches the two of them and basically like just, they're in an avalanche, they get like taken down. And they're tied together, so together they are carried 2,000 feet to the base of the mountain in this avalanche. James, after some, he was knocked unconscious. After some time, he opens his eyes and he realizes how badly his body is injured. And he's really confused as to what happened, but he looks over and he sees that his friend had not survived the fall.

• 41:52Corinne Vien?

  So his friend was dead next to him. And James, he had fractures in his vertebrae, he had cracked ribs, he had broken his arm, he broke his shoulder blade, he had a bunch of ruptured ligaments.

• 42:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:02Corinne Vien?

  And he was very confused about what had happened, so he just basically crawled over to his deceased friend, Richard, and curled up beside him and just was like, I'll wait here until my injuries take me and I'll die next to my friend.

• 42:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh. Yeah, because like, it feels like he's gonna die. Like, what else are you gonna do? Yeah.

• 42:20Corinne Vien?

  This is such a sad fact, too.

• 42:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What?

• 42:23Corinne Vien?

  If they hadn't been tied together, his friend would have missed the falling ice based on where he was, and he would have survived. James is

• 42:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I guess you don't know for sure. Like he could have still landed in that same spot.

• 42:35Corinne Vien?

  Or been like so startled that he like, or maybe them going together is what saved James.

• 42:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, exactly. Yeah.

• 42:41Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. It's so hard to know, but James is there curled up, buried under snow, freezing in immense pain next to his friend who's passed, and he's certain he's going to die. But 30 minutes later, James felt the presence of a man next to him. And this man calmly assured him that he wasn't alone. So he felt the presence, but he couldn't see anyone, but he heard a voice speak to him. And it was inside of his head. So like, the voice was being implanted into James's mind.

• 43:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Was it the voice of his friend?

• 43:11Corinne Vien?

  No.

• 43:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, interesting.

• 43:13Corinne Vien?

  But the voice said, you can't give up. You have to try. And suddenly he felt super peaceful. He felt so unafraid. And all of a sudden, he had this like, energy and motivation to get up despite his like horrible injuries. And he mustered all of his strength to walk slash crawl all the way back to base camp, which was, at this point, it was actually only one mile away, but with all of his injuries and then the freezing cold after being like destroyed by an avalanche. He's a very far

• 43:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And disoriented and confused and probably like not really sure where you are.

• 43:47Corinne Vien?

  Yes. So this presence was with him the entire time. It was giving him words of encouragement. It was giving him tips on how to survive this whole walk slash crawl to base camp. And at dusk, after a long time, James finally made it to just outside of base camp. And in this moment, he felt the presence leave him and suddenly felt all of the pain and exhaustion come back to his body. And he collapsed. He was unable to make it any further. And he's laying there in the snow once more. And then he heard some distant voices, heard people. So he screams, hoping someone will hear him. And they did. They came out and they got him and he was saved.

• 44:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This kind of, I mean, it reminds me, and I don't know that we have actually heard the story, and it might be something I've like seen in a movie or a TV show, but this concept, or I think maybe I saw it in like Unsolved Mysteries or something, but like, there was a car accident and multiple people were in the car and one person lived, and they swore, like, the dad had gone into the backseat to unbuckle them, to save them, but the dad had died upon like impact.

• 44:54Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And was still like buckled in his seat when his body was found.

• 44:59Corinne Vien?

  That's so, oh, I just got chilled. It reminds me of the book If I Stay. Did you ever read that?

• 45:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, yes.

• 45:04Corinne Vien?

  And it might be an Unsolved Mysteries episode too, where that man, I know we've talked about this on the podcast before, where that man witnessed another car accident and he like gets out of his car and he's running to go,

• 45:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You've talked about this.

• 45:19Corinne Vien?

  And go around to save that man, and he's like running to the bridge, and it should have taken him like 10 minutes to get to the car, but he was there within 30 seconds, and he has no idea how he got there.

• 45:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  How he got there, yeah.

• 45:29Corinne Vien?

  So like in that case, he kind of like, he almost was the paranormal figure.

• 45:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, oh, so weird.

• 45:35Corinne Vien?

  So there's another South Pole expedition, and this is in November of 1998. Peter Hillary, he's in a bit of a life or death situation. He's out in the elements in Antarctica, and this third man comes to save him. And in his case, this is what's a little different for his third man. It was his mother who had passed some 20 years earlier in a car accident.

• 45:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's sweet.

• 45:57Corinne Vien?

  So for the majority of people, it's been this like extra presence that they can't recognize the voice, they can't recognize.

• 46:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is it George?

• 46:02Corinne Vien?

  The presence. Holy shit. Is everyone George?

• 46:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is George the third man?

• 46:09Corinne Vien?

