Online Talk – Mr John Geiger, 23 October 2025, 7pm

Join us as we welcome Mr John Geiger to the Society as he delivers an online talk on the 23rd October 2025 at 7pm.

John is a Canadian journalist, author and shipwreck hunter. He is best known for his books, international bestseller Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition, and The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible, which popularized the concept of the “third man”, an incorporeal being that aids people under extreme duress. The book is the basis for a National Geographic Channel video entitled Explorer: The Angel Effect.

Bloomsbury Publishing released Frozen In Time: The Fate of The Franklin Expedition, written by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, with a revised edition in 2004 that featured an introduction by Margaret Atwood. The book has been published in seven countries and became a bestseller in the United Kingdom, and subsequently in Canada and Germany.

John spent three field seasons in the Arctic as historical investigator for the Knight Archaeological Project, a scientific investigation of the 1719 James Knight Expedition disaster, research published as Dead Silence in 1993. Geiger’s book Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine (2003) was made into an award-winning film FLicKeR, by director Nik Sheehan. It contains a foreword by the writer and socialite Leila Hadley. Nothing Is True Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin was published in 2005.

In 2008, Geiger authored, with Peter Suedfeld, the scholarly study, ‘The Sensed Presence as a Coping Resource in Extreme Environments.’ In 2009, The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible[8] was published in 13 countries. The foreword was written by Vincent Lam. The book is about the third man factor where people at the very edge of death, often adventurers or explorers, experience a sense of an incorporeal being—a “third man”—beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive. The experience, which resembles a guardian angel, has been reported by scores of people, including well-known figures like Sir Ernest Shackleton, Joshua Slocum, Frank Smythe, Charles Lindbergh, Reinhold Messner, Ann Bancroft, and Stephanie Schwabe.

In 2024, Geiger led a Royal Canadian Geographical Society expedition that located Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, Quest.

We are honoured to welcome John virtually to the John Rae Society.

This ticket is ONLINE attendance to the talk. The talk is hosted on ZOOM. Purchase of the talk will trigger a PDF file emailed to you with full details on how to join. Please check your junk mail if you have not received it within 24 hours.