Ep. 32: You Are Not Alone

0:06 Welcome to M4 Medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder. I'm Andrea Marziano and RN with 35 years of experience across various fields. From direct patient care in hospitals to home health, geriatrics, and injury medicine, I face life, death, and everything in between. And I'm Crystal Miller and RN with 13 1/2 years of experience. My work spans home health, Hospice, emergency care, geriatrics, and occupational health. From the chaos of trauma based quiet moments with patients, I've seen stories that defy explanations. We've been friends for over 25 years and as nurses we've shared countless stories that have left us and our families speechless. Now we're bringing those stories and many more to you in medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder.

0:53 Each week, we'll uncover cases that challenge the boundaries of medicine, sharing the human stories behind the science. From puzzling medical mysteries to shocking real life crimes, we'll bring you stories that'll leave you questioning everything you thought you knew while. We're both experiencing these nurses. We want to make it clear we're not here to give medical advice. This podcast is about storytelling, education and exploration, not diagnosing or treating medical conditions. This is medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder. Let's dive in. Hey, Crystal, how are you doing? I'm. Doing pretty well. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. I'm getting excited for an adventure that starts my first week of adventure and then goes into another week of adventure. I noticed that when I'm getting ready to travel, sometimes I can't sleep the night before because, you know, I'm always worried I'm going to forget something or miss waking up or all of that kind of thing.

1:46 Do you experience that as well? Sometimes there are times when I intentionally don't sleep so that I'll sleep on the airplane or in the car or whatever. I don't actually sleep in the car very well or on airplanes very well. But you know, that's a nice way to pass the time if it's a long distance. So I kind of will do that if it's not so much long distance. I mean, I stay up late every night. So it's kind of hard for me to equate it to. I also have a hard I have insomnia so I have a hard time sleeping every night also. Right, right. That's true. A lot of times it's not hugely different for me, but it's funny, it's one of those things that I'm like, well, my alarm's not going to work this time. It works every other day in the whole world and I don't have a particularly early flight tomorrow, but still, it's just like, all right.

2:31 And then I'm going on the first leg of my journey. I'm going to Arizona, so it's not like like I'm going somewhere I can't get anything I need, but I still pack stuff because, you know, yeah, don't want to buy it again if I've already got it, but yeah, are. You driving or are you flying? I'm flying, I'm flying. It's only a 3 1/2 hour flight. It's got these notices, you can get food. And I said I think I can manage a 3 1/2 hour flight without any of the food that they offer they. Offer for $15.00 for a peanut butter sandwich. Exactly exactly. It's really good stuff but what's hilarious is they're ready for me to order my food. However, I noticed when I checked in I don't have a seat assignment yet so I don't know where they they would send it even if I had it. And I haven't been on a flight without a seat assignment for a long time.

3:15 Not sure what that's about. You know that Southwest is now doing seat assignments, right? And that's good. Yeah, I feel the same way. There's so many people who are up in arms about it because they're like, that's why I fly Southwest. And I'm like, that's exactly why I don't fly South. Yeah. I want to know where I'm sitting, especially because I'm a bigger person and I need to be in the aisle. Yeah, well, and I was thinking about it. I'm like, you know, and because I'm, I'm not very big figure, I can be in a middle seat for three hours. I don't care. But of course, those are the moments that I immediately have to go to the bathroom 500 times. But that's just me and my bladder. That actually happened to me when Odyssey and I were flying to Washington, DC for my high school reunion. She was in the middle, I was in the aisle and she kept getting up like every 45 minutes to go pee and I and I couldn't climb over me, so I'd have to get up out of the aisle.

3:59 I was still in horrible pain with my hip. You know, it was awful. I was like that in the aisle. You rotten child. That's right. My need to go to the bathroom is directly related to how difficult it is. The harder it is, the more I have to go. No questions anyway. Well, with that note, what we're talking about today is called Third Man syndrome, or third. Oh, I totally just forgot factor. Third factor is the other way it's listed and I don't really know why. Have you ever heard of the Third Man Syndrome? Nope, not at all. Well, we're here today to figure it out so I can mention my resources. I used something that was in the desert News, which is a Utah, Utah based paper. Also IFL Science, which I looked up and they just look at sort of like what we do.

4:50 They like to look at the things that we maybe don't know a lot about. Then also Wikipedia for definition of course, and NPR had an article about the third fat man syndrome or factor. The final thing I used was called the Post which I want to listen to news just because that's. You know, owned by the Mormon Church. Exactly. I thought it was interesting too. OK, so the third man syndrome and one of the articles I read this was in the ghost post. It said, are you really alone in your scariest moments? One of the things I was going to ask is have you ever been in a situation where you're stressful? Well, you're stressed, I mean, and I've been. In a lot of situations where.

5:34 I'm stressed. You're the stressful. I yeah, I get that. But have you ever been in a situation where you felt stressed, even uncomfortable, for whatever reason, and then you feel like someone with you even when you're alone? Have you ever felt that? Only in a frightening way. Yeah, good. Well, save that story. I want to hear more about it. OK. I've had times where I felt like someone was with me, but not necessarily in a frightening way. And it was more of a a feeling that someone was there and just sometimes feeling just not alone. So the phenomenon that this is called is the third man factor or the third man syndrome. It's happened to a lot of people where they've described later that they felt like someone was there with them.

6:17 It's everything from explorers to soldiers and just the regular person walking upon the street. The way the third man syndrome is described is that it's something that's experienced in a survival situation, so something that's super stressful or feeling really traumatic that this presence, the third man, is felt and they intervene at critical moments. They offer encouragement, guidance and support, and that can look a lot of different ways. Most people experience it. Report feeling the presence we talked about even though they knew they were alone and sometimes it's been with groups so they felt a presence that was not part of the group. I've got some really fun examples for later, but I know I've experienced this before.

7:03 I was listening recently to a podcast and they were talking about the third man syndrome where the little girl was in a situation that she describes and we'll talk a little a little bit more about that later, but she describes an experience where someone takes her to safety. Like I say, it's it's experienced and mostly as an individual because I think a lot of times if if it's a group, they can push it off to maybe having been someone in the group or someone saying something. But the people who describe it the most commonly are individuals. One of the things that they know noted in the research I did is that the Third Man syndrome was titled from ATS Eliot poem called The Wasteland.