  Is George, we talked about this, I don't even know when the episode comes out, or no, it came out last week.

• 46:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wait, which one?

• 46:14Corinne Vien?

  When we were talking about like the idea that we're all just one, we're like chips of one entity trying to experience life.

• 46:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, the universal consciousness thing?

• 46:23Corinne Vien?

  Is it George? Is George?

• 46:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is George?

• 46:25Corinne Vien?

  Is George everyone? Are we all a little bit of George?

• 46:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  George is within all of us.

• 46:30Corinne Vien?

  Because George was curious about living life.

• 46:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The name George.

• 46:34Corinne Vien?

  It is a strong name.

• 46:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, I feel a connection to it. Maybe because we are all George.

• 46:39Corinne Vien?

  Cause we're all George. Who doesn't like the name George? George is a good name.

• 46:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  George is a great name.

• 46:43Corinne Vien?

  Petition that every child has to be renamed George. I want one entire population.

• 46:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Your name is now George. My name is now George.

• 46:51Corinne Vien?

  We're all George.

• 46:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hello, this is Two Girls, One Ghost, but your ghost is George's.

• 46:54Corinne Vien?

  The Georges.

• 46:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The Georges.

• 46:56Corinne Vien?

  How fun, though, when aliens come to visit us and they're like, everyone's name is George?

• 47:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Corinne Vien?

  We are. When did that happen? We just decided it one day.

• 47:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  One day. Humanity's weird. Two women on a podcast decided everyone should be renamed George.

• 47:11Corinne Vien?

  So, this is interesting, because, yes, it was his mom. Diver Stephanie Schwab, she had kind of a similar situation. She got separated from her diving guide off of South Bahama Island. And she was not just diving normally, she was cave diving.

• 47:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 47:25Corinne Vien?

  Arguably, the most scary and dangerous version. Well, I don't even think it's arguably. I think it is. In fact, cave diving is way more dangerous than regular diving.

• 47:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, scary.

• 47:35Corinne Vien?

  It's so dangerous. So, she gets separated, she's in this cave, she's no idea where she is, and she panics because the chances of her dying have just increased exponentially. All of a sudden, there's a light in front of her. And her late husband speaks into her head and calms her down and tells her, no, you're gonna survive. And so she breathes, slows down her breathing, and she just slowly starts to move through the cave, reaching out, touching the sides, until she saw the white line, the one that was put out by the dive guide that led back to the surface. Her husband left her in that very moment, the second she found the cable. And Stephanie made it to the surface and survived.

• 48:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ah.

• 48:16Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. So, it is interesting, because the majority of people experience this unseen presence, but there are times that people see and interact with someone that they've never seen before. So, it's like, there's different layers. It's like feeling like someone's there. There's hearing a voice and actually being helped by this unseen presence.

• 48:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 48:32Corinne Vien?

  There's seeing a presence, and then there's sometimes the identification of who that person is.

• 48:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 48:38Corinne Vien?

  So, third man.

• 48:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's an amorphous term.

• 48:41Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. It's loosely defined. Thirsty girl. That's gonna make it in the fanfic. Thirsty girl.

• 48:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Thirsty girl.

• 48:48Corinne Vien?

  So there was actually a study done on these adventurers and these types of experiences. And the largest group, they basically like categorized who was most likely to experience third man syndrome and this phenomenon. And the largest group by far was climbers. So climbers.

• 49:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Interesting.

• 49:05Corinne Vien?

  Probably the most dangerous, I guess, like in this situation, they get in the most dangerous situations.

• 49:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's so interesting to me because I feel like a lot of these stories are in situations where people have willingly put themselves in a dangerous place.

• 49:19Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Rather than like an accident happens.

• 49:22Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 49:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't know what that says about it, but I'm curious.

• 49:25Corinne Vien?

  And I think that by and large, I guess, like these people are putting themselves in these dangerous situations more frequently. So they're more likely to experience something like this. But I think we also have a little bit of a skewed view right now because the study was done on adventurers. So I'm only talking about adventurers in this exact moment.

• 49:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 49:43Corinne Vien?

  So climbers were number one. Solo sailors and shipwreck survivors were the second most likely in this group to experience third man phenomena. And polar explorers were third.

• 49:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It kind of reminds me of when I did the Marblehead episode, when I talked about the white wizard of Marblehead, William Dimond. A lot of sailors would hear William's voice or wizard, the wizard Dimond's voice as like storms were clearing and they were like going, being led to safety.

• 50:16Corinne Vien?

  His name isn't George. Are we all just William, actually?

• 50:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't know.

• 50:19Corinne Vien?

  Everyone was named William or George or John.

• 50:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  John back then.

• 50:23Corinne Vien?

