Witches, vampires, ancient aliens—you'll find them all in Malta

On Malta’s southeastern shore, in the village of Marsaxlokk, fishermen haul the day’s catch onto the harbourfront — iridescent parrotfish; mahi-mahi shimmering green and gold; octopus arms spilling from the tops of clay pots. The scent of coffee flavoured with chicory and cloves carries on the sea breeze from harbourside cafes, where people munch pastizzi (pastry filled with curried peas) and gaze at fishing boats bobbing in the harbour.

And the boats gaze back at them. These little wooden vessels, looking pharaonic in their stripes of yellow and blue, are painted at the helm with pairs of hooded eyes, which resemble something from an Ancient Egyptian papyrus.

“The Eye of Horus,” explains my guide, Audrey Bartolo, as we stand on the waterfront. “Or Osiris, depending on who you ask.” These boats are known as luzzijiet, Audrey explains, and their markings are believed to protect fisherfolk from the evil eye while they’re out at sea. “It came from the Phoenicians, who liked to copy the Egyptians.”

Malta’s coast, towns and countryside are underlain with stories like these. They weave together to create a twilight realm of myth and folklore, unseen except to those looking for it, lurking beneath the country’s sunny facade. I’ve enlisted Audrey, a guide and traditional Maltese folk singer with coal-black hair and olive skin, to guide me through the folkloric landscape of this tiny archipelago, the smallest island country in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite its size, it’s a place of many mysteries.

Fisherfolk supplement their income by offering trips in their luzzijiet around the Maltese coastline, so Audrey and I climb into a waiting boat and the fisherman putt-putt-putts the motor into life. As the boat departs the harbour, we gaze upon the face Malta would have first presented to the succession of outsiders — Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, crusading knights, colonising Brits — who occupied these islands over the centuries. The coastline is formed from blonde limestone, riddled with coves and caves bridged by rock arches. After 20 minutes, we reach the Blue Grotto, named for the startling sapphire hue of its water, and long said to harbour mythical creatures. “Mermaids were believed to live here, and sirens, who called seafarers to shipwreck,” says Audrey. The Maltese coastline has a long association with classical mythology. Further north, on the coast of Gozo, is Calypso’s Cave, where Odysseus was held captive for seven years by the nymph in Homer’s The Odyssey.

Our boatman returns us to the harbour and after a seafood lunch, we make the 20-minute drive to Valletta, Malta’s capital, where the National Museum of Archaeology should give me some background on the country’s ancient mysteries. Chief among them are the megalithic temples that scatter the landscape, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids, and created by an enigmatic civilisation known simply as the Temple Builders. Elsewhere, the countryside is etched with strange, deep grooves known as cart ruts, made for an unknown purpose at an unknown time. One such site, Misrah Ghar il-Kbir, is dubbed Clapham Junction for its weaving network of tracks which, when seen from above, resemble a busy railway station.

Offshore, the mystery only deepens — the ruins of a supposed sunken temple, Ġebel ġol-Baħar, were identified off the coast of St Julian’s in 1999 by Hubert Zeitlmair, a retired property investor who claimed to have been guided to the ruins by ancient aliens. Clearly, something about Malta invites the human imagination to superimpose wild theories onto the country’s natural and archaeological landscapes. The streets of the capital are not immune. “We have a Valletta vampire,” Audrey whispers as we walk through the museum — said to be Grand Master Pinto, who ruled the Knights of Malta from 1741-1773, lived a scandalous and opulent life and died at the grand old age of 92.

At the heart of the museum are exhibits of figurines unearthed at Malta’s ancient sites — the only clue as to the culture of the people who built them. The most famous, known as the Sleeping Lady of Malta, sits before us in a glass case. It’s just five inches long and depicts a female figure, lying on her side and wearing a pleated skirt; it was unearthed at the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a 5,000-year-old underground burial chamber near Valletta. Hundreds of similar figures have been discovered across Malta’s megalithic sites, many of them seemingly female. Beginning in the 1970s, at the peak of second-wave feminism, this led to Malta becoming a focal point for adherents to the goddess movement, a pagan revivalist religion centred on worship of the divine feminine. There’s no evidence, beyond the figurines themselves, regarding the original use of the temples, but that ambiguity is what makes Malta so ripe for folk tales and speculation. “When you don’t have evidence,” says Audrey, “theories emerge.”