7:46 It references 1/3 Who walks always beside you. So that was considered the third man 1. Of the TS Eliot if he meant man or woman, nobody. Asked, it was long enough ago, nobody asked. One of the most common examples of this third man syndrome. And it's interesting to me that they call it a syndrome, but I think more they're starting to call it more. Well, they vacillate between syndrome and factor. I never understood. They never said why they say factor though. I don't I didn't ever see something that said why it was called either syndrome or factor. But the most common example is Ernest Shackleton, and he had a team in 1916, was exploring the Antarctica and they had been in a boat.

8:32 And they're both the endurance got trapped on the ice. They just got stuck. They probably planned poorly, maybe had early storms, whatever. They had a route to safety, but it was not at all easy. So he and his two companions, Tom Crane and Frank Worsley, So they started going across the mountain ranges and glaciers to a whaling station for more than a day. They trekked across the island of South Georgia. They actually survived that. So that was good. And they actually credit their survival with a fourth traveler, a presence they all felt. Every single one of them provided hope and direction, but was never really there, they said. Here is a quote that Shackleton said. I know that during that long and racking March of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were 4, not 3. He said.

9:19 That they all mentioned it over and over again. Wow. One of the ways that for them that happened is that this third person gave extra support, didn't really tell them to do anything, but just they just felt like they were supported by this person being there. And there's other types of reports that are like that. And the one I was talking about, the little girl, she had been walking, it was back in the 70s where children were far less monitored than they are now. And she was walking somewhere, I don't recall where, but it was, she had to go down this alley. And when she got there, she felt this really dark presence. She didn't know what she should do.

10:00 She decided to hide to see what happened, kind of, I think she was 10. She's like I said, she just didn't know what to do. And as she was hiding, she got this voice in her head that said run. She she didn't know. I know she didn't know where that came from, but she felt it was right. And so she ran. And then all of a sudden it said stop and hide. And so she stopped and she hid because she was running out of the space and there were some plants around and since she was small, she was hiding behind them. Then all of a sudden she heard the steps of this person and then the steps are to recede and she got the sound again, run. And then she got all the way home with run, hide, run, hide. And she got home.

10:46 And she felt like that was why she survived because she got that assistants, if you will, face listeners. You can't see Crystal's face, but she would have really liked this experience it sounds like. Yeah, I'm like, Nope, nothing in my mind I'm saying I will just avoid alleyways I'm blocking. How about that? There you go. Never leave the house. That's just all there is to it. There are so many people that I know have just said, Oh my gosh, I felt like I should do this or I felt like I should do that, or I've heard a voice that said something and I don't know very many people that haven't experienced something along that line. There's a writer, his name is John Geiger. He wrote the book The Third Man Factor Surviving the Impossible. He claims that there's some several scientific explanations for the syndrome.

11:37 Now, I don't know how many other people claim this, but what he says is that there's probably a biochemical reaction that is actually a misfiring of the brain, and that's a possibility. That they did a third man factor, by the way, that's where. Oh, John. Geiger did, yeah. I don't know why he did it. I just looked that up. Obviously I already told you, I don't know anything about this, but because you had said that I was looking it up while you were talking. Yeah. So he he decided it was it was just the third man before that. And then he in his book, the third manufacturer, that was with the third manufacturer, some little trivia there for you. There you go. Thank you very much. Well, and it's funny because it still comes up like I said, as a third man syndrome. So I don't know where the syndrome part came either, but I guess they just decided.

12:23 And this information that the writer had put together is also part of this information comes from the NPR article I I've read. Geiger actually believes a spiritual explanation makes more sense than a neurological misfiring. He said that many skeptics and non believers also had an experience like this, but they attribute it to other explanations. They want to people that are non believers want it to be something that is a medical thing because then it can be explained. And we'll talk a little bit more about this later. But basically the bottom line is a spoiler alert is that nobody really knows. We talked about so many things that nobody really knows if it's true because the problem is in order to find out you have to have a controlled study, right, right, right.

13:11 So this would be a very difficult topic to do a a study on because First off, it probably isn't very ethical to put people in situations that they could be in danger for and wait and see if they have a response. Well, that's right. We will set up 7 serial killers that will be along this course way and see what happens. So I don't know very many people. Well, I don't know, maybe people would sign up, but it's still. Odyssey. Probably would. There's some people that really like that kind of thing. No thank you. Then I think I'd always be worried that something was lurking around the corner. Is it real? Is it not real? I don't think most people agree that it's not a hallucination because most times people when they have a hallucination feel like they're having some sort of disorder and they're they're just, it's confusing. It's it causes stress that way because if it's a hallucination, it's really not.

14:06 It doesn't give a specific plan. It doesn't do anything really concrete. Hallucinations mostly are just sort of weird things that happen, or weird visions or whatever. There's a guy on TikTok. Random thing. There's a guy on TikTok who has a service dog that has been trained to greet people given the command greet and his owner has hallucinations just like that, the usually of people. And so he can say greet and if the dog is silent, it's a hallucination. If the dog is not silent, it's real. That just gave me chills. Whoa. Oh my gosh, it is cool and scary at the same time, right? Because gosh, if I was having, if I were prone to hallucinations, I think I would want to know whether it was a real event or not. Because I.

14:48 Think I would too. Gosh, that would be really unsettling at best, to me anyway. Wow, For sure. OK, Well, they do believe that these are not generally hallucinations, like I said, because they're usually helpful. They're usually orderly, you know, do this, do that. Do they see something or is it always unseen? Most people do not report seeing anything. They Most people report hearing something with a. It's usually a voice that gives this guidance. Sometimes they feel that something's there, but most people, when I read some of the the stories, most people do not see anything. They just felt something. That makes it even weirder to me that the Deseret News did an article because I would expect them to just say it's not third man syndrome, it's the Holy Spirit, right? Right.