  Some, yeah. So I guess like this makes sense because these people are participating in really high risk activities and some of them like have dangerous professions and they just do it regularly. But this has led people to wonder like, is this really a guardian? Is this a hallucination in someone's darkest moments? And obviously we're a paranormal podcast, so we do believe in the paranormal.

• 50:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Corinne Vien?

  We're not the quickest people to yell like, it's definitely not a ghost.

• 50:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't think we've ever done that, really.

• 50:52Corinne Vien?

  No, we've never done that.

• 50:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Never.

• 50:54Corinne Vien?

  But we are open to. People trying to debunk things and trying to understand the unexplained.

• 51:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 51:02Corinne Vien?

  So in this research that has been done on this third man syndrome, a common theme throughout all of these encounters is that people report to feel a comforting presence in times of great distress. So we've talked a lot about people who are adventurers, people who are explorers, people who often and opt to partake in really dangerous things. But not everybody does. Like you were saying, there's car accidents, there's different things like that. And I will tell some examples in a moment.

• 51:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ooh.

• 51:27Corinne Vien?

  One of the most widely accepted explanations comes from neuroscience and psychology. Some researchers believe that third man syndrome is a survival mechanism triggered by the brain under extreme stress. So it's basically like we're projecting this extra presence. It's a figment of our imagination.

• 51:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like the survival element of yourself like separates from your physical body to help guide you there.

• 51:48Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, yeah, you like separate into two.

• 51:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 51:52Corinne Vien?

  So in high pressure situations, the brain may create a sense of another presence to help manage the situation. This could be a cognitive coping strategy, a way that the brain can compartmentalize the trauma by creating a separate entity that helps guide the person to safety. Which as I'm saying this, this is reminding me, I know I just talked about if I stay, but this is reminding me of Adrift. Did you?

• 52:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I watched that movie, the Shailene Woodley. Yeah.

• 52:15Corinne Vien?

  It's about, it's a true story.

• 52:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  True story, right?

• 52:17Corinne Vien?

  Basically, like there's this woman who miraculously survived with very little boating experience. This horrible journey on a sailboat where a storm basically like killed her partner. But she did not know her partner was dead because he was with her the entire time, like she saw him with her the whole time. And so the whole story is about like her hallucinating and making, this is reminding me of Life of Pi now too. I'm getting so, see, the story exists in many different forms.

• 52:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. I also understand like the idea of human instinct to survive. Like our brains are so powerful and the desire to survive is like animalistic and primal and ingrained in us.

• 53:01Corinne Vien?

  Totally.

• 53:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That I imagine there is this like part of the brain that like works in a different. Different way that we don't fully understand in that moment.

• 53:08Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. So there's also a theory that is tied to sensory deprivation. So in extreme conditions like in cold or isolation, altitude, sickness, our sensory systems can become impaired. So Shackleton's crew hadn't slept for some 80 plus hours. I think I said 36 hours. They hadn't slept in 80 plus hours. So basically like it's saying you could trip balls and you could just see people, which is what happens to people in Everest all the time.

• 53:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's hallucinating. Yeah.

• 53:34Corinne Vien?

  Or like, you know, like the classic, like you're stuck in the desert. You start to hallucinate.

• 53:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, like the lighthouse effect too.

• 53:39Corinne Vien?

  Totally. So basically the scientific study just resulted in a bunch of theories. And essentially it's suggesting that we can't rely on our senses. Our brains might fill in the gaps by creating this presence. Neurological theories also suggest that changes in brain chemistry such as increased dopamine levels may play a role. And dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward and survival, can spike during life threatening situations, potentially causing these hallucinations. But here's a little bit of a counter argument for the paranormal explanation, paranormal side of third man syndrome. These third man hallucinations aren't terrifying. They're not chaotic. I mean, the experience that people are having is,

• 54:18Corinne Vien?

  but this third man is always calm, always focused, always guiding them. And so if we were to hallucinate a person, how could everyone hallucinate the same sort of vibe?

• 54:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Especially if it's not like someone experiencing like their deceased husband or mother. Like a lot of these are just like.

• 54:36Corinne Vien?

  It's a complete stranger. A voice they've never heard. It's George. Yeah. So we would assume that people would see different things. This is kind of the same argument we make for sleep paralysis. Like why has someone who doesn't know anything about sleep paralysis, who's never experienced it before, having the exact same experiences as someone 3,000 miles away that also has never known anything about it?

• 54:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And they're not on drugs.

• 54:55Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 54:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Corinne Vien?

  And this is where I was like, is it the Grim Reaper?

• 54:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 55:00Corinne Vien?

  Is George the good weaver? So it's always a calming and guiding presence and it's usually just out of sight. Right? And it's also important to remember that while science may not fully explain every aspect of this phenomenon, those who have experienced it often describe this as a really profound and life-changing experience. It has lasting impact and it changes these people immensely.