The following morning, keen to discover more of Malta’s mysterious places, we set back out across the south of the island, past fields of prickly pear bordered by dry-stone walls, and Audrey tells me some of the folk tales that haunted her dreams as a child growing up. Il-Belliegħa, a serpentine monster said to live in dark, dank places, discouraged children from playing near deep wells. Il-Ħares, meanwhile, was a mercurial, shapeshifting ghost, sometimes benevolent and sometimes terrifying, like the Arabian djinn — evidence, as is the Arabic-influenced island language, of Malta’s position at the meeting point of the Christian and Islamic worlds.

After just 25 minutes, we’ve already crossed most of southern Malta from east to west, and arrive at the sleepy town of Qrendi. We get out of the car beside the Church of St Matthew, where old men sit in the shade of carob trees, watching the world go by as the bright morning melts into a hot afternoon. A young child loses control of his bike and almost crashes into the group of men, who sternly admonish him. “The story goes that St Paul is said to have rid Malta of poisonous snakes,” says Audrey, as we watch the scene unfold. “He removed the venom from their fangs and put it onto our grandparents’ tongues.”

Tradition has it that St Paul was shipwrecked on Malta while travelling from Jerusalem to Rome in the first century CE, bringing Christianity to the islands with him. “But the minute he set sail again,” says Audrey, “we converted back to paganism straight away.” In the following centuries, Malta was colonised by Byzantines and then Muslim Aghlabids from North Africa, before eventually returning to Christian rule with the Norman conquest in the 11th century.

Nowadays, more than 80% of the population identify as Roman Catholic, and there are 359 churches in Malta — more than one per square kilometre, one of the highest concentrations in the world. Even so, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Malta’s paganism is still very much present.

As if by way of evidence, a figure emerges from the shadow of the trees ­— a woman with green hair beneath a black conical hat, purple shades with bat decorations, a pentacle tattoo and a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Witch’. Rosalind Dougall, owner of the Fata Morgana magic shop, is a member of a small but thriving pagan community, many of whom are inspired by the mysterious temples and folk tales associated with Malta’s ancient people.

Rosalind leads us behind the church — here, the land suddenly gives way to a giant sinkhole, 300 metres around and 40 metres deep. As we descend the rock-cut steps into the abyss, we enter a lost world — the air is cool, the rocky walls are covered in laurel shrubs and sandarac trees, and midnight-blue rock thrushes whistle their flute-like song from crevices in the light stone.

“They call this place Il-Maqluba, the upside down’,” says Rosalind. “The story goes that the villagers were living in sin, so God swallowed up the land beneath their feet.” Angels carried the land offshore, where it’s now a strikingly flat-topped island known as Filfla, sitting just beyond the storied Blue Grotto. As we take in the peaceful, otherworldly atmosphere, Rosalind tells me more folk stories that reflect the intermingling of Malta’s pagan and Christian spirits. “In Wied Speranza in Mosta, a young girl took refuge in a cave while being pursued by pirates. She prayed to the Virgin Mary, who sent a giant spider to weave a web over the cave’s entrance, keeping the girl hidden away.” A church now stands on the spot of this supposed miracle.

“These stories have been transmitted orally over time, and for a long period, the people telling those stories have been Catholics,” says Rosalind. “So there’s always a Christian element injected somewhere — a saint or another biblical character.”

There is one thing, however, that the church can’t claim credit for — Malta’s megalithic temples and burial chambers, built some 3,000 years before the birth of Jesus. For some Maltese pagans, Malta’s temple sites have become ritual spaces, and figures like the Sleeping Lady positioned as native deities. “If you’re a pagan in Britain, you have the Celtic gods; if you’re Norwegian, you’ve got the Nordic deities,” says Rosalind. “We don’t really have a Maltese pantheon, so people make their own choices.”

Rosalind leaves us to make preparations for her shop’s stall at a forthcoming gothic music festival. “It’s great,” she says. “I can whip out a statue of Baphomet [an occult idol] and no one bats an eyelid.” We continue on our journey.

