Ghostly Stroll - Spöklik promenad

Introduction Everything Comes to Light

There is an old saying that what is hidden in snow comes to light in the thaw.

It applies to more than snow.

Humans have lost things for as long as they have existed on Earth. A Bronze Age child might have lost an amulet at the edge of a field. A Roman soldier dropped a coin on a road. Someone forgot a piece of jewellery in the sand on a beach; another hid a bundle of love letters in an attic, where they lay for generations. Centuries and millennia pass, houses are demolished, forests grow, fields are ploughed, and cities are built atop old villages.

Then someone arrives with a shovel. Or with a metal detector. Or breaks up an old floor to lay a new one.

Suddenly, the object is lying there once more.

The strange thing is not that things disappear. The strange thing is how often they return.

Eva-Lenas handbag lay hidden beneath the floor for more than sixty years. For her, it was lost on that February evening in 1957. For the house, it remained so.

When it finally came to light, it told a story.

So do all old objects, if someone stops and gives them the chance to finish telling their story. A worn coin, a dropped ring, a rusty key, or a teenage girls handbag are not just things. They are messages from people who once lived on the same earth as we do.

For that, no ghosts are required.

It is enough if someone finds them.

"Poem to my dear
Dearest Agathon, my best friend,
From childhood days you now have grown;
Listen to your darling Lena till the end,
And learn the lessons we have known.

Into a world we scarce have seen,
The same old fates will surely fall;
But with our love and minds so keen,
We shall triumph over them all.

Walk with care upon lifes track,
And heed not what the crowd may say;
Our blazing love will hold them back,
The finest gem we own today.

Our city Malmö stays the same,
With foolish folk and wise ones near;
And at the jazz club we can claim
More right to dance than shed a tear.

Too much distrust breeds bitter spite,
When phone exchanges cause us pain;
Think not each rose a thorn in sight,
See Agathons pure heart remain.

Hear us who from the parties know
To catch the drumbeat loud and clear;
Our dixie jazz and cheerful glow
Is wisdoms greatest sum, my dear.

Waste not your time with ghostly fright,
The dark of night needs no review;
Keep reading short, stay in the light,
Not letting our phone call boil over, too.

A splendid mind, an open soul,
What more can I to thee impart?
Dearest Agathon, view the world whole,
It gives us thoughts to stir the heart.
Malmö, August 2026

Prologue Friday, February 15, 1957

The wind from the Öresund tore at the building facades along Jakob Nilsgatan, bringing a whipping, ice-cold sleet over Gamla Väster. Malmö was darkening, and the streetlights turned on one by one above the empty street. The pale light barely reached the cobblestones.

In the dilapidated shack popularly known as Kattahuset (The Cat House), it was dark, with only sparse light filtering in from the street through the dirty, rotting window frames. The walls groaned and creaked in the storm, and the wind whirled around the room where Katta-Lisas dozens of cats used to brush against the floorboards.

The girl pulled her thin coat tighter around herself. She was fourteen, with frozen fingers and breath that formed white clouds. Her heart beat fast. There was something about this house that made the hair on her neck stand up, a feeling of not being alone, as if an invisible presence watched in the shadows around her. But she did not have time to be scared now. Friday the fifteenth was circled in her calendar. Today was the day. She had come to see with her own eyes whether it was true that Malmös notorious ghost, Karna, lived in the house.

The girl could barely squeeze through the broken front door. She had all her senses on high alert. The building trembled in the powerful gusts of wind, and the rotting walls creaked and squeaked around her. The girl padded carefully forward in the weak, flickering light of a cheap torch. The large room was in terrible condition; in several places, the floorboards were rotten, leaving black holes in the subfloor.

Deep in the room, in a corner by an old tiled stove, the girl stopped. At that moment, the storm seized the house with a new, violent griplike when the Giant Finn shakes the pillars in Lund Cathedral. The whole building lurched. The girl lost her balance and fell. Beneath her, the rotting wood gave way, and she crashed down into the subfloor.

Pain stabbed into one of her knees. There was a sharp tear as the fabric of her dress ripped against a broken beam. From the open tiled stove, where the brass doors had long since been stolen, the wind sucked in through the open flue with such force that a roar arose in the chimney. It blew soot and dust into a haze that stretched towards her. Terror took over. It must be the ghost she had come to spy on.

In pure panic, the girl scrambled out of the hole. She dropped both her torch and her plastic handbag in the dark but did not bother to look for them. With the help of the pale light from the streetlights outside, she managed to get back to the door. She would have to fetch the bag the next day when it was light.

Just as she reached the door, the wind whipped up to hurricane force. Something behind her crashed with a thunderous roar she had never heard before. A thick screen of dust and plaster came flying through the room. The girl realised that the tiled stove had collapsed right where she had just been lying, her legs down in the subfloor.