• 55:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It almost also feels like a near-death experience, like that you that they've come back from and almost are misinterpreting as,

• 55:29Corinne Vien?

  oh, interesting.

• 55:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A living experience.

• 55:32Corinne Vien?

  Which I totally get for the people that are solo, but it's interesting, like in Shackleton's case, the whole, like it's a group.

• 55:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Again, theories.

• 55:39Corinne Vien?

  We don't know. So because it's not always the same person every single time and because people don't always know who it is, some people have said it's a spirit guide, it's a guardian, that it's just something almost angelic and it doesn't matter who it is or what you experience, but it's just some sort of divine intervention to help people

• 55:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 55:55Corinne Vien?

  in these really distressing and near-death times.

• 55:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Corinne Vien?

  And this is where like the whole topic of fate and destiny comes into play because people are like, well, are our futures already decided for us? Like, how can they?

• 56:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I kind of do think they are.

• 56:09Corinne Vien?

  Be altered?

• 56:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know. I also, it's like, it's like, there's free will within that, right? Cause it's like.

• 56:16Corinne Vien?

  So is that why certain people here, you know, like when we've had listeners email us being like they hear someone say, stop or whatever, like right before they were about to go at a

• 56:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 56:24Corinne Vien?

  at a light and that saved them from a car accident, like was that other car, that other driver experiencing free will in that moment and wasn't supposed to be going?

• 56:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  See, this is like part of the paranormal conversation that's so hard to talk about because it's like confounding.

• 56:39Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 56:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cause at the same time, like, like having been through stuff, I'm like, look, I came out on the other side and maybe my life is better because of what I went through. I have to believe that like, everything's going to work out and will work out as it's meant to, which is basically saying that life is already predetermined. And like, there is a fate for us.

• 56:59Corinne Vien?

  It's interesting because like that kind of connects to reincarnation in a way, like we come back to experience something or learn a particular lesson.

• 57:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Which in the episode that will come out in December that we did with Eliza Kelly. It's a lot of like what's destined in the stars. When you're born and she was analyzing our charts and like my chart is so heavily in like the psychological journey that like my whole life I'll be going through and learning and experiencing psychological lessons.

• 57:30Corinne Vien?

  Hmm. It is wild like birth charts and astro cartography and astrology and like all of that just blows my mind. Because if you get an actual reading that's so specific to you for like what time you were born, when you were born, where you were born. If you don't believe in horoscopes, like do that and then you're going to be like, oh my god.

• 57:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's wild.

• 57:49Corinne Vien?

  It's so spot on.

• 57:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Corinne Vien?

  Okay, well, so we don't have to go too far off course here. We'll go back to third man syndrome. Parapsychologists who study paranormal phenomenon like near death experiences often view third man syndrome as evidence that the human consciousness might have connections beyond the physical world. That we're always tapped in in some sort of way that sometimes it just takes a certain setting, a certain condition, a certain near death experience for us to be able to channel and tap into this other world that like exists on top of ours that some people feel disconnected to and other people seem to just like fully experience all the time. Okay, so there's a third man or a presence of you all who appears in a moment apparel and helps people survive. But how? Well, I don't know.

• 58:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But I do, I was gonna say, do you know? Does anyone know?

• 58:34Corinne Vien?

  But I do have some real life accounts that do not involve adventurers. So we can see some examples of people that are not just actively saying, put me with the polar bears, submerge me 200 feet below the ocean.

• 58:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's more of like everyday experiences.

• 58:49Corinne Vien?

  Everyday experiences, accidents.

• 58:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I want to remember what episode this is, but this is also really reminding me of a listener story we read that it's not necessarily like paranormal in the sense, but it's very much like this where she was out on like camping with someone and she kept like feeling she had to get in her boat and they found like someone who was like stranded and needed help. Do you remember that? I'm not, I'm not like saying it perfectly, but that idea of like she wasn't gonna get in her boat and something told her to and something told her which direction to go. Go in.

• 59:19Corinne Vien?

  Yes, yes.

• 59:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Corinne Vien?

  Yes, this is coming. And now that you're talking about this, this is also triggering a memory of the podcast Snap Judgment Presents Spooked.

• 59:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 59:29Corinne Vien?

  There is an episode on that podcast where there's a girl who, I think she was camping, and like these men started coming towards her and she heard a voice in her head saying, run. And like basically told her like where to hide and to keep hiding and like all of this stuff as these men were coming to try to find her to like

• 59:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Killer.

• 59:48Corinne Vien?

  And probably kill her. Yeah. And it was just a voice that existed in her head that was like telling her when it was safe and where to go and when to run.

• 59:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Y'all, I want to tap in on that voice. I need George. Chills.

• 1:00:01Corinne Vien?

