Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Several of the recent texts described different aspects of and different perspectives on entities we could call undead, including ghosts. This brief expert touches upon something different but still related to the subject. Something not that as sinister… or is it?
In his memoirs “The Moon Over Antarctica (1986)” polar explorer Christian McClanahan regales the story of how he and fellow explorer Margaret Evinbow were one night caught in the middle of a heavy snowstorm en-route to base camp. Starving, freezing and with one of them heavily injured their situation appeared dire, but according to McClanahan, there was something in the storm that had reached out. Nothing more than a silhouette, a “figment wearing my familiarity like a beautiful shroud painted in snowfall”.
He goes on to admit that the mysterious figure showed itself to him like a big brother he never had, someone to reach out to when in need. It had no features; no face and barely even a body, yet he insists he recognized it as a person. Supposedly, he “just knew he could trust its beckoning”. The last thing he admits he remembers before he awoke surrounded by others at base camp is that he followed.
McClanahan’s case is one of several historically documented occurrences of this type. The phenomenon has been dubbed it the ‘third man factor’, a kind of delusion where the mind manifests a third, unseen entity in order to cope with arduous conditions, such as high-altitude mountain climbing or being shipwrecked. However, McClanahan’s case has given researchers cause to believe that the phenomenon cannot simply be regarded as a benevolent delusion.
According to studies performed by the Arkham Institute around Mt. Everest’s Rainbow Valley, there is cause to believe these occurrences of an unknown and unseen third party are an embodied Legion manifestation of untended mass graves within these environments. What is believed is these figures appear to wayward travelers to guide them to safety to avoid the fate they themselves suffered. This phenomenon has been documented in other parts of the world, however on a much smaller scale; several deaths around the US-1 highway are believed to be because of such figures (perhaps unintentionally) leading drivers off the road or sightings around the favelas of Rio de Janiero, presumed to be the victims of gang violence.
How this occurs or why these entities do this remains mere speculation.
Esoteric Musings... 