15:34 Like interest. It's I'm fascinated. Yeah, me too. I really agree. Like I said, most people feel like it might be a coping mechanism that's triggered by stress. So somehow our body goes into high alert. Maybe others believe it's a guardian Angel or maybe even your higher self, right? Maybe you're helping yourself. I don't know. I mean, obviously we don't. Know, but that'd be cool. Yeah. Well, and that's where I, I feel like that's probably the most likely for most people is that they, I, I know that when we're in a situation or even all of our time, we're noticing details around us, we're seeing what's going on, we're getting input all the time. Our brain like if we wake up in the night to a sound, we almost immediately know if it's a normal sound or not normal sound and our body will bond.

16:24 And so part of me wonders if some of this is based on just life experience that I've realized that this situation can cause this result. So I found if I do this, that can help. And so maybe it's a guidance from the subconscious or you say the like we say the higher, higher being, which is our our greatest self. So but anyway, it's still it's quite a mystery. And one of the things that Geiger said, it's just an astonishing capacity, whatever it is, it's an astonishing capacity that we can actually do these things. And we can some people have actually have actually been working on the skill, if you will, of gathering this information or calling on their Angel guide spirits, whatever it is, they can call in these resources when they need it in their lives. Again, whatever it is, they can ask for it, which I believe is true with other gifts.

17:23 So why wouldn't it be true with this gift? Sure, yeah, maybe it's maybe it's clairvoyance, I don't know. Or Claire audience since most people are hearing hearing it. Geiger had spent five years gathering stories from individuals that had experienced the third man syndrome. He talks about it in his book. Like I said, the third man factor and. He also come and came up with third man syndrome. He just he's the one that uses it interchangeably. Well, that's useful. Thanks a lot, Geiger. Well, maybe that's why I couldn't find more about who did. Probably it was it was he. He is the one most commonly referred to when people talk about this because he did study it for five years. One of the first things that he had given an account of was a man, Ron de Francisco.

18:11 Pardon me, Ron, if I pronounce it incorrectly. He was one of the people in the September 11th, 2001 Trade Trade Center. He was on the 84th floor in the South Tower. Bad news. I'm just going to read it what it says because I think that's easier than me trying to paraphrase incorrectly. But he said when the second plane crashed into the building that he made several attempts to escape but failed to find a safe exit. At the brink of giving up, Ron heard an unfamiliar voice. He said, somebody told me to get up. Somebody said called to me. The voice, which was male, but it didn't belong to one of the people in the stairwell, and it was insistent. It's a get up. It addressed Ron by name and gave him encouragement. It was, hey, you can do this.

18:57 But it was more than a voice, He said. There was also a vivid sense of a physical presence. That's the thing that gives me shivers, that there was a physical presence, but it was a sense of a physical presence. There wasn't. He didn't actually see the presence, but he felt that and he said that he had a sensation that somebody lifted him up and felt like he was being guided. He said I was led to the stairs. I don't think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely LED. With help from what Ron described as an Angel, he made it out of the South Tower alive. He was only one of four people to escape from above the 81st floor. Wow. And what makes me consider is if anyone else, if he was one of only four people that survived and he had said he was in the stairwell, I wonder if he said anything like come with me or something like that.

19:47 I'm not sure. So he but he felt like he was LED out of that experience. Wow. Yeah, I found that pretty intense. And there's a there's another story that was in here and it was talking about a man named James who was climbing the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, Canada. He and a man, this is guy's name is James Spagney. And Richard Whitmere, I should not even try and say people's names. I'm pretty bad at it. They were overcome by an avalanche. They were carried nearly 2000 feet. That's a very long way to go in an avalanche, just right in the way. I can't imagine that was comfortable in any way, because when I've seen avalanches, there was not just snow. There's snow, rocks, everything else. Debris or as Paul and I like to joke, Deborah. That's what I say too, yes.

20:43 Is there any Deborah's around here? Whether they had Deborah's or not. And when James regained consciousness, he knew he was severely injured. He also discovered that his his partner Richard was dead. And now I don't know if that means that they were carried together, if they were right next to each other, which it sounds like 'cause I can't imagine if he was severely injured. He went very far to find his friend. It was noted that his back was broken in two places. He had a fractured arm, cracked ribs, severed nerves, torn ligaments, as a knee, broken teeth and internal bleeding. So he just laid down to die, 'cause I mean, Can you imagine? But then he said this was his quote.

21:24 He then felt a sudden, strange sensation of invisible being very close at hand. It was something I couldn't see, but it was a physical presence. The presence communicated mentally and its message was clear. You can't give up, you have to try. And so the presence urged him to get up and dispense practical advice. It told him, for example, to follow the blood dripping from the tip of his nose as if it was an arrow pointing the way. Because it was going down. It was going down as he walked. That's. So cool. I know as he walked, he kept breaking through the Crest of the deep snow and was almost unable to pull his feet back up because of his injuries.

22:05 Part of the time he crawled, the presence, which stood behind his right shoulder, implored him to continue even when the struggle to survive seemed untenable. When he finally made it to base camp, there were people there to aid him. When the presence left, he was overcome with loneliness. He understood it was more than luck that led to his miraculous survival. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, one might argue that that was Richard before he, you know, passed through the veil, if you will. Sure. Gone, you know. We don't know how long souls or spirits hang around just listening to that story. I don't know. You said the other one gave you chills. Does that give you chills too? Or is that was that one different for you somehow? It was milder for some reason. I couldn't tell you why, but yeah, it was just, I mean, it's still, I just, I don't know.

22:51 I don't, I don't know that I'm a survivor. I. Don't know that I would. I would be like willing to do that. Every time I hear people, particularly hear of people, despite in painful, painful injuries continuing to move on. I think of like when I broke my foot or my ankle, as you know, a massive fracture tried malleoler with my tibia and my fibia and blah blah blah and basically every bone in my ankle. They sent me home from the hospital just in a boot. Not no, not even a boot in a air cast airsoft, airsoft. Well, it wasn't even airsoft. It was just Oh my gosh, it's the kind that like plaster of Paris and not and it was not enclosed.

23:38 So my. So I could partially. Residual, yeah, like split, that's what I'm trying. To say. And so I was able to use a wheelchair to get to my car, right? And of course I wasn't driving when I got home. I have no doors near anything in my house from the from outside. And so. And and both of my entrances have stairs. Have three stairs each, or 4. Of course, anyway. Yeah. So I had to somehow get from my car to the house and I couldn't even like I couldn't even like crutch the splint the bottom of the split to the ground without it being excruciating.