  In 1916, there was a man named Henry Stoker. He's a distant cousin of Bram Stoker, the

• 1:00:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:00:07Corinne Vien?

  Creator of Dracula. And he was a prisoner of war in a Turkish camp and he escaped alongside two others, attempting to cross 350 miles to get to shore with nothing but raisins and cocoa powder to sustain them. That's all they were able to grab.

• 1:00:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Damn.

• 1:00:21Corinne Vien?

  They would travel only at night and hide during the day. There were three men, but these three men quickly became four because a comforting presence joined them. And this presence was felt by all of them. It was just out of sight. It was like, they knew someone was there, but they couldn't pinpoint exactly where the person was, or it felt like they were just right behind a tree or like hiding right behind a rock, sitting just out of view around the corner.

• 1:00:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:00:46Corinne Vien?

  But this person was always there, just standing right out of sight.

• 1:00:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, I feel like this is also very religious, like could be viewed very religiously, like God or Jesus or like some type of like

• 1:00:57Corinne Vien?

  Angels.

• 1:00:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Higher being guiding you. Yeah.

• 1:00:59Corinne Vien?

  Totally. During World War II, there were multiple accounts from soldiers who described feeling an unseen companion in combat. And this figure often appeared during moments of intense stress, offering guidance, helping them to try to go back to being calm. And these experiences, while sometimes attributed to sheer exhaustion or hallucinations, seemed way too vivid and also extremely consistent across many different people to be easily dismissed.

• 1:01:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 1:01:27Corinne Vien?

  Another famous example comes from Charles. Lindberg, he was a pioneering aviator and he made the first solo transatlantic flight in nineteen twenty seven. And during his thirty three hour flight Lindberg reported sensing multiple invisible presences in the cockpit with him. He described them as comforting figures who spoke to him and helped him stay alert during this really long and exhausting journey. And despite the isolation and fatigue, these presences, these beings helped him navigate the perilous flight successfully.

• 1:01:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I also love for that one. I like to think that there are these ghosts who are like, fuck yeah, I want to get on a plane. I want to be the first one to fly across the world.

• 1:02:06Corinne Vien?

  They're like, wow, new experience. Who wants to go? It's like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory sort of thing where it's like the ghost world, they got the golden, yeah, we're giving out five golden tickets to join Charles Lindberg in his little plane.

• 1:02:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's only so much room.

• 1:02:19Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, you get like a time slot you sign up for.

• 1:02:22Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  First come, first served.

• 1:02:24Corinne Vien?

  For the ghost world.

• 1:02:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Of course.

• 1:02:25Corinne Vien?

  One thing that was not exciting for the ghost world.

• 1:02:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What?

• 1:02:27Corinne Vien?

  And for anyone else here was nine eleven.

• 1:02:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh.

• 1:02:31Corinne Vien?

  So there were a lot of experiences that happened on September eleventh when there was a terrorist attack in New York City and the twin towers were hit. Ron DeFrancesco is one of the most well documented, modern day accounts of third man syndrome. He's a survivor of nine eleven and Ron was trapped in the south tower of the world trade center during these horrific attacks. Ron found himself disoriented. He was alone. Smoke was filling the building and he could not find his way to safety. He was looking for the stairs, but he was obviously completely panicked.

• 1:03:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Corinne Vien?

  And he couldn't see anything. The smoke was so thick. It seemed so certain that he wasn't going to make it out. And basically in that moment, he just accepted, this is how he goes. And so he gave up. He laid down. He attempted to accept his fate, wait for the smoke or for the collapsing building to take him. But then, as Ron recalls, he felt a presence behind him and a hand reached out to him through the smoke. So he saw this hand and Ron grabbed the hand and the person led him all the way down the stairs to the exit out of the building.

• 1:03:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:03:38Corinne Vien?

  And he recalled that it was. Was like, there was this voice accompanying this person as well that was holding his hand and the voice was urging him forward, telling him, get out, keep moving. You've got this. Let's go. And it was not a voice he recognized, but he said that it gave him the strength to keep going. He felt confident that they were gonna make it out.

• 1:03:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hold on to the hand too.

• 1:03:56Corinne Vien?

  And I think in the moment, like he, he thought it was another person, like he thought that the duo was determined to make it out.

• 1:04:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:04:03Corinne Vien?

  So he made it out to safety just moments before the building collapsed. He was one of just four people to escape from above the eighty first floor. And he believes the president saved his life that day because no one else came out of the building with him in that moment. There was no one else discovered near where he was. They have no clue who that person was guiding him out of the building. It was paranormal intervention.

• 1:04:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wow.

• 1:04:30Corinne Vien?

  And there are so many more reports like this from nine eleven. There are people who were shepherded to safety by these invisible forces, by these voices showing them where to go, telling them where to go, guiding them through the smoke and impossible things. This is why it's like, how is it a hallucination if you can't see where you're going?

