The Ghost Train of Stockholm

Silverpilen – The Silver Arrow

The silver train was only rarely seen by the average Stockholm dweller.

The background for the ghost stories associated with Silverpilen may be related to the eerie look of Silverpilen if seen arriving late at night to an open-air underground station. People were used to green metro trains and were surprised at the arrival of a silver colored train, particularly if they had lived in Stockholm all their life and were unaware of the existence of the unpainted unit.

If the traveler was tired or drunk at the time, their imagination might have run away with them. The stories that circulated most widely in the 1980s have been retold by the noted Swedish folklorist Bengt af Klintberg, and later featured in the December 10, 1997 installment of Det spökar; a television series dedicated to allegedly real ghost stories and haunted houses.

There are different versions of this urban legend. Some say that the ghost train has only been seen in abandoned tunnels by subway workers. Others say that anyone can see it passing the stations at high speed after midnight. Some even claim that Silverpilen sometimes stops to pick up passengers, who then disappear forever or later get off weeks, months or even years after they embarked. The inside of the train is described as being empty, or as containing one or several ghost passengers.

Some stories connect the ghost train with the abandoned Kymlinge metro station on Line 11, the blue line. Kymlinge also has a reputation of being a ghost station, with people saying that “Bara de döda stiger av i Kymlinge” (“Only the dead get off at Kymlinge”). Some say that it stops at a station that has no exit. Kymlinge station was half-built during the construction of the blue metro lines, in anticipation of a residence area nearby, but the sub-city of Sundbyberg decided it would ruin the green space, so nothing was built there.