24:19 I remember we, they, the people that helped me, they went and got a office chair and tried to wheel me up. Of course, it was a shitty office chair, so it was really hard to push. And I was, I was much heavier than I am now. And I cried and I cried and I just wanted to live in that office chair for the rest of my life. Yeah, outside on the street corner. Outside on the street corner. Yeah, exactly. So what I think about that's, you know, that's but I think about these people and they're like, they're in the mountains and they're, you know, stranded and they're severely far more injured than I was. I'm in awe. I'm truly in awe. I just. Jeremy Renner always comes to mind. This.

25:02 He's not about third Man syndrome necessarily. Maybe his. I don't know. I don't know the story other than he was run over by a snow plow. But yeah, he recovered so quickly. And I'm sure it's because he has a passion for what he does as an actor. And it's. Yeah, I just. I have not shown myself to be that kind of person. Well, and it definitely is a special kind of person that will work through that to survive because I think in situations like that, there is a moment a person has to decide, am I going to just sit here and die or am I going to do every single solitary thing that I can? Yeah, I do think it breaks down to the person, their beliefs, their strengths, things like that, and maybe what they have to live for.

25:50 I don't know. I mean, would I try harder if I had a newborn baby to get home too? Probably. Probably. Yeah. Who knows? Whatever the motivation is or whatever the basic. Person, I would prefer not to ever be put in that position. Thank you very much. Please knock on wood. I was planning on starting the study with you. Excellent plan. Well, again, so, so again, they really don't know scientifically what happens. But one of the things that I also saw in in the research that I did is that theory of the stress and induced hallucination. But again, using that word, hallucination probably is what some people might get stuck on because is a hallucination a vision?

26:35 Is a hallucination just something that is unpleasant or uncontrolled or something? Or just neurons? But that's what that's what yeah, that's what is suggested. That is when we're in danger, our adrenaline starts pumping right? I mean we get the short breath we we get racing heart, things like that and in those moments, one of the reasons our our breath gets short and our hearts start to pump is to a lot of people think that that makes the the oxygen go up to the brain so the brain will start really working harder. One of the things it. Says is what I imagine. It also pumps the adrenaline faster, right? Gets the system faster.

27:16 Exactly. And so our brains can get creative. And extreme stress can trigger malfunctions too, though in the visual and auditory cortex. Is that a fun, a dysfunction, or is it a useful tool? Right. Well, you don't know. But when this does happen, when this malfunction happens, there can be vivid perceptions of things that aren't there. Hence hallucination. That's where it gets a little sketchy. And one of the things mentioning to that the things that aren't there is like like they were talking about a reassuring voice when you're up on a mountain pop or phantom figures and our our minds can just be pretend, potentially conjuring up a comforting companion.

28:01 Yeah. I mean, if you think about this, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Do you want to finish? No worries, go ahead. If you flip it, this, I this is fascinating. I just thought of this. But if you flip it and you're talking about, say, psychopaths who have hallucinations of people who tell them to kill people or hurt people or whatever, right? Is it related? It's about the dark side of the third man, and so parody. Oh dear. Syndrome. Syndrome or factor? Factor. Yeah, that's a really good question. Is it? It makes me wonder too when people are are in those psychotic moments. I bet you they have a adrenaline pumping. I'll bet they do too.

28:43 Yeah, I'll bet you're right. And because also when you think about that or a panic attack or something along that line, nobody stands there calmly and peacefully. One of the things about something like the serial killer or something, something like that, that's where they get their high is thinking about all that stuff. So maybe that is when their adrenaline pumps and then they see those hallucinations and that's just what moves things along. I don't know. That's a good question. It's I don't know. It's how my brain works. Yep. I was doing something in Minecraft yesterday with my son. I was building a mob farm and people who know Minecraft will know what that means. Basically, I was building a monster capture. He was like, take this side that I built for you and replicate it on the other side.

29:29 And I looked at it and it was really difficult for me to even look at. But so I started doing it and he goes, well, that's a really curious way to start that. And I'm like, I started and he's like, well, why didn't you do this and this and this and this? And I'm like, Oh, my brain doesn't work that way. Yeah, that's right. I like how he said. That's a curious way to start it though. But again, I mean you, we do all have different ways that we think about something and look at something. It would be fascinating to see if we could figure out if it was the other side. I think also they do have a little trouble with interviewing serial killers too, because they're not really control group and and unfortunately they don't always tell the truth. So they may have a hard time describing that.

30:12 But maybe if it was someone who did have psychotic breaks that. Wasn't necessarily killed. When they could talk to them about it, we'll, we'll submit that suggestion to the the board of Third Man Syndrome. I don't don't know where that is. But anyway, back to what we were. Well, this is what we're talking about, but more of it. One of the other defense mechanisms that our brains have is disassociation, 'cause we hear a lot of people, they're in a really bad situation, so they take themselves off to a sunny island somewhere just to take their as much of their brain away as they can do. Interestingly, that's one way of dissociating. Odyssey dissociates by sucking it all in and becoming a shell of a person chooses to stop existing in time.

30:59 Yeah. Well, and that is something that is mentioned here is that when we're in overwhelming stress, we can disconnect from reality. Like like we were talking about sometimes creating an internal world where we get a reassuring guide or supportive presence. Yeah, she does. Maybe she she. Doesn't feel that she sits in a. Four walled dark room that's just about as big as her sitting in the fetal fetal position. Oh wow. Well, and does that comfort her? No, doesn't at all. Where she goes, where she goes. She has to. Fortunately she's learned to identify it and so she can stop it. She can sometimes go like 3 days where she's headed that way before she's like, oh you know.

31:43 But yeah, really scary, I think. Wow, yeah, that would feel really uncomfortable for me in this case when they talk about dissociation and people are reporting it because all of this is done by self report, like I said, because there's not possible studies to do at the time. They noticed that this disassociation for them is giving them this reassuring voice and things like that. Like it's offering a safe space, but within their own mind to get through whatever it is. There must be some level of safety for her being blocked like that. I'm sure there is. I just thought of something. OK, this is something else. I don't know if this is true for everybody, but when I often I won't say that all the time, but often when I'm talking to myself, I refer, I refer to myself as we we really need to do this.