• 1:04:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Well, that also makes me wonder too, if like there are other people who passed away prior to Ron and other people who were able to escape and then helped other survivors.

• 1:04:56Corinne Vien?

  I, that makes so much sense to me. Because I feel like when you pass, I mean, I don't, I don't know, because I don't remember the last time I passed. But I just feel like you do have at least a few moments.

• 1:05:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:05:08Corinne Vien?

  To like view your own body and like try to accept that you've died.

• 1:05:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Or you don't even know and you're just like acting.

• 1:05:14Corinne Vien?

  That's true. Oh, that makes me sad that people think that they escaped and they're out there and then.

• 1:05:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But they saved someone else.

• 1:05:20Corinne Vien?

  They did. There's a group of firefighters during nine eleven who recall a mysterious figure who arose from the north tower and led them all to the stairs to safety when they were all trapped and also disoriented. And there's so, so many examples of this. And I did find this BuzzFeed article that I read about third man syndrome. And you know what's so funny is I like found this BuzzFeed article and they were citing, I think M. On and That's Why We Drink had covered third man syndrome. And they were like, I love third man syndrome. So I collected a bunch of third man syndrome stories from other BuzzFeed readers.

• 1:05:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So that is so funny.

• 1:05:50Corinne Vien?

  So I've collected their collection of third man syndrome stories.

• 1:05:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 1:05:55Corinne Vien?

  And there's a million more on Reddit, but I wanted to read a few of these because

• 1:05:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:05:59Corinne Vien?

  They're just so interesting. I know I told you this was gonna be a long episode. This is sent from anonymous. They said, 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 up against the wall until both my feet were secured. I cannot explain what happened to this day, but I do know that there was someone or something out there that saved me.

• 1:06:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jeez.

• 1:06:33Corinne Vien?

  Another person, anonymous. I'm disabled and I survived the attacks on the Twin Towers. I was buried under the debris for about 15 hours, but I was never alone. I kept hearing from a voice that said his name was Michael. When I was weakest, he would just keep talking to me. When I was rescued, I found out that there was never a man named Michael anywhere in that area. I still wonder about the voice that saved me from becoming another death on that terrible day.

• 1:06:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, like, is it someone, is Michael a guardian of his? Or like, was Michael someone else in the towers?

• 1:07:04Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jeez.

• 1:07:06Corinne Vien?

  Another anonymous. When my husband was in his twenties, 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 that he had 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 this kid. The police said that no one had called them. They were just coming because the power was out. Not only that, but they said that there was no way anyone could have even gotten close to the car on account of all of the live wires. If my husband had tried to get out of the car, they probably would have killed him. My husband so vividly remembers this kid. He believes he was real, but his mom believes that this was his guardian angel.

• 1:07:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. Another idea is like, what if it's like your soul from a past life who's like, no, no, it's not your time yet. Like,

• 1:07:53Corinne Vien?

  Interesting.

• 1:07:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like you didn't live long enough. Like you have to keep going. There's so many possibilities.

• 1:07:59Corinne Vien?

  So many possibilities. Okay. I have four more examples from this Buzzfeed article. This is from Emily in Ohio. A few years ago, we were on family vacation in Virginia Beach. The water was pretty choppy. The waves kept knocking me down before I could even properly get in. So as I was pregnant, I decided to relax on the sand instead. My husband and my three siblings went out swimming and without realizing it, my husband and one of my sisters got pulled out pretty far. They were far from everyone else swimming and a lifeguard was blowing the whistle that they needed to come back in. The water was so rough. They were having such a hard time getting any closer to shore and genuinely thought that they might drown. My sister is pretty petite, so my husband ended up carrying her piggyback style back to the shore. And they were both pretty scared and tired. And my husband told me that he felt something or someone had helped them make it back.

• 1:08:44Corinne Vien?

  He said it felt like someone was giving him a push. The next day, there was a perfect handprint on his back, on the right side of his shoulder blade. It looked like a reverse sunburn in the perfect shape of a hand. So yeah, someone was definitely looking out for them that day.

• 1:09:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Again, it's like, why do some people have this and others don't?

• 1:09:07Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And is it because of destiny? Is it fate?

• 1:09:11Corinne Vien?

  I don't know. It makes me so sad.

• 1:09:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or is it just like right place, right time? And there's just like an energy there that does, it's like, happens to be there? I don't know.

• 1:09:19Corinne Vien?