My and Audrey’s ultimate destination is the oldest of Malta’s ancient temples, Ġgantija, which sits in the country’s far north, on the island of Gozo. First, though, we’re spending the afternoon at Ta’ Cicivetta Farm, an agrotourism project near the town of Rabat, half an hour’s drive north west of Qrendi.

Little dust devils swirl around our wheels as we pull up at the end of the rough farm track. Malta’s summers are hot and dry, but as far as the eye can see are fields of gold — the yellow flowers of wild fennel, set ablaze by the softening sun, their smell of anise carried towards me on a warm breeze. On the hill above the valley stands the grand old city of Rabat, its blood red-domed church and honeyed-stone citadel standing proud, a fortified castle town in miniature. This is Malta — mighty on a micro scale.

Ta’ Cicivetta lays on countryside dinners, served in the fields to the accompaniment of Maltese folk music. On the bill this evening is Audrey’s group, the Ta’ Verna Folk Band — three men smartly dressed in traditional black waistcoats, white shirts and black flat caps. The band leader, George Bonello, plays accordion and żafżafa (a drum attached to a stick), which he plays by rubbing the stick with a wet sponge. The friction creates a deep, growling, almost animal sound. The line-up is completed by a mandolin player and a guitarist. Audrey is lead singer, but she sits out tonight.

“There’s a big Sicilian influence on Maltese folk music,” says George, “but Maltese music is very joyful — that’s what characterises it. And a lot of the singing is improvised.” The focus is on witty one-liners, often exchanged between singers as a duel. “Like a rap battle,” he says.

The guitarist, an elderly man with no teeth save for a silver fang protruding from each corner of his mouth, begins to sing. Verses are ad-libbed in Maltese and English offering up choice couplets like ‘Sugar is too sweet/Now I have no teeth’. Traditional Maltese folk singing is called għana, and for centuries has been the medium through which folk tales were transmitted, traditionally sung by women while they worked in the fields.

Folk music isn’t the only part of Maltese life influenced by neighbouring cultures and those of its many colonists over the centuries, most recently the British. Visitors to Valletta are often struck by the capital’s proliferation of gleaming red telephone boxes, of the kind once commonly found on British high streets. Malta’s British connection sometimes presents itself in other unexpected ways, not least in its cuisine. “A popular comfort food is spaghetti with cheese and Bovril,” says Audrey, barely containing her disgust. Thankfully, tonight’s menu is more traditionally Maltese, and we feast on rabbit meat marinated in white wine the temples are half-ruined stacks of rugged limestone boulders, smoothed by island winds and bleached bone-white by thousands of years of Mediterranean sun. They were built in 3600 BCE, making them the second-oldest surviving buildings in the world after the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site in Türkiye.

“The wheel wasn’t even invented yet,” says Audrey, marvelling at the ingenuity of the temple’s builders. When the Great Pyramid of Khufu was being built in Giza, Ġgantija had already been in use for 1,000 years, its original purpose, perhaps, already lost to history. Like Malta’s other temples, statuettes of voluptuous figures were found here. Even today, when seen from above, the temples’ floor plan resembles a similar exaggerated feminine form. This has led to theories of a fertility cult being practised here. Gozitan folklore speaks of a giantess named Sansuna who, having grown huge on Gozo’s rich bounty of fava beans and honey, carried these rocks here and built the temples herself (Ġgantija means place of giants).

The connection with feminine power abides today. Audrey shows me around the ruins, where altars bear evidence of historical animal sacrifice — cattle and sheep bones were found beside them, along with ‘libation holes’ through which blood was poured as an offering. We see groups of women, some linking hands, others standing with their eyes closed, meditating in quiet communion with the stones. “They’re worshipping the Goddess,” says Audrey. “Goddess tours come here from all over — Australia, the US. But they see it from a spiritual rather than archaeological point of view. They choose to believe that all the statuettes are feminine, when actually some are clearly male, and many are ambiguous.”

There’s much that’s still not understood about Malta — but in its mystery lies its power. Its countryside, coves and ruined temples are a blank canvas onto which, in the absence of concrete information, people project their gods and monsters, fears and folk tales. “Until we find evidence to the contrary,” says Audrey, “people can believe whatever they wish.”