The next day, the girl could barely remember how she had made her way home through the storm. Her mother naturally noticed the tear in the dress and the swollen knee. There were harsh reproaches, a two-week grounding, and a strict promise never to set foot in that shack again.

Her father set out for the house the following morning to inspect the damage. When he returned, he was deathly pale. At the spot where his daughter had said she dropped her things, the entire tiled stove and half the inner wall had collapsed into a heap of bricks and debris. He realised how close he had come to losing his daughter.

A few days later, the girl received a new handbag from her parents. The old one lay buried under tons of bricks, and she had to start filling the new one with novel memories.

Chapter 1: Night over Jacob Nilsgatan

Anita Ekberg was visiting Malmö again from her star, Alpha Centauri. This time, she stayed in a small house in Gamla Väster in Malmö. For once, she stayed there with the owners permission. Kajsa Söder is something as rare as a medium. She has written a book on the subject that caused quite a stir when it was published. In The Journey After Death, Kajsa describes a souls journey back and forth to a star. It is based on her contact with the medium Helga Braconnier, who left Earth and Malmö in 1973. It was through Helga that Anita came into contact with Kajsa. It is practical for a time traveller to have an Earthling as a close friend, someone to confide in across the border between life and death and to talk like normal girls do, even though Anita was born in 1931 and Kajsa in 1983one living on a star and the other on Jakob Nilsgatan.

Not only that, but Kajsa had a roommate, Karna, who had lived in the house on and off since 1738 and moved in for good in 1898, when the Hippodrome was built. Driven by necessity, as Karna puts it. Naturally, she and Anita also became friends; both had been unlucky with their husbands. That kind of experience bonds people. As a time traveller, Karna is unusual because she lives more on Earth than on her star. On Earth, her kind are called ghosts or revenants. In eternity, they are designated restless souls for their unwillingness to settle down. Karna did not consider herself more restless than others in eternity, because there was nothing to worry about there. What is, remains what it was.

On the other hand, Karna developed a taste for being a poltergeista noisy ghost that throws objects, slams doors, and makes a lot of noise, rather than merely fluttering past like a mist. Other ghosts were wraiths, spirits bound to a specific place, often at accident sites or along old travel routes, where they scared people.

Anita and Karna had taken a nightly walk around Gamla Väster. Time travellers do not sleep because they need to, which is fortunate when their sun neither rises nor sets. They sleep only to pass the time. Kajsa was invited to good friends in Lund but said she expected to be back after midnight. The street lay deserted under the dim glow of the streetlamps on Jacob Nilsgatan. It was one of those Malmö nights when the silence felt almost heavy, broken only by the rhythmic echo of Anitas footsteps against the old building facades. No sound came from Karnas feet, because, like a ghost, she floated above the cobblestones.

Anita drew her suit jacket tighter. She had just finished a hilarious anecdote about how she once stopped traffic on Melrose Avenue outside Paramount Studios. During a break, she needed fresh air and took a walk. Anita ended up outside the main entrance, and as if by magic, everything stopped: cars, buses, cyclists, and pedestrians. Everything! And there they stood still for several minutes. Only then did it dawn on her that she was still wearing her characters clothes, which were not much: a pink, glittering stage costume that showed more than it hid. Furthermore, she looked like an elk, with a vast glittering crown rising high above her head.

I could make an entire room stop just by stepping into the doorway, Anita said, smiling and tossing her blonde hair. That time, I apparently succeeded with all of Melrose Avenue. It was a completely different kind of attention from the one you seek, Karna, but I must admit I enjoyed it quite well.

Karna measured the film star with her gaze; a pale yet proud smile lingered on her lips.

I held an entire city in terror in the eighteenth century simply by showing myself, Karna countered proudly, her voice carrying a resonance that seemed to echo from another time. The desire to scare is common among most ghosts, you know. And believe me, it is almost always linked to old injustices. Normally, time travellers leave their earthly wrongs behind, because you can never change what has already happened. But even in eternity, we are different, Anita. Some of us have a harder time than others reconciling with history.

They turned slowly around the corner, where deep shadows fell over the pastel-coloured facades of the houses.

The need to mess with the one or those who did you wrong characterises us, revenants in particular, Karna continued, letting her hand brush the cold stone wall. In my case, it was my husbands betrayal when he remarried far too quickly after my death. Eventually, the very cause of the humiliation leaves the Earth, and thus the motive for revenge should die out. But as it happens, some of uslike mehave developed a taste for this scaring business and for making a mess. Then you stay behind. You become a poltergeist and choose to view eternity as one long, extended practical joke.

Karna fell silent for a moment, and a faint, hollow sound vibrated in the air around them.

I must admit it has become a bad habit, she confessed in a low voice. Rattling chains Its directly addictive. It gives me immense pleasure. And why not? Captain van der Decken continues in the afterlife to do what he loved mostsailing around the world as The Flying Dutchman, but cursed never to arrive. Personally, I became the Kalende Ghost.

Karnas face darkened, and her voice took on a bitter edge that made the night air feel colder.

