Best-selling ghost story book back in print

A new edition has been published of The Unexplained, the best-selling book by Allied Newspapers journalist Vanessa Macdonald.

The original, released almost six years ago, brought together over 50 stories based on interviews Ms Macdonald conducted in Malta and overseas on tales of ghosts and the paranormal.

She became interested in the subject in 1982 when she crossed the Atlantic on a haunted boat, taking it up later in a series that ran for several years in the Weekender.

The first print sold out in just seven days and it remained on the bestseller lists of local bookshops for years.

"Ghost stories are always popular even though people insist that they don't believe them. But once you show that you take them seriously, people come forward with their own stories.

"The great thing about them is that they are first-hand accounts and not stories embellished over the years. I remember hearing the story about the sailor who was taken to a party in St Ursula Street, Valletta, who left his cigarette case behind - but there are so many versions of it that it is hard to believe that it actually happened at all.

"It is different when you sit down with people in their front rooms and watch their faces as they tell you in great detail about what they remember," Ms Macdonald said.

Over the past years, Ms Macdonald interviewed other people and started building up another stock of stories but she admitted that these were not the most interesting ones.

"People read the stories in the original version and realised that they had had experiences at the same place - or even seen the same thing."

When the third print of the book sold out, Allied Publications decided to print a new version, The Unexplained Plus, with the original stories, the updates and the new material.

The resulting book has over 60 stories of daytime sightings, benevolent ghosts that saved people's lives and malevolent ones that drove them out of their homes.

The book is now on sale in all leading book shops.