Silverpilen

Stockholm · Sweden · Urban site

Silverpilen — Stockholm · Sweden · Urban site

The train races through the rock. After Hallonbergen the wait for the next station is unusually long, and the dark outside lies thicker.

Silverpilen and Kymlinge — Stockholm's ghost station

The underground train rushes through the rock. After Hallonbergen it takes unusually long before the next station. The darkness outside the window lies thicker than usual. And suddenly — like a whisper from underground — a platform appears. Unlit. Abandoned. Almost finished.

This is Kymlinge, Stockholm's most storied ghost station. A place that officially never existed for passengers, but which has lived its own life for decades in stories, legends and night-time fears.

A station without a town

Construction of Kymlinge began at the end of the 1970s, when plans for the northern Järva area were ambitious. A new district was to grow here with housing, workplaces and government agencies relocated from the inner city. The underground line was extended as an obvious part of that future.

But the future changed direction. Agencies were placed in other towns, the building plans were shelved, and Kymlinge was completed only in raw structure — without a ticket hall, escalators or lifts. The trains began running, but the station remained closed.

The final stop came from nature. The Igelbäcken stream, which runs through the area, was classified as a sensitive natural environment and habitat for the rare stone loach. Development was halted. Kymlinge remained a station without a town, hidden beneath the forest at Ursvik.

The myth takes over

Once the place was abandoned, the stories began to form. Urban explorers got inside. Rave parties were held in secret. But it was the myths that gave Kymlinge its character.

The best-known says: "Only the dead get off at Kymlinge." The words are closely bound to the legend of the silver-coloured ghost train, Silverpilen — the Silver Arrow.

Silverpilen was no fantasy. It was a real, unpainted underground carriage that ran sporadically in Stockholm from the 1960s to the 1990s. Unusual. Quiet. Almost never seen. That was enough to make it a perfect vessel for fear.

In the legends, Silverpilen runs at night along the blue line. A voice calls out "Last stop!", but the train continues — all the way to Kymlinge.

The girl who boarded the wrong train

The most widely told account concerns a young woman heading home after an evening in town. She boards the underground at T-Centralen and soon notices something is wrong. Her fellow passengers stare blankly ahead. No one answers when she speaks.

The train does not stop where it should. Not even when she pulls the emergency brake. Finally it slows into an unknown darkness. The sign on the platform reads: Kymlinge.

Following the others up the stairs, she sees them walk straight through the wall as if it did not exist. Panic sets in.

In some versions the girl is found dead in the Ursvik forests a week later. In others she is found alive — but marked for ever by what she saw.

Today thousands of passengers pass Kymlinge without knowing it. A brief glimpse of a platform in the tunnel darkness. A place that both exists and does not.

Perhaps that is exactly why the stories endure. Kymlinge is not only an abandoned station but a boundary between what was built, what never became, and what — according to some — is still waiting in the dark.

FAQ

Where is Silverpilen located?

Silverpilen is in Stockholm, Sweden.

More haunted places in Stockholm

Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: Maad Dogg 97 at en.wikipedia / Public domain — Wikimedia Commons