But the fact that people dont talk about me anymore is because people today dont believe in ghosts. Ive grown tired of all the explanations that are just a button-press away. I hate Google and the internet for all their rational explanations for why I cannot exist! According to these modern sources, people experience us as ghosts for natural reasons. Optical illusions, they say. Sound waves, dream states, or a human brain mistaking shadows and nightly sounds for living creatures. Karna snorted contemptuously. If you search the net, you learn that my old, faithful chain-rattling is actually just a rascal kicking an empty aluminium can along the pavement. My dramatic bangs are alleged to be due to a car backfiring or someone setting off a firework. In a world where even flying saucers are explained away as natural phenomena, there is no place for real phantoms.

Anita let out a sigh that echoed between the houses. So you gave up?

Never, Karna replied, defiance flashing in her eyes. You just have to adapt. Instead of chains, Ive started crocheting potholders in the hideous patterns and colour combinations you can imagine. I smuggle them into local flea markets and auctions around Skåne. I set the price so low that people cant afford not to buy them. I know exactly how it works: there are always older ladies gripped by an acute urge to possess when they see my highly unusual textiles. Their husbands, however, do not. Arguments break out immediatelyand those marital rows can be just as loud and rattling as any old eighteenth-century chains! The strategy works just as well with rag rugs, another typical must-have item for the home where men and women almost always disagree.

They stopped in the middle of Jacob Nilsgatan. Karna pointed down at the heavy, round cast-iron manhole cover at their feet.

Another of my modern favourite tricks is to prise up the manhole covers on the street and place a small nut between them. The covers then wobble and slam with an echoing metallic sound every time a car drives over them. Naturally, it gives the absolute best effect at night, when people are trying to sleep. Likewise, setting off store alarms at all hoursits actually surprisingly easy once youve learned how the electronics work.

Anita looked at her nightly companion with newfound respect and smiled broadly. Karna, my friend, she said, winking. Youre just like me. Youve traded a Hollywood flatulence machine for Malmös manhole covers.

Flatulence machine? Karna looked genuinely questioning. It was nothing in her repertoire, but in eternity, nothing is too late.

Yes, your manhole covers remind me of when we filmed Screaming Mimi in 1958, I think it was, Anita said, laughing. Philip Carey and I had a sensitive scene together in bed, and beneath us lay that huge Great Dane from the film. I had hidden a battery-powered flatulence machine under one of the spotlights. Just as Philip crept closer to me, there came a prolonged, splendid blast. Anita laughed at the memory. Everyone stopped and stared at the dog. It had that expression only dogs can have when they are accusedand look guilty. No one could continue the scene. Philip shook with laughter, I bit my lip, and the dog hid its head between its paws. His handler was on set and looked as if he wanted to sink through the floor.

Karna gave Anita an amused look. The difference is that no one laughs at my manhole covers in the middle of the night. Do you have any more stories about harassment from your time in the film industry?

Oh yes, if you can bear to listen to all the nonsense.

Otherwise, I wouldnt have asked. After three centuries, one has heard most things, but the film industry has eluded me. I have been treated to a bit of Edvard Persson, but he is quite tedious to listen to.

Hollywood in the 1950s was ruled by two things: ironclad film contracts and the fear of losing control. But no one had counted on me. I quickly became a force of nature on Paramounts sets and loved puncturing male stars need for control. While filming Hollywood or Bust in 1956, I found the perfect target in Jerry Lewis. Jerry was a genius on screen, but behind the scenes he was a bundle of nerves, obsessed with symmetry and plagued by an extreme germ phobia. His dressing room was known as a sterile temple, where every objectfrom the angle of a manuscript on the table to the placement of an ashtraywas adjusted to the millimetre. It was an invitation I could not resist. When Jerry was busy in make-up, I slipped into his dressing room and carried out my silent sabotage.

I turned his manuscript exactly thirty degrees. I moved the perfectly centred pen holder two centimetres to the left, and the colour-sorted handkerchiefs in his drawer were shuffled so that a blue one ended up among the white ones. They were tiny, almost invisible changes, but to a man of Jerrys nature, it was a visual earthquake. When Jerry returned and froze in the doorway, his eyes darting over the subtle chaos, I made sure to appear in the corridor. It was really fun listening to his theories about a malicious poltergeist haunting the dressing room.

Later that same week, just as Jerry arrived for a take, I widened my eyes, cupped my hands in front of my face, and let out a loud sneeze right in his immediate vicinity: Aaa-tchooo! Jerry stopped in his tracks as if hit by an assassins bullet. His face paled, and his eyes widened in terror at the invisible microbes attacking him. Jerry threw himself backwards. After a frantic fumble in his pockets, he found his disinfectant and sprayed the air around him. I had trouble suppressing a fit of laughter, and the sounds of me covering my mouth sounded like yet another sneeze, and Jerry fled like a scalded ferret. Dean Martin, who had seen the whole performance, understood completely, and we could laugh it off together.

