Case file · High strangeness
Shackleton's 'fourth man'
In May 1916 Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean crossed the mountains of South Georgia to get help for their stranded men, and all three later said they felt a fourth person walking with them.
1916 CE · -54.25, -36.60 · status: account
The account
Shackleton wrote in 'South' (1919) that it seemed to him there were four, not three. T. S. Eliot drew on it for 'The Waste Land'. The experience is the namesake of the 'third man factor'.
The sceptical view
Psychologists link it to extreme stress, cold and exhaustion; it is a widely reported human experience.
Connections in the atlas
- Shackleton's Endurance found
- Slocum and the pilot of the Pinta
- Mawson, Mertz and the poisoned livers
- Winter-over syndrome and the 'Antarctic stare'