32:34 We really this we what are we going to do? And it's like, there's nobody else. It's just me. And that makes me wonder if that's associated right? Because like I might say, oh, Crystal, what are you doing that that has nothing to do with, you know, we or whatever. But yeah, it's like it's not all the time. Sometimes I do say like I I think it's kind of processing this for some reason right now. But I think it's kind of like when I say I need to do something at that political, practical, logical, and then it's more of like the philosophical type things where it becomes a conversation with the what I tend to call the royal we, right there is the royal we, but I'm not royal.

33:14 And I wonder if, yeah, I just wonder if that's related because I've always thought that was weird. Like I'll actually stop myself sometimes and be like, there's no we here. It's just you homie. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, and it could be, it could be when when I hear you say that, what I think of is that's the thing that sort of takes some of your personal responsibility out of it because you've got you yourself and I or whatever it is. And so, well, one of you is going to do it. It may not be me of the one of us, but when I say when I say I, that to me says, OK, I have the responsibility for it. I'm going to carry on. I wonder if that's what it means for you is if you're sort of stepping aside from it being a personal thing and just going, well, we'll think about that later or? I'll take the luncheon to that because now I'm very curious. I do catch myself doing it, so I think I'll still be able to catch myself doing it.

34:07 But now I'll be like, wait. Which is the weirdest. I'm very, very interested. We need a recording going on in your brain, all of that. That would be scary. I mean, fascinating. Wouldn't it be it for all of us if people could really hear our thoughts? No, thank you very much. There's some thefts I really would not like to take accountability for, but in the mean time those arguments are there that maybe this is just coming from our minds disassociation or hallucinations. But what if it isn't a figment of our imagination? What if our bodies are sending us messages? Is our body sending us a message? Is our Spidey sense air quotes really magnified at that moment? Because there's times that we get messages. One of the messages when we put our fingers on something hot or must.

34:57 Our body says don't do that, don't do that. So they let us know when we're hungry, tired or scared and multitude of other things. I mean, that lets us know if we need to go to the bathroom. All of the things that happen all the time, but we may or may not really be paying attention to some of them. Some of them, our body has to say, OK, no, really, you get to go to the bathroom or you get to eat something or rest or whatever it is. But in highly stressful situations, these messages may get, they said, might get mixed up. They might be amplified, making us feel like someone's touching us or talking to us even when they're not.

35:37 And then I think of we're both Reiki masters and teachers. So I think of when I'm teaching my students how to feel energy, I have them put their palms together to see if they feel the energy in their palms between each other. Is that? Create a bowl. So I have them. Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah. Have them take their, take their hands, put their fingers. So like your right hand fingers, 4 fingers on the side of your pinky and then your left hand. I'm just describing it for the listener. I know you know. Like like making a snowball. Yeah, there you go. Like being a snow and then on, I guess channelling the energy there and then to feel that energy. And a lot of times by myself included, I can get to where my snowball's as big as a softball.

36:18 Sure. And it's one of my favorite things actually, about teaching. Yeah, it is mine too. And so when we do that, what we're doing is exemplifying what energy can feel like, right? I think most of us have been in a room where maybe we're facing away from the door or something and somebody walks up. We can feel them before we really know that they're there because maybe they came in quietly or whatever. So when I think of this sort of thing, I think of that kind of energy exchange where something energetic is out there giving some feedback and maybe it feels like they're touching us or talking to us at that moment. Because it says even when they're not doing those things, I believe they do those things. So I already have a predetermined idea that this can happen.

37:00 So I might be biased, but when we're in these dangerous situations, some people have reported that this felt like a soothing hand or a soothing touch. They didn't feel like it was scary or dangerous to them. But the argument when if it's coming from our own bodies, is that but it's just our body telling us to keep going. You may remember recently in our podcast, I believe it was about death, but I can't remember. I told the story of when my brother died and I was sitting at his grave after everything has settled down and most of the people had filed a way and just sobbing because he was, he was my best friend. My two brothers were my best friends growing up. Just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.

37:41 And I probably cried for two hours on and off. Of course, I'm not crying. But anyway, at some point during that cry fest, I felt a hand on my shoulder just kind of like a comforting, like, hey, you know, you've seen people do it. Hey, I'm really sorry you're hurting or whatever. And I remember Holly was there with me, staying with me. And I remember asking her who did that, if it was her and who, you know, who did that. And she was like, nobody did that, right? And so I know. So I get that. And maybe I don't hear the third man because of the oh, my gosh, aphantasia. Aphantasia. Yeah. You know, I mean that there, there seems to be a lot of things. I mean, there, first of all, there are a lot of things that people, other people experience that I don't that I had no idea until now.

38:27 But it seems to be that the list continues. And I know that there are, there's the scientific of it, right? I don't hear voices. I don't hear voices. I don't get, I don't see pictures, I don't hear voices. You know, it's all a concept. It's all just, you know. And so that's like the scientific part, right? I don't see pictures in my head. It's a blank space. But when we get into the non scientific, maybe it's true that I have had third man experiences, but because they haven't been auditory I've maybe not been as aware of them. Yeah, and it may have meant something different to you by the way you experienced it. Yeah, and I agree. And I, I feel like if all of us really think about it, there's probably a moment in time that we have felt something like that or just some sort of some people will call it inner knowing, some people call it Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, anything like that, depending on what kind of belief system people carry. I feel like bottom line is it doesn't really matter where it comes from.

39:30 My mind would like to know more. It's like many of the things that we look into, people just aren't sure. And as I mentioned, we can't really study it, we can't control it. So all of this comes from subjective and anecdotal reports, which for people who like to research things that is certainly suboptimal with answers that does not really fit what I'd like it to say. But there were a couple of stories that I wanted to read that I thought were really cool about people who have had these experiences. I will also read these just because they're a little easier to press them for me to shorten it. So these come from BuzzFeed.