Scalded ferret?

Sorry, its just something I say. Not that I want to hurt a ferret, but I assume it would move quickly if it got hot water on it. In any case, Jerry disappeared like one.

I see. Continue!

When Hollywoods nightlife took over after work, I shifted the playing field to another kind of perfectionist. Frank SinatraThe Chairman of the Board, as people called him. He courted me intensely. He proposed twice, but I wanted to remain Miss Ekberg, not Mrs Sinatra. Frank was a man who demanded submission and military order in his surroundings. His wardrobe was legendary: row after row of tailored suits and snow-white shirts, meticulously stored and folded with a precision that tolerated no disorder. During one of our many evenings together, when Frank left the room to mix drinks at the bar, I took the opportunity. I opened the wardrobe of his suits, sorted by season and colour.

I moved a blue worsted-wool suit to the green tweed suits, a light summer linen suit to winters dark wool suits, and a Glen check into the group of herringbone patterns. Finally, I tucked a narrow-striped one among the wide-striped ones. Then there was nothing to do but wait. It was time to head to the fake princes restaurant, Romanoffs in Beverly Hills, and Frank had to change his suit. The tirades he hurled after sliding the wardrobe doors aside are memorable, but I shall spare your sensitive ears all the details. It was surely the majority of the foul words in the American vocabulary, and then some. His Italian background gave the curses a depth of their own. I took a calm sip from my glass, looked him straight in the eyes, and smiled my most innocent smile. In a world of perfect men who took themselves far too seriously, I was probably among the few who dared remind them that order is relative.

Karna laughed as hoarsely as only ghosts can.

But my biggest challenge awaited on the other side of the Atlantic, in Italy. Suppose you can bear to listen. Gianni AgnelliLAvvocato, Fiats mighty empire builder and my boyfriend for several decadeswas the very symbol of Italian sprezzatura and of absolute, uncompromising punctuality. Two minutes could cost people their jobs. His most famous style signature was wearing his wristwatch strapped to the outside of his shirt cuff. He claimed it saved him precious seconds because he was far too busy to fold his sleeve back. For Gianni, time was money, power, and absolute order. During our super-secret romance, I couldnt help but challenge this mechanical perfection. I had good reason, because Gianni had tricked me into believing I had a shark after me when I swam in the sea outside Rome. I was actually terrified. But now he was going to get even.

On one occasion, in his apartment in Rome, while Gianni was on an urgent phone call, I crept up to his laid-out Battistoni shirt, where his exclusive Patek Philippe was already fastened to the fabric. Teasingly, I turned the hands forward by exactly twenty minutes. When Gianni pulled on the shirt and cast a lightning-fast glance at the watch, he was struck by panic. He was catastrophically late for a meeting with his directors and rushed out to his waiting car without even time to tie his tie properly. When he reached the meeting room, there wasnt a soul present, despite his being twenty minutes late. They showed up gradually, and after various palaver, Gianni realised that his watch was wrong. The store got that one back.

Thats how they should be treated. The menfolk, said Karna. Now thats enough talk about a movie stars life. Kajsa has told me a little, but Ive never heard you talk about your life before you ended up in Gamla Väster. Karna glided noiselessly beside Anita. You had your admirers in Hollywood, she said. I had mine on Kalendegatan. The difference was probably that yours wanted to get close to you, while mine preferred to keep their distance.

Chapter 2: The Bag Under the Floorboards

Karna had listened to Anitas story with a sympathetic smile. They continued slowly along the nightly Jacob Nilsgatan, hand in hand, two women from Malmö, more than two hundred years apart in age.

You were beautiful, Karna said after a while. Thats why people stopped to look at you. When people stopped to look at me, the reason was completely different.

She explained that her real name was Karna Jönsdotter and that she had been married to the brewer Per Nilsson Möller, who owned a farm with a brewery and a horse mill on Kalendegatan. There she had lived a life that left little room for either rest or excess. She had given birth to ten children in ten years before she died in childbirth in 1736.

My body had barely cooled before Per remarried a woman named Ingeborg.

How quickly? asked Anita.

Far too quickly.

Then I understand the rest, Anita noted.

Karna cast a glance at her. Women usually do.

It was after Pers remarriage that Karna began to appear on Kalendegatan. At least thats what people claimed. Neighbours, servants, and family members reported seeing the dead Karna floating along the street in a white shroud, her face with eyes that had become dark, empty sockets. Other witnesses had seen even stranger things. Sometimes she appeared as a dog with glowing red eyes, sometimes as a terrifying creature with a blue-black bulls head, and on a few occasions, she was alleged to have grown so large that she could stand in the street and look straight through the second-floor windows of houses.

Anita glanced at the glowing eyes beside her. You seem at least to have kept part of your repertoire.

One shouldnt abandon what works, Karna replied.

