Near you

Buildings you never knew were haunted, one is probably in your town

21. Juni 2026 · 5 Min. Lesezeit

Buildings you never knew were haunted, one is probably in your town

Ghosts do not only live in ruins and castles. They hide in the everyday: a hotel room you can book, a theatre you have seen a show in, the town hall you have walked past. We took a single Swedish city and found them all.

When we picture a haunted place, we see an abandoned castle or a ruin far out in the countryside. The truth is more unsettling than that.

Most ghost stories play out in buildings we use every week. A hotel. A theatre. The town hall. The museum you visited on a school trip. Places where hundreds of people pass by without knowing what the walls hold.

To show how common it is, we took a single Swedish city, Gothenburg, and looked closer. Here are six perfectly ordinary addresses, each with its own story.

By Drottningtorget stands one of Sweden's oldest hotels. The stern liquor cashier Ebba Eggers is said never to have left, and guests and staff single out room 397, where she is said to keep order. You can book in and see for yourself.

A classic theatre opened in 1859, its round auditorium preserved in its original state. When the hall stands empty, actors have heard voices and unexplained sounds from the wings, and a White Lady is said to appear now and then. The audience suspects nothing.

A town hall where people run errands by day. Beneath the floor once lay the dreaded flogging chamber and damp holding cells. Staff report footsteps echoing in empty corridors, doors that open by themselves, and names whispered in rooms where no one stands.

The city museum, built in 1762 as headquarters for the Swedish East India Company, once Sweden's most successful enterprise. Museum staff testify to strange events in the hidden corners and storerooms visitors never see. Secrets that sit in the walls, as they put it.

In its grand halls, King Charles X Gustav died in 1660, aged thirty-seven, after a flu that turned to pneumonia. A plaque on the facade marks the spot. His presence is still said to be felt indoors, especially in the cold winter months.

By Stigbergstorget stands the old house of the privateer Lars Gathenhielm. Lasse i Gatan is said never to have found rest in his grave, and on stormy autumn nights he is said to ride toward the house, hooves clattering on the stones. When his coffin was opened in the 1940s, his bones lay bound together with a sheet.

Six places, a single city. And Gothenburg is not unique. The same thing hides in Stockholm, in Oslo, on your own street corner.

A small caveat. Not every story is equally old. On the Keyhole House in Gothenburg, for instance, sits a plaque claiming an American astronomer haunts it. In truth it was part of an art project, but it has hung there so long it has become part of the building's history. A story does not have to be true for a place to feel haunted.

Want to know what stands in your town? Open the map and zoom in. The building you pass on your way to work may carry a story no one ever told you.

Mehr Geschichten