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John Geiger, the author of The Third Man Factor: The Secret to Survival in Extreme Environments, took readers' questions via e-mail this week. These are his responses.

PJ in Canada I'd like to ask John Geiger whether the "Third Man" effect has happened to any Canadians other than the guy in the excerpt? I'd also like to know whether he has a favourite example.

John Geiger Third Man cases have happened to people all over the world, people of different cultures and faiths. The phenomenon is universal. Yet I was struck not only by how many Canadians have had the experience, but also by the extent to which the search to explain the origins of the Third Man has been taken up by Canadian researchers.

So in answer to your question, yes, there are many cases beyond that of Jim Sevigny, whose dramatic meeting with a Third Man after he was severely injured following an avalanche on Deltaform, near Lake Louise, was excerpted in the Globe. Andrew Prossin, a Canadian yachtsman and expedition leader, gives a harrowing account of a meeting during an Atlantic crossing. So does another Canadian yachtsman, a Presbyterian minister named Angus MacKinnon. Then there is William Laird McKinley, a member of Stefansson's Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913-18, when trapped in ice off the Arctic coast.

Perhaps none of the cases in the book is more striking than that experienced by Ron DiFrancesco, the last person out of the south tower of the World Trade Center before it collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. I'm not sure I would say I have a "favourite" example in the book, they are so different and each astounding in its own way, but Ron's case is literally hair-raising.

Jamal Uddin, Toronto I read with interest the Globe review by Wayne Grady. He seems to agree with T.S. Eliot that the Third Man could be Jesus, and he cites The Waste Land. What about non-Christians and non-believers? Together we are in the majority!

John Geiger Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose experience inspired the passage in The Waste Land, described it as a "Divine Companion," so, yes, he saw it through the lens of Christianity. But the Third Man Factor is not reserved for Christians, although there is obviously a strong Christian tradition of guardian angels, as well as passages in Scripture that are certainly relevant to any attempt to understand the Third Man.

But this sense of being joined by a benevolent being when under great stress happens to people of any faith, and indeed highly secular individuals, non-believers, have also had the experience. The Third Man Factor includes cases like that of Avi Ohry, an Israeli soldier who was a PoW in Egypt and had the experience while under torture, and Parash Moni Das, an Indian climber.

But more often than not it includes cases like the great climber Reinhold Messner, a very secular guy, who saw the Third Man not as some spiritual or religious intervention but as the product of brain processes.

Brandon Jorritsma, Beamsville, Ont. In the past, witnesses to the Third Man Factor frequently ascribed religious origins to the phenomenon, while today neurological and psychological theories are becoming more popular. How have the changing explanations behind the sensed presence influenced people's willingness to talk about their experiences with a Third Man?

John Geiger I think historically people would have found it much easier to discuss encounters with the Third Man, for the simple reason that it would have been seen as a religious experience and their report would have placed them in the exalted ranks of holy men, prophets and saints.

In our own, secular world, it's another matter entirely. Many people are skeptical about religion or anything that hints at the possibility of a spiritual dimension, and so absent that interpretation this sort of experience has been categorized as an hallucination. Well, hallucinating is not meant to be a good thing, you might get funny looks, you might even get locked up. So I think Third Man cases are under-reported. The American polar explorer Ann Bancroft only very reluctantly discussed her experience with a presence in Antarctica. The same goes for the early British Everest climber Frank Smythe, who came clean only at the insistence of his expedition leader.

Tory Streather, another great British climber, was involved in a quite incredible life-and-death struggled with a team of Oxford University climbers in the Himalayas. Yet in the published narrative of that expedition, The Last Blue Mountain, which describes in excruciating detail the disaster, there was no mention that Streather had been aided by a Third Man. He only discussed it years later.

And in his first account of the famous flight, Charles Lindbergh made no mention of ghostly, helpful presences in the Spirit of St. Louis. It was several decades before he spoke of it. I think a lot more people have experienced the Third Man than will admit it.