The rumour of the revenant spread across Malmö, and soon people gathered in large crowds on Kalendegatan in the evenings to catch a glimpse of her. The haunting became a public amusement, and the situation grew no less absurd when her surviving husband realised that all these people were becoming thirsty from standing and waiting for his dead wife.

Per began selling beer to them, Karna said. The more who came to see me, the more beer he sold.

Anita stopped mid-step and began laughing. Your husband made money from people standing outside the house, waiting for his dead wife to appear?

He was a brewer.

That is the cheekiest thing Ive heard. I had agents who took 10% of my earnings. Your Per apparently managed to charge the audience without even representing the artist.

There was, however, a less amusing side to the matter. The rumours grew, people crowded onto Kalendegatan, and suspicions began to focus on Per himself. Had Karna really died as reported? Could he even have had anything to do with her death? Eventually, the situation became so troublesome that Per himself requested that the magistrate in Malmö look into the matter. A routine investigation was launched, and witnesses were required to report what they had seen and heard to the authorities. They tried to determine whether the city had been affected by fraud, collective imagination, or something that eighteenth-century people could fully perceive as devilry and supernatural forces.

Then the authorities went a step further. To dispel suspicions surrounding Karnas death, they decided to open her grave in the hospital cemetery.

They dug me up, Karna said as calmly as if she were telling someone that a barrel of beer had been fetched from the cellar.

Anita turned her head sharply towards her. They did what?

Picked me up! Under the supervision of the city physician, the barber-surgeon, and the priests, the grave was opened, and my coffin was lifted. There I lay, exactly as a properly buried dead person was expected to lie, and, according to the witnesses, remarkably well-preserved.

Anita observed her for a moment, then smiled. That doesnt surprise me. A woman from Malmö naturally wouldnt let herself be found untidy just because she has been dead for a couple of years.

Karna could not help but laugh.

The grave opening should reasonably have put an end to the story, but it had almost the opposite effect. People kept talking, and Karna kept appearing. Finally, the parish priest Jöns Rönbeck resorted to a weapon few other ghosts in Swedish history can boast of having wielded against them. He composed a special protective prayer titled Prayer in Malmö Parishes Against Satans Ghostry, which was read during Sunday services in Malmös churches for nearly three decades.

Anita stopped and looked at her transparent companion, a mixture of surprise and respect on her face. Nearly thirty years? Karna nodded.

I got reviews, headlines, and photographers, Anita said. You got Malmös priests to speak about you from the pulpit for thirty years. I actually think you win.

Karna smiled contentedly, but the story about Per was not yet finished. In hindsight, people had been eager to believe that the poor brewer had fled from Kalendegatan to escape his vengeful first wife, but that was not the case at all. Per stubbornly remained right in the middle of the hauntings and kept selling beer to the curious. What finally cost him the property was not Karna but his catastrophic financial management. The debts grew until the property, the brewery, and the associated horse mill were sold at a foreclosure auction in October 1738.

Not even then did he disappear. Despite no longer owning the property, Per stayed on Kalendegatan without paying rent. Even in 1739, he remained there while the authorities investigations, the rumours, and the stories about his ghostly wife continued. Because I didnt give up. Per got all the advertising he needed for his beer. But it wasnt enough. He was a trifler, and his new wife couldnt count either.

I must almost admire that, Anita said. You, his dead wife, haunt the man, ruined and stripped of his house, yet still refuses to move.

Dont admire him too much, Karna replied. He didnt pay the rent either.

Years passed, and Per died too. But not even death could separate the spouses. At his wake, Karna returned once more, stepped forward to her dead husband, and invited him to dance. What happened thereafter, no one could, of course, say with certainty, but the story became another chapter in the growing legend of Karna Möller.

After all that, you still wanted to dance with him? Anita asked.

Karna shrugged her shoulders. One shouldnt be resentful.

You haunted him for years.

I didnt say Id succeeded, Karna said.

Anita laughed, and they continued along the empty street.

Karnas old property on Kalendegatan stood long after both she and Per had gone. Only at the end of the nineteenth century was the old development demolished to make way for the Hippodrome, the new amusement palace that opened in 1899. But even a new house couldn't get rid of the old tenant. Over the years, actors and other staff at the Hipp have spoken of strange noises, footsteps, and movements backstage, and of that hard-to-explain feeling that someone is right next to you, even though you know you are alone.

Anita looked at her inquisitively. Is it you who keeps doing that?

Karna did not answer but kept drifting over the cobblestones, her gaze fixed ahead.

Karna? She slowly turned her head towards Anita, and her red eyes glowed like coals in the dark.

A lady must be allowed to keep some secrets.

Anita smiled and squeezed her cold hand. You know, Karna, I think we would have got along very well if we had lived at the same time on Earth.

Karna raised their intertwined hands and looked at them. I think so too, but then we would never have been able to walk through Malmö together without drawing a crowd.

We might still do that, Anita said.

