The morning after the excavation, they returned to the old warehouse in the heart of the gold market in Tripoli. The trench was still filled with mud and dampness, but something was different from the night before. Massive footprints now stretched across the ground.

According to Sheikh Ahmad Al-Mallah, the prints looked nothing like human feet. Each one measured about 70 to 80 centimeters long, with nearly three meters between each step. Even stranger than their size, the footprints appeared to have just a single toe.

Where did these prints come from? Who - or what - had passed through during the night?

This is just one of several incidents Sheikh Ahmad Al-Mallah says he experienced himself or heard directly from those involved. He shared some of these stories in a recent episode of the podcast "Athar," hosted by Mohammad Hadid on Al Jadeed TV. The episode explored topics like 'jinn courts,' possession, revenge, and tales from the hidden world.

Who is Ahmad Al-Mallah?

During the interview, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Mallah described himself as a scholar of Islamic law. He studied in Saudi Arabia, earning his degree about 45 years ago, then traveled to the UK to continue his education. However, he said he didn’t find the environment suitable and eventually returned to Tripoli, where he worked with the Al-Fayhaa News Network and offered spiritual healing services to those in need.

Before sharing his experiences, Al-Mallah quoted verses from the Quran about jinn, emphasizing from his religious perspective that they are sentient beings. He directed his comments especially toward those who deny their existence.

But he didn’t rely solely on religious texts; what he wanted to discuss, for him, was something entirely different: events he claims to have witnessed firsthand.

Digging Beneath the Gold Market

His most unusual story takes us to the old gold market in Tripoli, a historic district known for its goldsmiths and its place among the city’s network of traditional markets and alleyways.

Al-Mallah says that one day, he was with a group of people inside a deep, spacious warehouse in the market. They were digging for something, though he didn’t specify what during the episode.

The men dug a trench about 25 to 30 meters long. Al-Mallah described its width by comparing it to the diameter of the columns in Tripoli’s Grand Mosque. The area was flooded with water and mud, so they had to remove large amounts of both just to keep digging. They finished for the day and left, but the real surprise came the next morning.

An 80-Centimeter Footprint

When Al-Mallah and his companions returned, they noticed clear prints in the mud. He insists the footprints measured between 70 and 80 centimeters and looked nothing like ordinary human tracks. He described them as having a single toe, with nearly three meters between each step.

For him, the size and shape of the prints ruled out any ordinary human explanation. But the footprints weren’t the only strange thing about that warehouse.

The Women Who Appeared to the Shop Owner

Al-Mallah recounts that the owner of the warehouse told him about another incident. The man was alone near the door when he saw a group of women approaching inside. At first, he was simply surprised—they seemed completely out of place, but he kept watching as they drew closer. Then, according to the story, his surprise suddenly turned to intense fear.

The witness didn’t specify what the man saw at that moment or what exactly terrified him, but he did say that the shop owner bolted out the nearest door and didn’t return.

When recounting the story, the witness added his personal belief that the man was 'telling the truth.'

A whirlwind inside... then a spiral-shaped pit

The strangeness of the warehouse didn’t end there. The witness also described an incident where, right in the middle of the space, a powerful whirlwind suddenly formed. The air began swirling violently at a single point, then stopped just as abruptly. When they went to check the spot where the whirlwind had started, he said they found a deep, spiral-shaped hole in the ground.

His interpretation was straightforward: to him, these and other incidents were clear signs of jinn occasionally crossing into the human world.

But his stories weren’t limited to that old market.

The house his uncle never returned to

Mallakh recounted a story he heard from his uncle about a house the uncle once owned in the Abi Samra neighborhood of Tripoli, right across from a police station. The house was on the ground floor and, according to Mallakh, had no reputation for being haunted or having any unusual history.

After his uncle got married, he went to the house one day and stepped inside. As soon as he entered, he felt according to the story that someone or something grabbed him. Then, something completely unexpected happened.

Mallakh says his uncle was suddenly shoved or thrown with such force that he was hurled a considerable distance across the room.

According to the account, the man couldn’t find any logical explanation for what happened. The experience was so terrifying that he ran out of the house and decided never to return.