Edward S., Alberta I've read your excellent book, and was impressed that Vincent Lam shared his Third Man incident. But it doesn't really seem the same thing as the many of the examples you give.

John Geiger Thanks for the comment. In fact, Vincent Lam's experience fits the description of the Third Man Factor perfectly. He was cramming to get into medical school, he was sleep deprived, under stress, experiencing monotony because he wasn't leaving his computer, and he was probably eating improperly. Since the book was published, many people have come forward and shared with me their own Third Man incidents, and these people are not climbers or astronauts, they are regular folks under extreme personal stress.

In the book, I also talk of an interesting psychological variable I call the muse factor that suggests some people have lower thresholds to have a Third Man experience. For Reinhold Messner, it takes extreme stress in the death zone on Nanga Parbat to trigger it; for others a bad ski day on Blue Mountain might bring it on! I'm perhaps exaggerating, but not a lot.

Tom, Victoria, B.C. I have had an experience where I sense a faceless being near by me in the room while I sleep. The experience is not a good one. In fact, I am unable to move at all or call out for help. It is as if I am stuck between being asleep and awake. I have had this experience on several occasions and each time the presence gets closer. It is as though the presence knows I cannot move and knows how much time it has before I force myself awake. The process I go through to become awake is often very terrifying.

John Geiger This is an interesting area. Some people do experience at some point in their lives what's called sleep paralysis. It is not a Third Man experience, in the sense that these "presences" are sometimes (although not always) frightening, and insofar as they don't offer any support.

Essentially this happens when an immobilization associated with REM sleep persists as a person is waking, the result is that the person is awake, but unable to move. It is a fleeting event, but in the circumstances would obviously be frightening. One theory holds that during such episodes people experience a defensive state, their brain searching for clues of some external threat, a predator or human assailant, to explain their predicament. In response they register some false positives in the form of a presence. Other researchers see it simply as hallucinatory social imagery.

Maggie Pym, Salmon Arm, B.C. I have a couple of questions. Did any of the people interviewed find (or even look for) a method of "wooing" this benevolent presence into their everyday lives? And do you feel that there are at least two different types of helpers, one which seems to be the reality of us and one which is a separate entity, more like the guardian angel concept? I have experienced two very different "helpers."

John Geiger Thanks, Maggie, for these questions. In answer to your first one, none of the people I spoke to who had a Third Man experience consciously attempted to conjure up this companion. In fact, in many cases people told me the presence arrived suddenly and unexpectedly.

Nor did any of them say that they had sought later to try to woo, or invite, the presence back. It was a highly special experience, and to a woman or man they seemed protective of it. I got the sense that many of them hoped they would see the Third Man again, but only if they were in a desperate struggle and again needed this kind of comfort and help.

Yet I do, however, think there may be ways that this experience can be accessed, that there is indeed an "angel switch" that can be thrown. Some indeed have had the experience repeated, like Reinhold Messner, who encountered it on both Nanga Parbat and Everest.

As to the second point, I don't think there are two types of helpers. I do think the Third Man experience varies, however, from person to person, from episode to episode, in intensity. For some it is diffuse, just a generalized sense of some "other" being close at hand, a stalwart companion, but that's about it. Others actually experience much more; they have mental conversations with the Third Man, receive insights, and even catch glimpses of the presence.

Loki Wils from Canada Mr. Geiger, this sounds fascinating! Just a query: How do you find the discipline to write while on these adventures?

John Geiger I have been involved in some Arctic expeditions where I've been encamped for weeks on rugged outcrops, battered by extreme weather and bloodied by hordes of mosquitoes, but I have never encountered anything close to that experienced by many of the adventurous people in this book, and indeed I do my level best to keep away from trouble. Most of the writing in The Third Man Factor was done in a study the size of a broom-closet, late at night. An unusual, but in no way extreme, environment.