40:11 Whatever you think about the different sources, I know that some of these could be real. Some. Them could be not real, but they talk about stories that I thought were interesting and probably somebody somewhere has actually experienced these, even if these people. Anyway, there's my disclaimer. I just like some of the stories they put together. And so this woman says when I was 8 months pregnant with her first child, I was driving alone on the freeway on my way to work. It was raining and the roads were slick. I was behind a school bus in the slow lane and my exit was about half a mile ahead. So I was planning on quickly passing the bus when a voice yelled loudly. Stop. It startled me, but I was confused where the voice came from, where a few seconds later, about the time I would have been alongside the bus if I hadn't listened, the bus driver lost control and the entire bus with sideways on the freeway taking up three lanes, I am certain that my car would have either been crushed or run off the freeway. I believe that voice saved our lives. I definitely thanked whoever was watching out for us that day. What do you think about that?

41:09 Wow, yeah, Yikes. Yeah, I know there definitely been times. There's one that this reminded me of when I was doing the research. I was driving on the freeway. There was a little truck in front of me, like a pickup truck, but a small one. And they had stuff in the back of their car, their bed, the bed of their truck, including a ladder. And all of a sudden I just thought I've got to back off because I was, I don't follow closely anyway because I'm a nurse and an insurance nurse, all of that. So I've seen way too many things. So I give way more space than necessary in most cases. In this case, I so I was in the regular distance, but I got the feeling I just had to back off. So I slowed.

41:51 I stayed in the lane for a minute and then I decided to change lanes. Just as soon as I changed lanes and there was a big gap between me and the car behind me because I had slowed down, one of the ladders in their truck came out and it was, it came rolling out too. It was top, bottom. It was one of those long collapsible ladders. So it was at least 8 feet and it hit and it flipped and flipped and flipped and then finally it went flat. The person behind me, 'cause I could see this happening in my mirror and I was going, Oh my gosh, I'm glad I moved. And by the time they got to it, it was flat on the ground. So they drove right over it. But where I would have been, it would have hit me at some point. I just thought, oh, I'm really glad I got that feeling or impression or whatever it is that that just told me back off, slow down, you know, kind of thing.

42:38 So I was grateful for it also. No idea what I can associate that with. Here's another one. This person says I wear CPAP at night due to severe sleep apnea. I can relate. And the individual says the mask sits over my mouth and nose and provides positive air pressure to prevent me from stop breathing. During the night. There is a small tank of water. I'm explaining this the way they wrote it, partially because not everybody knows how Cpaps are. There's a small tank of water that keeps the air from drying out my lips and throat. One night about a week after my mom's passed away, I was sleeping and felt a handshake my shoulder really hard. I thought my husband was making me up for work so I shrugged him off. About 3 seconds later I felt another heart shake even stronger than before.

43:22 This time I sat up and took off my mask to yell at my husband, but he was not asleep in bed. I laid back down and put out, went to put my mask back on and noticed that was of 1/3 of the way full of water. My tank was backing up into my mask and I seriously could have drowned. I'm pretty sure that hand was my mom saving me in my sleep. Wow, 'cause, you know, if a person had been a sleeping soundly enough and the mass filled up and they took a deep breath that could they could have respirated deeply. It would be inhalation pneumonia, you know? Yeah. So that was pretty cool. I just there are a bunch of different stories. Here's one. It says. Once I went on a skiing trip with some friends. After the first day of skiing we headed back down the slope.

44:04 Right at the bottom near the chair lift my ski tips crossed and I fell. I was in pain after the fall but I got up and went back to my room at the hotel. The pain was getting worse and I feared it. Feared it was a cracked rib. I was sitting on the bed waiting for the tub to fill up when I heard a male voice say get help for your spleen. I got up, got dressed. Yeah, I got up, got dressed and headed down to the lobby where they took me to Slopes Medical Building. After the exam. The guy there said I could go and would probably be OK. Probably. I asked them to call an ambulance because of what the voice said. Three hours and 90 miles later we arrived at the Regional Hospital. They took me in and ran ACT scan on me.

44:45 The doctor came back and said I was bleeding internally and my spleen was ruptured. I'm so glad I listened to the voice or I would have died that night in the hotel room. And that's true. Spleen injuries are are terrible. I mean even a very small laceration to the spleen can be deadly. Most of the time a spleen injury is Sometimes they have severe pain, as you know, but sometimes they don't. You can't. You can't say spleen anymore. It stopped being Ored. It's what it's not being Ored. Haven't you ever had that experience where you say a word over so many times that then it just becomes a weird sound? Oh I see, I thought you meant they renamed the spleen. I'm like what? Oh, no, no, no. I'm just saying. I'm just saying my brain just turned off spleen. It was like, that's just a silly sound. Yes, it's true.

45:29 I've tried to write papers before and all of a sudden the word the the OR that turned into not a word anymore. It's like. What is HICH witch? Exactly what the heck does that thing mean? I don't even know what that word means. Clearly we we move on beyond what our brain can. Handle. Without voices, apparently. At those moments, can you think of any story of anyone that you've heard of that has had an experience like that? My mom had one going up to girls camp and I might butcher this but I think I'll get the gist right. She was driving in an Isuzu Trooper of all cars, of all vehicles to Camp Shalom and it's up by fairway in Utah and lots of switchbacks and etcetera and such a narrow roads, etcetera.

46:12 She's driving up and she had something said to her slow down, like slow down more than you think is reasonable, right, Because she was she was a cautious driver and she was already driving slowly through these treacherous mountainous roads. She did. And then about 10 seconds later, the wheel fell off of the back of her car. And I don't mean it popped. I mean her wheel fell off, fail, fell off. And, you know, of course, it's a weird situation. And she said that she moved forward and it felt like she did go over the edge. And fortunately, it was not a very long, It was a short drop. But she said it felt like as she went over the edge, somebody picked up the trooper.

46:57 She turned it around and gently set it back on the road. That was, you know, switched back back. And that's huge. I mean, her freaking will think about if her wheel had fallen off going. Let's say she was going 30 and she decided to go down to 15 or whatever, right? That's a huge difference. That's a huge difference in what impact that sort of a freak accident would have. Oh, it definitely. I know of. Yeah, that's a good one. And like the one that there was no tumbling, there was no, she didn't, she didn't feel shaken, nothing. She literally felt like, oh, I got to grab you, take you off of the side of the mountain and just set you back down. It was on the side Bill. But by the way, she was set on her driver's side. It wasn't on tires.

