Do you believe in the supernatural? Well, you just might after what these locals had to say! A recent post to Facebook group Nostalgia Malta really brought out the spooks after various locals shared their creepy encounters or chilly moments. Here are just some of them as a pre-Halloween warm-up ahead of this month’s popular holiday.

1. The abandoned Bormla house

Facebook user Ray Daniel Schembri notes that while the people living there never actually saw anything, they did indeed experience many changes in their lives. “They had two dogs who loved them to pieces. Living in that house, the dogs became ferocious, even going as far as attacking their owners,” he notes. “The family was also the same, becoming aggressive once they step foot into the door, fighting like there’s no tomorrow.”

2. The old man on the sofa

Mario Bonnici recounts a story of him idly taking a photo and something strange appearing. “I’ve got a photo of a spirit or some form of person that I took with my phone by mistake. I don’t believe in these things,” he says. “All I did was take a photo accidentally with flash. Next thing I know, a shadow of an old man on a sofa appears in the photo,” reaffirming that while he’s experienced such things, he still doesn’t believe them. Wha-?

3. The helpful ghost

“Nowadays, you don’t hear much of ghosts... some 45 years ago, a girl who used to work with us used to tell us her family has a ghost at home that would hide their things, make them trip while walking,” says Gemma Falzon. "She even told us that the ghost would take up the washing basin to the roof for her mother. We’d then ask her if she would see a floating basin going up the stairs! We didn’t believe her of course.”

4. The woman in the balcony

“I was walking down to the square on Saturday morning around 9am, with my son in his pushchair. He began waving to an old woman in the balcony and I looked up to see if she needed anything. A woman on the street asked me what it was I was looking at,” says Maria Dolores Bonnici. “The woman told me the house has been vacant since the war and as soon as I turned back, the woman in the balcony disappeared.” Maria says she later found out that it is one of the houses mentioned in Cavalier Joseph Aquilina’s book Ghosts of Malta. “I totally believe in ghosts now.”

5. The Addolorata Cemetery

Because there has to be a ghost story set in a cemetery! Sandra Darmanin recalls one time when she visited her mother’s grave with her daughter at the Addolorata Cemetery in Marsa. To get to the area of her mother’s grave, there are two flights of steps. After lighting a candle, they saw a cleaner’s cart being pulled by an African man. “I turned round and asked to put the match I used in his bin. He just looked at me and kept walking without saying a word. My daughter and I said a prayer for my mother and the dead and we headed back to the car.”

But both the girls wondered how he could have possibly carried the clanky cart without making a sound. “I’m a curious person and I know there’s a chapel close to the area, so I wanted to check if there was some other way he could have possibly carried his cart in. But there was a wall about a storey high next to the chapel. Maybe all he needed was that prayer.”

6. The little ball of yarn

Isa Attard recalls one of her mother’s stories that she still recounts to this day. “When my mother was young she would visit the cemetery with her aunt to visit her husband’s grave, who died in the war. She always mentions seeing a ball of yarn rolling around, but when she’d try to catch it, it would fall through her hands.”

7. Two little girls

This one sounds like something out of The Shining. Graziella Attard used to go door to door, helping out in the community and recalls quite the strange scenario in one house. “As soon as I got to the bedroom I saw smoke, and two children running and laughing, but they immediately ran into the wall, and almost instantly everything was back to normal. When the owner of the house came next to me, she asked what was wrong, and after telling her I told her ‘I must be going crazy.’ She actually believed me and said it matches what her grandchildren saw a while back, too.” Graziella says that apparently, two girls died during the war in the house, and still haunt it to this day.

Locals’ tips on how to ward off a ghost

According to Doris Casha Camilleri, “a ghost is nothing more than a spirit that hasn’t rested. So if you just tell him (or her) to rest in peace, they’ll be quiet and won’t bother you.”

User Conniejohn Dalli also said that in their neighbourhood, there once was a house which many believes to have a ghost present. “When it was sold, they celebrated mass there, and the owners never saw or heard anything else.” #ThePowerofJesus?