They continued along Jacob Nilsgatan towards the park, for the night was still young. Anitas red sandals clicked on the cobblestones while Karnas bare feet floated a few centimetres above them.

Anita and Karna had turned at Slottsgaten and were on their way back via Norra Vallgatan when they met Kajsa, who had arrived by train from Lund. It had been a good dinner, but a bit too much talk about war, Putin, Trump, and other misery. As an upside-down trend analyst, Kajsa had had enough of that at work. Therefore, she risked involuntarily appearing as a kind of guru. Then she preferred to shut up and let others appear as experts. Therefore, Kajsa was now a bit talkative.

You promised to tell us about a magical bag, Anita reminded.

Everything started with me buying my house in Gamla Väster! Kajsa began. While the eastern part of the Old Town, Gamla Öster, was completely demolished during the harsh sanitation wave of the 1960s, Gamla Väster barely escaped the excavators. Behind seemingly abandoned, dilapidated facades, poor souls or temporary residents often found a last refuge in the citys oldest part. Like in my house on Långgardsgatan, where the colourful character Katta-Lisa lived with a couple of dozen cats. No matter how little money she had for herself, there was always food on the cats plates. Her house was fundamentally a piece of historical heritage from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but the then-owner, Lars Grope, had not maintained the property for decades.

Grope, like many other speculative property owners at the time, cynically hoped to hit the jackpot with the long-planned total sanitation of Malmös central parts. Katta-Lisa therefore lived there on sufferance, under a so-called demolition lease with a 6-month notice period. When she finally died, he never rented it out again; the house was left to stand empty and decay, save for her faithful cats that lingered. In popular parlance, the rickety shack was soon known only as Kattahuset (The Cat House). For several years, the house was in deep neglect, and a point was finally reached when not even the cats wanted to live in the misery.

In 1957, the year so critical to my story, a regular crisis brewed. The walls were about to collapse under their own weight, and the weather and wind blew straight through the rotting gaps. At the end of the year, Grope received a sharp order from the Malmö municipality to remedy the acute deficiencies immediately, so that, as it literally stood in the official documents, neither people nor beast would come to harm. Seeing his chance to make money, Grope immediately applied to demolish the existing house and build a new 2.5-floor house. But he was thwarted. The city plan protected my house and a few others in the block; they were not allowed to be demolished but had to be carefully renovated to retain the historical facade facing the street.

Of course, Grope was unhappy about this setback, but he was an experienced builder who knew that a rubber-stamped city plan cannot be changed. He did not want to make enemies of the municipalitys decision-makers, especially as he had other lucrative property projects in the city to consider. Instead, he carried out a rudimentary, almost cosmetic renovation and deferred most problems to the future. Grope sold the property, made a hefty profit, and went on to become one of those who amassed a fortune by demolishing and rebuilding todays Caroli.

It passed through six owners before I bought this rare townhouse in 2018. You, Anita, have lived with me for a while now and have praised me for how cosy it is, but you should know that the road there has been long and crooked. Since I have been short on money but big on energy, I have renovated the house room by room, as my wallet has allowed. Finally, three years ago, it was time to replace the old kitchen, and I intended to do so from scratch.

The work began with me breaking up the worn pine floor that Grope had left lying during his quick renovation. That floor was certainly no masterpiece from the start, and after sixty years of wear and tear, it was truly time to replace it. It was then that I found the bag under the floor. Not directly in plain sight, because it had wedged itself under one of the bärande floor beams in a dark corner. The beam was rotten and needed to be replaced, and it was pure coincidence that I even caught sight of it. Otherwise, the bag would still have lain in the dark, as well hidden as it was. Kajsa nodded towards Karna.

Chapter 3: Periods and Medelsvensson

The handbag! reminded Anita, who had already heard all about hauntings from Karna.

Forgive me, dear Anita. I might have had a few too many glasses of wine, so tell me if I become tedious. Kajsa brushed away a lock of hair that had fallen over her eye. The handbag was a beige plastic wristlet with a metal frame and decorative rivets along the sides. Rats had chewed through the bottom. Inside lay a red wallet made of some glossy material. It was bursting with everything except moneymany photos. Two black-and-white pictures were cut from a strip of the type that photo booths at larger train stations, amusement parks, and certain department stores deliver. It was a cheap and popular way for young people to take spontaneous portraits and give them to each other. On the white edge of an oblong photo of two well-dressed girls in 50s-style dresses posing in front of a car, perhaps a Rover, Lena had written Maggan and I. The girl closest to the camera resembles the photo booth picture, so one must assume she represents Lena.

A small square photo showed Lena as a baby. At the very top, it read Me 10 months. Another picture was so faded that you could barely make out the small child standing in it. 20 months was written along the white edge, and at the bottom was Lena. An equally faded picture showed four children lined up in size order: the little girl in a white dress on the far left was Lena, with a brother to her right, then two sisters, and the one on the far right looked to be around ten years old. All were dressed in summery white, and Lena wore the same lace dress as in the 20-month picture.