  I don't know either. Another from anonymous. I was a teenager in the eighties and I was driving alone at night in a rainstorm. I hate driving at night, especially in the rain. Anyway, I ended up hitting a pothole and my tire popped. I was kind of in the middle of nowhere, but I somehow made it to a parking lot. It was empty from what I could tell, and this was obviously before cell phones or anything. So I was going to try to change my tire myself when I realized I didn't have a spare. I sat in my backseat trying to think of what to do when I heard a tap on my passenger window. There was a man's voice saying, you need a hand, miss? I felt my car being jacked up and I heard the sound of someone messing with my tire. I remember clutching my tire iron in my Hand as I got out of the car to try to get a better look at the guy and see what the hell was going on. And as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone.

• 1:10:03Corinne Vien?

  I sat back in my car again, still thinking. And then a few minutes later, the rain cleared up a bit. And I made my way to the store whose parking lot I ended up in to try to use their phone to call my dad. My dad showed up with a spare tire, only to tell me that all of my tires were totally fine. So now I always wonder if any of this was real at all.

• 1:10:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That one's also like, is this a glitch in the matrix?

• 1:10:22Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, cuz it's like their actual tire to their car.

• 1:10:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is now no longer deflated.

• 1:10:28Corinne Vien?

  Right. It's like some magic little fixing your tire.

• 1:10:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Geez.

• 1:10:33Corinne Vien?

  Okay, last one, also sent in from someone anonymous. I was driving on a somewhat rural road on a very windy winter's day. The snow was being whipped across the road and a sudden gust of wind hit the back end of my car. This caused me to fishtail and I lost control. I shot across oncoming traffic, off an embankment, and rolled the car into a field. As I was airborne, I felt someone sitting next to me in the passenger's seat. After the car flipped three hundred and sixty degrees and slammed back down onto my tires, I heard a voice in my head tell me that I was unharmed and I felt a gentle caress across my forehead. Once I determined my neck wasn't broken and that I could move, I saw that I was covered in windshield glass. It was everywhere, except for the passenger seat.

• 1:11:17Corinne Vien?

  There was only glass bits around the edges of the seat, like someone had been sitting there. I didn't have any scratches or any bruises on me. The police officers and the tow truck driver could not believe that I was uninjured, given the state of my car. And since then, I've tried so hard to be a better human and to repay whoever or whatever saved me that day. So yeah, this is third man syndrome. It remains one of the most mysterious phenomena that defy easy explanation.

• 1:11:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Corinne Vien?

  It is, it leaves us with the question of, is it a product of our brains in survival mode? Are we tapping into some hidden reserves of strength?

• 1:11:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 1:11:53Corinne Vien?

  Is this the power of the human mind and our will to survive? Or is this something beyond explanation, beyond science, beyond our brain chemical makeup?

• 1:12:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Paranormal.

• 1:12:03Corinne Vien?

  Is it? Are we connected to the spirit world? Is this granting us temporary access to the spirit world and helping them save us?

• 1:12:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or just an energy that we don't typically access? I mean, this also makes me think like the survival of going back to Sir, what's his name?

• 1:12:20Corinne Vien?

  Ernest Shackleton.

• 1:12:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ernest Shackleton, like that group, like if you have so many people who are all trying to survive, the energy of all of them trying to survive, does that create almost like another person?

• 1:12:34Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They like created an energy, like the same way you can create a haunting. Did they create an energy that wanted to survive so badly that it did?

• 1:12:43Corinne Vien?

  Like your will to survive in a group like that, like that's undeniable powerful, like the, the energy that is put forward. I don't know. I hope no one experiences the trauma and the, these situations that third man syndrome often finds itself appearing in. But I do think that there's something pretty beautiful about the idea that in these moments of distress, there's likely someone waiting there to save you.

• 1:13:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. And if you die, there's also someone waiting there to guide you. The Green Reaper or your loved ones, your pets who have passed away.

• 1:13:15Corinne Vien?

  Wow. In our darkest moments, there is light.

• 1:13:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're not always alone. You're actually never alone, even when you shower.

• 1:13:22Corinne Vien?

  Yep. The ghosts are watching you.

• 1:13:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The ghosts are, are washing you.

• 1:13:28Corinne Vien?

  They also get Willy Wonka golden tickets. Who gets to wash Sabrina today?

• 1:13:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They're like, she never gets her feet. Let's get them for her.

• 1:13:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. Well, so I didn't totally know what the third man syndrome was, and I didn't want to look it up to ruin it for myself. But I did like a quick and I just saw like saved or whatever. So I thought it was like premonitions and stuff. But I ended up pulling a story that is about a guardian angel.

• 1:13:51Corinne Vien?

  Perfect.

• 1:13:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is from our listener Carrie and it is called Grandad Saved My Life. Hi ladies, I recently discovered your podcast and have been, been listening ever since. I don't think my story is super scary, but it is the moment I stopped questioning if ghosts were real or not.

• 1:14:07Corinne Vien?

  I love this.

