Once the story was out, several new episodes came to light. One of the brothers was married and lived nearby. Faced by the terrified group all trying to explain what they had been through, he was sceptical at first. But he finally admitted that he would often pass by the house and see all the lights on, even in the middle of the night.

The family started to keep together as much as possible.

One dinner time was disrupted by the sound of water trickling down the stairs. But no-one had been upstairs. When they went to check, the stairs were as dry as a bone.

But what could the family do?

The house had been a splendid home but life was rapidly becoming unbearable. William’s father tried to find somewhere else to live but the only other thing available was a tiny flat and it would cost double.

The landlord, meanwhile, tried to find someone else to rent the house. Couple after couple came to see the house but they always stopped in the hall and stared at the darkness under the stairs. They would inevitably make excuses and leave.

Although the family was sure that it would not achieve much, William was entrusted with locking the door at night, which he did as securely as possible, jamming a huge wedge in the door to keep it shut.

They decided to move into the same bedroom, as none of them was willing to spend the night alone. Instead of reassuring each other, however, they managed to frighten each other even more by recounting the things that had happened over the years.

“Call Raymond,” one sibling suggested. Raymond was a cousin, a big, tall lad… He would certainly not be frightened by a few noises… or would he?

He was called over and the family settled down upstairs to wait for him, as though his presence would solve everything.

All the family was woken up by the sound of footsteps going down the stairs and into the bedroom, even though there was nothing there

The opposite happened. The spirits seemed to object to the family’s united front and the door downstairs started to shake violently. One by one, all the doors of the house were shaken, all the way up to the roof. The silence after the fearful noise was even more terrifying, and when the doorbell rang, the family’s nerves were so taut that they almost cried out in fright.

William went down to let him in and was not really surprised to find the door open, hanging on its hinges. From the look on Raymond’s face, he must have heard something as he was very reluctant to go in and made lame excuses about having to go home to get something to eat first.

William grabbed him by the arm and drew him in. It was more than his life was worth to let him leave.

He dragged him into the kitchen and put on the kitchen stove to fry him an egg. While it was cooking in the spitting lard, William took a tray of drinks upstairs to the family’s communal bedroom. He had hardly gone a few steps when he found Raymond panting behind him.

“I’m not very hungry actually,” he insisted.

William knew better than to ask what had suddenly destroyed his appetite. “I’ll just go and turn off the stove, then,” he said.

Raymond took his arm and pushed him back up the stairs.

“No need,” he said. “Everything went out, the stove, the lights… all by themselves.”

William smiled to himself. No wonder Raymond did not want to be left alone in the kitchen. It did not seem that this six-foot-tall lad was going to be much help.

It was not only William who was unimpressed by Raymond’s presence. When he woke up the next morning, the tie that he had carefully draped over the end of the bedstead was swimming in the chamber pot at the other end of the room… The glass on his watch was also burnt, as though with a cigarette. But that was in the morning. That night was just as terrifying.

All the family was woken up by the sound of footsteps going down the stairs and into the bedroom, even though there was nothing there.

William was sharing a bed with his brother, and to this day he is not sure whether the punch he felt in his stomach was his brother’s knee or, well, something else.

At last, eight years after the ordeal started, the day came when they could move out. Relatives turned up to help load the truck and vans, and William was very busy. He certainly did not feel like chatting to the curious neighbours. But one of them was very persistent.

“William, why are you moving out? Is it because you saw or heard something?”

William did not really want to talk about it, and in any case they had promised the landlord that they would keep the story to themselves. But the neighbour pulled him into her house and showed him something which chilled him to the bone.

It was a framed photograph of a mother and her son who had apparently been killed and buried under the stairs in William’s house. They were all dressed up for carnival.

And their costumes? The woman was dressed like a Spanish noblewoman complete with a lace mantilla. And the son was wearing a fake moustache and wore a hat with a fringe of bobbles…

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.