A photo from a villa garden showed Lena with a small child in her lap, perhaps a sibling. A very worn, yellowed photograph depicted two people standing indoors, perhaps in a living room. It was evident that it had been in a frame, as the edges were not faded. A single Agfacolor picture existed, likely of Lenas mother and father. In 1957, colour photography was unusual and expensive for ordinary people, but was used by professional photographers and dedicated amateurs. It had the typical warm, saturated colour tone that differs greatly from modern digital images.

Oh, Agfacolor, Anita sighed, gazing out over the water. Those pictures had a fantastic, almost glowing saturation. You always looked a bit more beautiful in those colours than in real life.

In a special pocket, presumably intended for a drivers licence or similar, sat a photo of a short-haired young man. This place of honour could only be for a very special person, as confirmed when you picked up the photo and looked at the back: To my finest Lena, from your Agathon. Two calendar cards for January and February from 1957. All days are crossed out up to and including February 15, so it is not too wild a guess that the owner lost her bag that day. Friday the fifteenth was circled, and above it stood Kattahuset.

Karna stopped in the middle of the pavement. Her contours suddenly sharpened, as if the very name gave her more substance in the night air. "Kattahuset? That is your abode, Kajsa. What business did that girl have there?

In the bag lay a well-thumbed copy of a horror classic: The Night-side of Nature; or, Ghosts and Ghost-seers, by Catherine Crowe, in a Swedish translation from 1853. This is one of the earliest and best-known works in the field of paranormal documentation. Crowe collected and investigated reports of ghosts, poltergeists, doppelgangers, and hauntings from a near-scientific, investigative perspective for its time. That Lena was so interested in the subject was surprising. It was only when I saw the note in her calendar that the penny dropped. Kattahuset was the name of my house in the late 50s. It was right there that her bag was found, so of course it must be the same house.

However, the connection to spirits and ghost-seeing is not as clear, I continued, meeting Karnas glowing gaze. Since I wasnt born in 1957, I find it hard to say whether people knew Karna had a connection to the house in the early 1700s. That she was here in 1957 could not have been known, because Karna kept a very low profile and was more active at Old Hipp, which had then become the Pentecostal Church. She found great pleasure in scaring the wits out of the holy rollers. They fought against the devil in the basement for 39 years but gave up in 1989 and abandoned the premises. Three years later, the city of Malmö bought the building and got Karna in the bargain. During the extensive renovation that followed, Karnas soul also gave up. All those modern machines made a hideous racket. I understand it was around then that she started to crochet. Karna nodded.

Anita grinned broadly at the pale ghost. To think you scared the Pentecostals, Karna. I would have loved to see it.

Another calendar card existed for April, with Lena having circled the 18th up to and including Monday the 22nd. At the top, she had written The time when we travel together. It was Easter weekend. No Easter break like the one we have nowadays: from Maundy Thursday to Easter Monday, schools were closed. A five-day mini-vacation. The destination they were to travel to was illegible. Who, besides herself, was included in the concept we? One can only speculate. That it would be Lena and the boyfriend must be ruled out. No parents would let their teenage daughter go off with a boy, alone, on a journey to an unknown destination in the 50s.

God forbid she so much as breathed a word about such a thing in my time, Anita agreed, shrugging. The morality was rock hard. You travelled with family, or you didnt travel at all.

A piece of paper with a patterned back, perhaps cut from an envelope addressed to Malmö Borgarskola with the girls name Lena Svensson, her hometown Malmö, and a phone number 431. At Borgarskolan, you went after your first seven years in elementary school. From that, one could conclude that the girl was 13 years or older. The phone number could not be in Malmö, since they already had five- or six-digit numbers there. Many smaller towns and villages in Skåne were at this time not yet fully automated, or they belonged to small local stations with short numbering series, and you still called via a local telephone exchange staffed by a local operator. You lifted the receiver, cranked the apparatus, and asked the operator to connect to, for example, Gärsnäs 45 or Vellinge 431.

Karna looked deeply confused, her voice empty, like the rustling in the treetops. Crank an apparatus to speak to someone in Gärsnäs? Why didnt she go there or send a messenger on horseback?

Calling Malmö from, for example, Vellinge was a cumbersome procedure that required careful planning. It was a long-distance call, charged by time and distance, making it a luxury for ordinary households. You lifted the receiver, turned the crank on the telephone, and asked the local operator to book a call to Malmö. Depending on how heavily loaded Televerkets trunk lines to Malmö were, you had to hang up and wait politely for the exchange to call back when the connection was ready. When the connection was established, the phone rang at home on the farm, and the operator announced: Ready, Malmö, go ahead! Long-distance calls were charged in fixed time blocks called periods. A period was 3 minutes: during the call, the operator at regular intervals entered the conversation and interrupted with a short: One period or Two periods to warn that the rate was ticking away.

