Houses like that were few and far between. Huge houses with three storeys, plenty of room for grandmother and spinster aunts. And only £17 per annum rent.

The family leapt at the chance and moved into the house in Paola when William was only eight years old.

He was a budding artist, and when the family had already gone to bed, he would linger downstairs at the dining room table, doodling and designing. The cat and dog would sit by his feet, content in each other’s company. Until suddenly, one night, their hackles rose and the two cocked their ears and stared at the black shadows under the stairs.

William peered across the hall but could see nothing. The animals, though, could obviously sense something that he could not. Whatever it was frightened them so much that they flew down the hall, and when they found the back door to the garden closed, began to throw themselves at the door, again and again, spitting and snarling in a frenzied effort to escape.

The first time it happened, William was terrified. He scampered up the stairs to his bedroom and hid under his bedding. But when it happened again, the next night and the night after that, he got so used to it that he just ignored the animals’ nightly panic.

William was – and still is – a creature of habit. Getting ready for bed, he meticulously took off his clothes and laid them neatly on the chair. One night, he could hear the tap in the bathroom next door start to drip. By the time he had taken off his socks and shoes, the drip had grown faster, more insistent. By the time he actually got into his bed, the tap was full on.

That first time he heard it, he had rushed into the bathroom, only to find that the basin was dry. He tried the tap but it was turned off quite tightly.

When it happened again and again, he stopped going to check, aware that someone – something? – was playing tricks. Whatever it was seemed peeved that he could not be lured out of bed. One night, he heard a grunt and hot breath on his face. He jumped up but there was nothing there.

William did not say anything about the animals or the tap to anyone. He was sure that his numerous brothers and sisters would just tease him. But then, stranger and stranger things started to happen.

One summer night, the heat was unbearable. His brother no longer lived at home, having joined the Services and gone abroad. So he dragged the mattress off the extra bed and onto the floor between the two beds. He lay there with the window wide open, trying to get back to sleep. He had almost dropped off when a cat suddenly hissed in his face, giving him the fright of his life.

William looked at it in horrified amazement and then the cat-person disappeared

He propped himself up on one elbow and peered under the bed but it was not his cat. He shooed it away but the cat would not budge.

Under his brother’s bed, there was a big, zinc laundry tub. He crept around it and grabbed the cat’s tail and almost screamed with fright when the cat turned round to reveal a man’s face.

The man looked Spanish, with a long, drooping moustache and was wearing a hat with a bobbled fringe on it.

William looked at it in horrified amazement and then the cat-person disappeared.

William would have thought he was losing his mind but the rest of the family was also involved.

One afternoon, he was sitting down with his sister on the sofa at the bottom of the stairs, poring over a book. At first, William only saw a pair of legs coming down the stairs and hardly paid any notice. But as the person got closer to the bottom of the stairs, he realised with a little shiver than it was the Spaniard.

With a mocking smile on his face, the man walked over to the two children, bent over and placed a kiss on the trembling sister’s cheek. William tried to push him away but the man just turned around, walked back up two steps and vanished.

And as if that was not bad enough, the Spaniard was not the only manifestation.

There was also a woman, dressed in a long, black dress with a lace scarf hanging off an upswept hairstyle.

Once, when his sister walked into the house, she found the woman hovering behind her mother, arms opened menacingly. She leapt in between them as her mother walked up the stairs into her room and the woman disappeared.

Her mother never realised a thing.

The Spaniard and the woman in the lace mantilla started manifesting themselves regularly, terrifying William’s brother and sister by appearing behind them as they looked in the mirror.

His father once saw his mother walk into the house and go upstairs without greeting him, only to see her walk in again a few minutes later. It seems the first person he saw was not who he thought…

The grandmother once also peered over the stairs as she swore she could hear someone reciting the rosary. Another time, she complained that she caught William’s sister and her boyfriend entwined on the sofa. But William’s father knew that they were not at home at that time.

One brother came to visit William’s mother, who was sick in bed.

“Sit down there,” she said, pointing to the seat by the bed.

He gave her a worried look, casting an apologetic look at the woman dressed in black who was already sat there. The mother could not see her.

Inevitably, things finally came to a head. One night, the sound of heavy canvas flapping in the stairwell woke everyone up. Anxious heads peered around the bedroom doors. One of the brothers went up onto the roof but could see nothing.

When he came down, the fa­mily looked at each other warily.

Until then, none of them had talked to each other about the strange events. William rea­lised, with a touch of relief, that he and his sister had not been the only target of the taunting.

One by one, they all admitted that they had seen and heard incredible things over the past years.

To be continued next week.

This is the 36th 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.