The Dog Circling the Bed

Also in Abi Samra, Mallakh tells the story of a woman he knew who had trouble with her legs and was married to a Palestinian man. She said that whenever she was home alone, she would lock the door behind her. Yet, during these times, she claimed to see a dog circling her bed. Strangely, the dog never attacked or even approached her; it simply kept walking around the bed.

Mallakh emphasizes that, in his view, the woman was mentally sound, trying to rule out the possibility that her story was the result of any obvious perceptual disorder.

"A Cloud" in the Shape of His Wife

One of the experiences Mallakh says he personally lived through happened when he spent the night at his sister’s house. It was summer, and he set up a mosquito net before going to sleep. After turning off the lights, in that brief moment between wakefulness and sleep, he noticed something above him. He describes it as a "cloud" that took on the shape of his wife. The vision didn’t last long; Mallakh says he recited a prayer, and the figure disappeared.

For him, this incident was just another in a series of experiences that convinced him people can sometimes encounter phenomena that defy everyday explanation.

Dina and Lina... and the Disappearing Paralysis

Mallakh also practiced spiritual healing, or ruqya, when asked by others. During the episode, he shared one particularly striking case he encountered.

There were two sisters, Dina and Lina, living together. One of them was paralyzed and unable to stand. Mallakh began reciting ruqya for her first on the initial day, then again the next. On the third day, something unexpected happened.

According to his account, the girl was suddenly able to stand as if nothing had ever been wrong. Her sister, meanwhile, claimed she could see jinn and once described a strange vision: she saw what looked like a door opening in the sky, with powerful rays of light shooting down toward her.

Mallakh did not provide any medical diagnosis or details about the cause, nature, or duration of the paralysis, so the story remains a personal testimony as presented on the program. From the available details, it’s impossible to determine any connection between the spiritual healing and the improvement in her condition.

Testimonies from a World Not Easily Verified

What makes Ahmad Mallakh’s experiences intriguing isn’t just a single event, but the variety of encounters he’s collected over the years: mysterious footprints, women appearing in a warehouse, a whirlwind leaving a hole in the ground, an invisible force throwing a man, a strange dog circling a woman’s bed, a figure appearing in the dark, and cases linked to spiritual healing. For Mallakh, these incidents all point to a single explanation: the existence of a hidden world that sometimes intersects with our own. But documenting these experiences doesn’t necessarily prove their interpretation.

Take the story of the gold market, for example. There are no photos of the footprints, no official measurements, and no information about the soil conditions after digging. It’s also unclear whether a person or animal entered the warehouse overnight. Sometimes, odd shapes in the mud can be caused by collapsing edges, flowing water, or overlapping tracks.

As for the whirlwind, it can sometimes be caused by air movement and pressure differences in large spaces or corridors. The pit that reportedly appeared afterward would require an engineering inspection to determine how it formed.

The 'cloud' experience the witness described as he was about to fall asleep could have another explanation known in sleep science. During the transition between wakefulness and sleep, people may experience vivid hypnagogic hallucinations, seeing faces, familiar people, or shapes that seem to actually be present in the room.

For the other cases, there simply isn’t enough detail to re-examine them or rule out natural, psychological, or medical explanations. This is the longstanding challenge with most accounts of paranormal phenomena: a witness may be completely honest in describing what they saw, but the accuracy of their experience doesn’t necessarily mean their interpretation is the only possible one.

A Memory That Lingers

During the episode, Ahmad Al-Mallah never claimed to have unraveled all the mysteries behind these phenomena. He even mentioned having many more stories to tell, but not enough time to share them all.

The story of the warehouse in the gold market stands out as the most unusual, perhaps because of the physical details he described: a real trench, mud and water, and then footprints, one reportedly measuring nearly eighty centimeters, with several meters between each step.

If there had been photos of those footprints, or if the warehouse itself, the date of the digging, and the people present could be identified, the story could have moved from an intriguing oral account to a case worthy of deeper investigation.

But that didn’t happen, at least based on the information available so far. That’s why Ahmad Al-Mallah’s experience remains in the gray area where most 'hidden world' stories exist: a real event in the sense that a real person claims to have lived and witnessed it, but what actually happened behind those scenes is still an open question.