• 1:14:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  My granddad was my best friend in the whole world until he passed away when I was just 17 years old. I always felt he was with me, especially during stressful times, but I chalked it up to dismissing him and wishing I could call him for advice. And then when I was 22, My mom called me to tell me that my grandma, my granddad's wife, had suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm and it wasn't looking good. So I got in my car to take the four and a half hour drive to see her. I was about four hours into my trip when the weather got extremely bad. And the only other time I'd experienced rain that heavy was during a hurricane. So many people were pulling over onto the shoulder to wait out the storm, but I was determined to see my grandmother before she passed away. So I kept going.

• 1:14:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Out of nowhere, I felt the back collar of my T-shirt move and instantly felt the need to change lanes. But I was so focused on staying safe in the rain that I stayed in the inside lane and kept going. A few minutes later, that same sensation happened again. Something pulling on the back collar of my T-shirt. And once again, I ignored it. Almost immediately, it happened again, but this time the pull on my collar was so strong that it pulled my entire upper body back into the seat. And while my car stayed straight, I felt my steering wheel jerk to the right. I was so creeped out and had no idea what was going on, but I took all of it as a sign that I needed to change lanes. So I waited for an opening and switched to the outside lane.

• 1:15:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Less than a minute later, I looked in my driver's side mirror and through the heavy rain and watched a massive multi-car accident happen in the inside lane that I had just been in.

• 1:15:46Corinne Vien?

  Holy shit. This feels like Final Destination, doesn't it?

• 1:15:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I spent the rest of my trip with my stomach and my throat. When I finally got to the hospital, my aunt said that they had been worried about me because this was before I had a cellphone because they saw the news that there had been an accident with multiple fatalities. Turns out, it was the accident that I had just witnessed and just missed. That was the moment I knew that ghosts were real and my granddad had saved my life by pulling on my collar and telling me to switch lanes. And I have not ignored him since. Keep up the good work. Thanks for letting me share my story. Carrie.

• 1:16:19Corinne Vien?

  These things are so difficult because it's like, on one hand, you're so, like, it's such a powerful thing to either listen to your intuition or listen to the signs that you're getting and like, you get to be saved.

• 1:16:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:16:31Corinne Vien?

  But it's so upsetting that other people also, either they don't have those opportunities or they didn't recognize it.

• 1:16:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:16:37Corinne Vien?

  And like, there's still death.

• 1:16:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And also the fact that for Carrie, it was Carrie experienced the tug three times. The first two times she ignored it.

• 1:16:46Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And it wasn't until the third time where it was like really aggressive and then the wheel itself was turning.

• 1:16:51Corinne Vien?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That she was like, oh shit, okay, like, I need to listen to whatever this is.

• 1:16:54Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But like, some people might only get one warning or zero warnings. Yeah.

• 1:16:59Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 1:16:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's how, it's tough.

• 1:17:01Corinne Vien?

  It is tough.

• 1:17:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But I'm glad, Carrie, that you are safe and we're okay. And I hope you were able to see your grandmother.

• 1:17:10Corinne Vien?

  Dang.

• 1:17:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, man, this is, we started this episode talking about how like, we were feeling the weight of the world and how heavy it is.

• 1:17:15Corinne Vien?

  I know.

• 1:17:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I feel it more.

• 1:17:17Corinne Vien?

  I picked an upbeat, like, kind, loving episode for us. Somehow it got pretty heavy.

• 1:17:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. I'm still feeling that, that donut.

• 1:17:27Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And not a good donut, not a like a, I get to eat this donut, more of like a, I ate too many donuts and now I'm bogged down and want to take a nap and sleep.

• 1:17:35Corinne Vien?

  12 potato donuts in.

• 1:17:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm, yeah, we're heavy.

• 1:17:38Corinne Vien?

  Now I want the holy donut. Oh, man, I'm craving.

• 1:17:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But we hope all of you are doing well out there and we want to say we love you all. We're so grateful for all of you for listening. And if you have experienced anything like this, a guardian angel experience, third man syndrome, or if you have any paranormal encounters or alien Bigfoot cryptid, whatever it may be, please email them to us at [email protected]. And this is a reminder with the holidays coming up, ask everyone, anyone, anyone you see on the street for their ghost stories and uh...

• 1:18:13Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, because in fact, you think of ghost stories as being a Halloween tradition. It's actually a Christmas tradition.

• 1:18:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It is.

• 1:18:19Corinne Vien?

  So this is the season for ghost stories.

• 1:18:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gather them and send them to us.

• 1:18:25Corinne Vien?

  That's our gift. That's all we ask of you. Our Christmas wish this year. Send us your ghost stories. Send us your ghost stories. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Shout out to Jamie Ryan, who edits our podcast. And we love you. We do. And we will. See you on the other side.

• 1:18:46Corinne Vien?

  Very spooky.