Spooky Cool: The Third Man Factor

A somewhat random article that came across - Survivors of extreme situations—on Everest and elsewhere—credit the help of a 'third man' who is not there (WSJ):

In 1953, Austrian mountaineer Herman Buhl became the first person to climb Nanga Parbat in the ­Himalayas—at 26,660 feet, the ninth tallest peak in the world. He climbed by himself and not far from the summit was forced to spend the night out in the open without a sleeping bag or tent. It was an agonizing ­bivouac, but Buhl survived—in part, he later wrote, ­because he sensed that he shared the ordeal with a ­companion. "I had an extraordinary feeling," he wrote, "that I was not alone."

Read on.