47:38 Wow, she has to. Set her down gently. Wow that's wild and that brings into so many possibilities. Does she pass out and not notice it or not remember it? Or was there something doing that for her? Was it her adrenaline just misinterpreting it? Was she having a hallucination or reverse her hallucination? I don't be right. Do as soon as your troopers have a secret thing that does that. That's probably it. The as usually, trooper has wings. It has wings. You just put a couple of Red Bulls on the side. Wait, we're not. We're not not at all sponsored. By you're not sponsored. By you don't like them either. No, I'm just kidding. I have no opinion. To be honest, I'm indifferent.

48:19 There you go. That's another one. And this is a tear jerker for me. This is by someone from California. They don't have their full names, they just have some initials. And he said. I was a father of two and my daughter was about four months old and sleeping in her crib one night. My wife had been up with her for a while and had finally gotten her to sleep. Out of the blue I heard a girl's voice tell me to get up. I didn't think anything of it at first, but the voice yelled get up again. Reluctantly I did and checked on the kids. Just kidding. So reluctantly I did and checked on the kids. My wife had left a blanket in the crib with my daughter and she had somehow gotten it wrapped around her head. I immediately unwrapped her and she took the biggest breath ever.

49:00 If that voice had not woken me up, we would have lost her. I believe it was her little sister who would be born a year or so later, telling me to save her big sister from beyond the veil. Wow. Yeah, wow. That's me is pretty intense. That message was getting through, whatever that looks like. So with that, I mean, his adrenaline couldn't have really been going because he wasn't doing anything. If they talk about the adrenaline hallucinations, he shouldn't be having that because he wasn't. I mean, he was just sitting there and he even was reluctant to get up. Yeah, I feel like, I don't want to sound exclusive honestly, but I feel like every parent has experienced that something where it was go check on your kid or go such and such and it's like why? You know, whatever, They're fine. Yeah, they're fine.

49:47 I saw him 5 minutes ago or whatever, right. And then you do. And there was a real. I have actually, I have one. I forgot. I have one. Holy crap. I have a good one actually. No voices, don't know it was third man or anything. But so Torin has epilepsy and he was at a point where he was they, they were at a point where they were allowed to take baths if they let me know and let me know when they were out. And then they had a time limit, right? I think it was 10 minutes, which is lame for a bath, but whatever. One time they came, they'd come and told me they were going to take a bath. They had gotten in the bath and about four or five minutes had passed. It wasn't very long and I just had this feeling of I got to go check on Torin and I was I totally was like that is ridiculous. They've been in the tub for like 5 seconds, which obviously that's.

50:33 Fine minutes, but just felt like it. So I, I was like, OK, right, kind of get exasperated with the other side a lot. Yeah, well, don't we all don't be. Ridiculous. So I went in to check on them and sure enough they were under the water unconscious and I pulled them out. Scared the hell out of me. And poor Torin? Probably, yeah. Totally. It was just like I thought they'd had a seizure, they thought they'd fallen asleep, but regardless, they were unconscious under the water and it wasn't a neat CPR kind of thing. Fortunately, when I grabbed them and yanked them out, they came to whatever, whatever state they were in that came out of it. But that is that scared me so bad. And then I wouldn't let Torin take fast for a long time. They didn't like that.

51:21 Well, so that's one because I have no reason to check on them. They've been in the bath for so little time. That and really, I got to be honest, if I hadn't been torn, I probably wouldn't have listened to it. Like because of the epilepsy I was like, I better just do it. Yeah, yeah. And I and, you know, I don't know how many times you argue about Spirit or whoever giving messages, but I know I don't know. Well, one time I was driving either to or from Utah back to California. I don't recall which direction I was going. I had someone in the car with me. We've been driving along. And it was. No, we were going back to Utah because we had been on Christmas break, going through the mountains, which are sketchy in the best of times, but especially when it's stormy. Donner Passeno.

52:03 Yeah, yeah. I was driving and I still don't know what happened exactly, but all of a sudden I hit a little bit of black ice because I could feel it. I could feel my car shimmy a little bit. I had driven in those conditions enough time that I just, OK, I just steered gently, didn't break. I was able to go off the side into the median, which at that point was just a long stretch of sand. When we came off we were spinning and I know they were at least five times that we spun, but I wasn't sure at that point. I'm trying to put on the brake and stuff but nothing was changing anything and we stopped spinning.

52:43 Person that was in the car with me had been asleep when we went into the spin and woke up as we were coming out, so it was quite disoriented. He started to get out of the car. He still had a seat belt on but he started to lean out of the car and I said no don't because I had felt like I didn't even really think about. I just know don't is what I had felt and so I said it. But he closed his car and as soon as he did we were hit from behind. Oh my God. Yeah. And the car that I was driving was a Toyota Celica 77 back in the day when they used to make cars out of actual metal. And so the doors were very heavy. He was leaning out with his head. Even if I didn't know if he was going to be killed or something like that, I felt like he was potentially going to get quite damaged because if a big heavy door falls on somebody, that can at least cause a head injury or something. But I had visions of his head rolling down the highway or something, which would not be good. I just had a really strong impression that no, don't, he didn't.

53:37 And he as soon as the car hit us from behind, he looked at me like, how did you know? I don't know. Anyway, we everything was reasonably well. We had a little damage and carried on. But what I did notice in that section on that freeway, that was literally the only place that wasn't a cement divider about two miles ahead of us. Someone probably had a similar experience, but they hit the cement divider. Their vehicle had flipped onto the top and was squished. The top was squished down to the level of the doors. Wow. And I was just like, oh man, I'm really glad we were where we were. And, and the guy that hit us wanted to stand around and chat. And I said, no way, man. Two of us came off here.

54:18 I'm not waiting for somebody else. So. So I went on and here I was a college kid, he was an older guy. I was. I'm not waiting for anything here. I'm leaving. We have each other's informations. Bye bye. The last one I wanted to share 1. Share also. Oh good, OK oh good. This is another one that was written in this article. It says I was a very poor college kid who hitchhiked almost everywhere. One day I've been out visiting some friends that lived about 10 miles from my dorm. I'd gotten a ride back with a guy I'd met in class. I was getting out of his van when a woman's voice told me that I needed to climb back in and thank him again for the ride As I put my second foot up onto the floor of the passenger side of the van. They had been stepping out I guess.

