The Maltese Phantom

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on The Astonishing Dead Letter Office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, The Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests.

**Forrest Burgess** (0:37)
When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Forteana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter Office.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:11)
Tonight's episode, The Maltese Phantoms.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:16)
Our latest submission takes us to the Mediterranean island of Malta, sent in by a listener who was there studying aircraft engineering. He describes himself as a man of logic, someone who relies on physics and mechanics rather than things that go bump in the night.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:31)
Yeah, we could say a tough crowd for the unexplained. Though, if you're renting a farmhouse on an island with nearly 8,000 years of dense history, the past tends to bleed through, regardless of your degree. And I will say this, when you watch those old history channel shows, Malta comes up a lot. There was a lot going on there.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:53)
Yeah, there is a lot going on there.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:54)
Ancient Aliens, again, all the history channel shows, The Night's Templar, there was a lot of unusual history going on there.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:03)
I was struck by how much we found, so much that it took a lot longer to prep this DLO than most episodes take, because of the nature of some of the things we uncovered in our research on this. But this story starts, as you might expect, from a dead letter, a sensation of being watched, followed by movement in the periphery, shadowy figures in the kitchen, just out of your eyeline.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:29)
That sounds like most parties, too, where everybody gathers in the kitchen and you're trying to cook. But the most compelling part of this story, I think, is the fact that it became an impromptu double-blind experiment. And it did that in a way we've encountered before in the history of Astonishing Legends.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:47)
Yes, the Kekowsky Intruder episode.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:49)
Exactly.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:53)
I have a rather unremarkable yet remarkable story to share with you. A couple of years ago, I began studying to become an aircraft engineer. It was a four-year bachelor's degree that required an internship of at least nine months with a company of my own choosing. A good friend of mine in the program and I secured an internship with a company based on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Malta. Malta is known for its beautiful weather and delicious food, but also for its incredible history dating back to 5900 BC. That's almost 8,000 years of history packed into an island that's only 316 square kilometers or 122 square miles.
We decided to rent a small farmhouse just outside the nearest town because we enjoyed the peace and quiet. It was a great place to relax after studying and working. When I first moved in with my friend, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything felt normal, except when I was alone. At times, the house gave me an eerie feeling as if someone was watching me from a distance. I never believed in the paranormal and was pretty skeptical about the phenomenon, so I never paid much attention to that feeling and just shrugged it off as whatever. That was until one day when I was preparing food for my friend and me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a clear, humanoid figure move. It startled me since I knew my friend was in his room and he obviously wasn't standing there. Again, I brushed it off, assuming it must have been a shadow. A few days later, I was again standing in the kitchen preparing food, but this time, I was home alone. Once again, I saw a clear, humanoid figure move behind me in my peripheral vision. This time, it scared me so much that I jumped around thinking someone was standing there, but of course, no one was there. It left me feeling uneasy, so I quickly finished cooking and went to my room to shower and sleep. This became a regular occurrence in the house for me. Whenever I was in the kitchen or living room, I would see a humanoid shadow figure moving around. It was disturbing, but I had to live with it. Now, this is the part where I went from being highly skeptical about the paranormal to maybe there really is something to it after all. Since I studied engineering, I like to think of myself as a logical, scientific person. The strange part? I never once mentioned any of this to my friend and housemate while we were living there. I kept it to myself out of fear of being labeled crazy. When our internship ended, I had decided to return to the Netherlands while my friend chose to stay in Malta after receiving a job offer and finding a girlfriend. On my final day in the house, just hours before leaving, I casually mentioned that I was kind of glad to be moving out. Then, for the first time, I told him about the shadowy figures I had been seeing and how they'd scared me. I will never forget the look on his face. He stared at me in disbelief before finally admitting that he had been experiencing the exact same thing. He too had seen humanoid shadow figures moving around the house. Then he shared something even more unsettling. One day, while leaning forward to tie his shoes, he saw a black shadow rapidly move toward him. It startled him so badly that he fell over. And of course, when he looked up, there was no one there. The entire experience made me think. It shifted me from being a skeptic to wondering if there really is more to this world than we understand. In a way, it felt like the perfect scientific experiment. Two people move into a house with no prior knowledge of its history. Both experienced the same phenomenon multiple times. We never ever discussed or influenced each other's thoughts about the paranormal before this. It just makes me wonder, and I can't shake that feeling, that maybe, just maybe, there's more to this than we think.