Terence sits quite calmly in his chair, not even noticing the ash that falls silently to the floor from his cigarette. To look at him, you would think that he is talking about something he saw on television. There is no sign of agitation, no hint of fear, no manic glint in his eyes.

But Terence is no ordinary person. As he recounted his tales, one after the other in a relentless stream of incredible phenomena, I could feel a tingle of fear run along my spine. I wriggled in my seat, afraid of the power he could wield.

Of all the people I have spoken to for this series, he had the most bizarre tales of all.

Because Terence inherited a very special talent from his maternal grandmother: the ability to communicate with ghosts. This might conjure up images of a medium and seances but Terence is far from that.

Like his grandmother before him, he is able to pick up the “vibrations” in houses and would know, just know, that there was “something” there. His mother did not have the same sensitivity but she accepted her son’s power, as she had had to accept her own mother’s.

As a child of six, he often accompanied his mother and grandmother while they looked at houses to buy and he and his gran would exchange knowing glances, “Something not quite right here...”

And then his grandfather died and the young Terence often went to sleep at his grandmother’s house, which was more convenient for school. After supper, he would shut the antiporta and go up to bed. Seemingly moments later, he would hear a lot of noise and would go down to find the door open again.

His gran always went to hear Mass at five o’clock and he would be awakened, not just once but regularly, by someone opening and shutting the persjani on the bedroom windows. Then the tap would open in the bathroom next door and he would have to go and turn it off before the bath filled.

These manifestations have already been described to me by other people in other cases. What set Terence’s story apart was the fact that he could “see” the ghost, not in any sense that we would understand or recognise, but rather telepathically.

The ghost was a little Turkish boy, with a dark complexion. He did not always appear in the same guise but more often than not, he – strangely enough – had a mass of golden curls.

The boy would roam restlessly around the house, searching for who knows what. But Terence knew that he was searching for something.

Only once did the boy communicate with Terence. He was once crossing the corridor and noticed that the normally closed cellar door was open. The boy stood in the doorway, beckoning to him. He would not tell me what happened next or even whether he had gone down.

Many years later, his aunt admitted that she had also seen the ghost of a Turkish boy when she had slept in the house. She had been woken up by the sound of her child crying and had found the ‘boy’ standing in between her bed and the cot, rocking the child gently back to sleep.

Like his grandmother before him, he is able to pick up the ‘vibrations’ in houses

The house in Sliema has now been demolished. But the ghost is still there, still searching for something or somewhere. Whenever Terence goes by, he can sense his presence and knows that if he tried to, he would be able to communicate with him. But he never has.

“What would be the point? It is a tremendous responsibility. Once they tell you their problem, you feel morally bound to try to help,” Terence explained.

The story is made even more intriguing by the fact that a Turk has been seen in neighbouring flats. Terence has also heard that another couple in the same block of flats were disturbed one night by someone knocking at the door. The woman answered to find a little Turkish boy standing there but by the time she turned to call her husband, he had disappeared.

Who could the boy have been? According to rumours, the house was once used as a billet by soldiers and a young boy had once disappeared there. Is there some secret connected to the house? The only person who could find out is Terence and he either does not want to find out or does not want to say.

This is by no means Terence’s only story. About 12 years ago, he went to visit some friends in Paris. On their way to dinner, they took a shortcut through an alley, one of those typical Parisian tenement buildings, with a courtyard in the centre. As soon as he stepped out of the relative darkness of the alley into the courtyard, Terence knew that there was someone there. He could ‘see’ a young girl, wearing a flowing dress, cut demurely under her chest, carrying a hoop.

The girl called out to him, insisting that she was innocent.

“It was not my fault,” she said. “Tell them that it was not my fault.”

Terence’s friends stopped and looked at him in amazement. They could not see or hear anything and were only aware of their friend staring at an empty wall.

“Terence?” his friend said.

The ghost of the girl was a bit taken aback by the intrusion. She backed off saying: “You will pass this way again one day and then I will tell you the story.”

Terence went on to have dinner with his friends. He told them what he had seen, knowing that he would not be in Paris long enough to find out what the young girl had been talking about. His friends listened politely, not quite sure what to make of this remarkable story. But they must have been impressed enough to make some enquiries.

They found from local folklore that over a century before, a drunken soldier had forced his way into one of the apartments upstairs and had tried to rape a 13-year-old girl. The girl was terrified and ran from his unwelcome embraces, only to fall to her death on the courtyard below.

And now it seems, she still waits, hoping to protest her innocence to anyone who can hear her impassioned plea.

To be continued next week.

This is the 42nd in a series of short stories The Sunday Times of Malta is running every Sunday. It is taken from The Unexplained Plus (Allied Publications) by Vanessa Macdonald. The first edition was published in 2001 and reprinted twice. It was republished, with added stories, as The Unexplained Plus. The Maltese version of the book, Ta’ Barra Minn Hawn (Klabb Kotba Maltin), is available from all leading bookstores and stationers and from www.bdlbooks.com.