54:59 So they had one foot in, one foot out. They brought their foot back in. A huge truck and trailer passed behind me going about 45 miles an hour. If this person had been partially in and out, This individual says that I was told about the speed after the incident had been reported, but this vehicle removed the van door and the trim off the door frame. It passed them on the wrong side of the road. If they hadn't turned back to thank him a second time, the truck and trailer would have hit me and I would have been its hood ornament. I'm very thankful to whomever reminded me of my manners that day and I I love that. But gosh, just the thought of what could have happened, it would be so traumatic for every single person involved.

55:40 And as it was, they ripped the door off and this trim, so that was a very close hit. Wow, yeah. What was the story you remembered? OK, so this one I actually fact checked because my dad is, you know, likes to tell tall tales stories. Tall tales, Yes, my mom and my dad used to live in California and of course I forgot where now. Novato, yes. Thank you, Novato. I was thinking about. I live, no, well, I lived in Novato as well. I don't know if you remember this, but we were actually almost neighbors. They moved before I moved there, but I know we know people that still live in Novato. We both know those individuals because we live there. They actually know my in laws because of living in the same area.

56:23 Yeah, they knew them before I did. I mean, not my in laws. My sister's in laws. What have I said? My sister's in laws. Anyway, go ahead. I knew you. Didn't have consistent in laws so I think you meant something. Else that's right. Thanks, so anyway they were the 1. Time he so one time he was driving back to Utah for some reason and he was alone and I don't remember the reason that he was driving back to Utah and he was doing it at night because you know, no traffic, all of that stuff, etcetera. And he was driving up on I-5. He got to a point he could tell you the spot and I, when I, I was actually fact checking it as he was retelling the story because I asked him to tell my kids, but I don't remember where it was. But he got to a specific spot between Salt Lake City and Novato on I-5. He had this feeling like I should pull over and just maybe take a nap or something. And he was not, I'm not tired.

57:09 He's driving and this, this car pulls up on his left and the driver is just staring at it, just staring at him, pacing him and staring at it. And he's like, what the hell, right. And so he kind of would slow down and the guy would slow down. He was just pacing him at the next exit. He was, he was like, he was tricky, right? So he didn't seem like he was going to exit and then he exited and then he, he did decide to take a nap because he's like, I'm not getting back on the freeway till that guy's long gone, right? So he took a little nap. I think he said it was one or two hours or something. And he got back on the road and he drove through the night back to Salt Lake City. When he got to Salt Lake City and got to civilization again, he found he heard that there had been multiple sniper shootings on I-5 in this particular area.

57:51 And what the guy was doing, what I said, sniper, not sniper shootings. Yeah, what the guy was doing is he's pulling up and pacing people and then just shooting them through his windows. Well, through their windows, his windows long, probably down or broken, who knows. But it was the exact description of the guy in the car. And my dad was his next victim. And. He just had this, Yeah. He just had this thought, even though he didn't. He wanted so bad to get just get to Salt Lake City. He didn't want to stop. He didn't want to take the time. He just wanted to get it over with. Right, Right. And he just heard. And maybe he really heard it. Who knows, but you just heard Get off the freeway. And that's wild. And those things happen all the time. And one thing with this, the third man factor or syndrome, therapists have been trying to use it in therapy because if it is a coping mechanism, they're working with trauma victims to help them identify this is a coping mechanism and use the third man or the words or the sounds that they get as something that they can kind of call on. It didn't say in what I read.

58:53 Well, frankly, I didn't look for into it about how they try and put it into therapy, but it's something that they're trying to work with to see if it can be something that sort of triggered to help people in a stressful situation. And I think of times like panic disorders and maybe even psychotic moments, like where that person had the dog that identified if someone was really there or not. Maybe that's one of the checks they can do. I didn't look into that anymore because I knew we'd be getting close to time anyway. Sure. Well, what that makes me think of is the the new studies on ketamine, because ketamine's a hallucinogenic, but it's been showing signs of being able to to help with mental health. I wonder if the ketamine is somehow replicating that or even if not replicating it causing it or whatever.

59:38 I don't know. I'm not not a scientist, don't know much about ketamine research or anything, but just what from what little I know. And anyway, yeah, it's just, it's also fascinating. It's it's so intertwined and maybe not intertwined. And like you know, there's just. This is why it's fun. We may never be able to understand it because, as we've talked about, the brain can't really be fully studied or fully mapped out because everyone is so different. The idea that in a time of need or a time of distress that are a portion of our brain. Gets us a friendly person to help us is actually really kind of amazing and comforting to me. And it's like, yeah, it is.

1:00:18 Yeah. It almost feels like our imaginary friends when we were young, and maybe they were imaginary friend was 1/3 factor or third, the third man syndrome where it's something that that individual needed to cope with things. And is this something that came along the same lines in the same way? Probably. It kind of sounds like it to me. As you said, it's a it's a mystery. Will we ever know completely? Probably not. And also I don't think it's the top of of study for everyone. So it's probably not a really big issue. They just noticed that people have this, and also it is more common in individuals that especially experience a lot of trauma. That makes sense to me that they've developed this coping mechanism to get through the stuff that they have to deal with.

1:01:07 And so I like the idea. I think I'm totally open to kind, friendly voices telling me what I need to do when I'm in an emergency situation. Yeah, me. Too. All right, if you've made it this far, clearly you like a little mayhem with your medicine. Or you just enjoy hearing us ramble about weird medical mysteries. Either way, we'd love you for it. So hit that follow or subscribe button wherever you're listening. And toss us a rating or review while you're at it. Helps other curious weirdos find the show. And we know there are a lot of you out there. Oh so many. Come join the chaos. Thanks for listening to Medicine, Mystery, mayhem, and sometimes Murder. Do you have an idea for an episode of this podcast?

1:01:49 Just want to say hi? You can get in touch with us at our M4 pod. That's OURM thenumberfourpod@gmail.com. We read every e-mail, and sometimes we even respond just like real professionals. Because we are. Old friends with new twists and lots of body bags.