Anita laughed, a rich sound that made a passing nightwalker turn around. Oh, those voices! One period! You almost had a heart attack every time they broke in, because you knew how expensive it was for poor papa.

An ordinary long-distance call lasting a few periods could cost as much as several litres of milk or a kilo of butter. For an ordinary worker or farmer in the 50s, it was felt that, in those days, no teenagers sat and talked nonsense. Every call was itemised on the phone bill, so once a month, reprimands awaited talkative teenage girls. Due to the cost, you kept conversations as efficient and short as possible. The children had to sit quietly while father or mother spoke on the phone. You didnt waste expensive periods on small talk, but handled the most important mattersyou didnt call each other to tell, as today, what you were just then doing or feeling, but to announce that someone had a birthday or had become ill, or to arrange a meeting at the market. Invitations to a party were previously sent in writing; anything else would be bad manners. Like an invitation card to a club evening that lay in the wallet. Everything was pre-printed, and you only needed to fill in the date and time:

DANCE PARTY!
You are warmly welcome to our club evening Saturday, March 9 at 19.3022.30.
Place: The Youth Centre in Kirseberg
Music: Papa Bue plays the latest jazz and dixieland music!
Admission: 1 krona (including coffee and bun)
Bring your cheerful mood! / The Party Committee

One krona for both jazz, coffee, and a bun, Anita hummed, smiling. It was truly a different time.

There also lay a Valentines Day card, dated February 14, with two brown-curly cherubs carrying a sedan chair covered with blue forget-me-nots. Inside sat a third cherub, surrounded by red hearts, reaching out to one of them. At the top, it was written in scrawly handwriting To Malmös cutest, and at the bottom it was signed Agathon. It was the day before Lena lost her handbag, if my assumption about the 15th is correct.

Chapter 4: A Needle in a Haystack

The phone number in Vellinge 431 existed, and the village lay no more than ten kilometres from Malmö by train. Thats obviously what Lena had doneat least passed throughbecause there lay a round-trip ticket from Malmö to Falsterbo that had been clipped only once; the return journey remained. Lena had apparently made her way back in some other way, hitchhiking with someone. To Falsterbo, teenagers went to bathe a bit more luxuriously. Normally, you headed to Ribersborg beach, where you could cycle or take the bus.

Falsterbo, yes There it was elegant, Anita remembered, smiling faintly, as if she were seeing the white beaches before her. But hitchhiking? A young girl completely alone? That was daring in those days.

Karna floated closer, so transparent in the moonlight that the contours of the trees on the other side of the canal showed through her ghostly shoulders. Train? Is it one of those smoking iron horses that thunder forward on narrow iron rails? Terrifying machines.

In a clasp purse, lay two one-krona coins, two fifty-öre coins, one twenty-five-öre coin, three five-öre coins, and a paperclip. 3 kronor and 40 öre is equivalent to about 55 kronor today and was enough then for a movie ticket, a box of pink Emser lozenges, and the tram ticket home. Maybe a couple of caramels too.

Three and forty for a whole evening at the movies and tram... Anita shook her head and laughed softly. Today you barely get a piece of chewing gum for that money.

Two patterned fabric handkerchiefs lay there too. One had a clear green border and pink and red flowers. It seemed unused. The other, with large red peonies on a green background, was crumpled and used. Two unused red pencils with erasers at one end, and one sharpened with a chewed-up back end, had fallen out of the bags broken bottom, as had a mint-green plastic comb with a broken handle, one of those with a spike that girls used to tease their hair. A green plastic pencil sharpener had survived and lay to the left, in the part the rats had not eaten. In the bags bottom lay a charm with a broken loop that had presumably sat on Lenas armband. The little silver bear she certainly mourned, since girls jewellery is dearer to them than most things.

Alongside the envelope containing the love note lay a neatly written slip, written with a fountain pen. Under the heading Dance Party, line two read WHEN February 19, 1957; the next line read WHERE Kirseberg, which ought to refer to the youth centre there, one of the first in Malmö to organise dances for teenagerson the third line, equally neatly printed, stood TIME 7.30 to 10.30. Half past ten at night is late for the mid-50s, so it must have been a special dance event. Perhaps a visiting band from Stockholm or Copenhagen. The immensely popular Papa Bue with his New Orleans Jazz Band is no bad guess. Dixieland music was highly valued among teenagers at the time. It would still be many years before rock n roll conquered the same stage.

Papa Bue! Anita exclaimed, eyes sparkling. God, what fantastic jazz they played. Dixieland was the best there was before everything became so loud with pop music.

Karna looked completely bewildered. Dance party until half past ten? In my time, the citys torches were extinguished long before then, and woe to the woman who ventured out at that hour.

Apparently, Lena had received the slip from a Margareta Sillentahl, who had both written received from and signed it. Proper girl. That name one ought to have been able to find. Surely, if it hadnt been for the family moving to Australia in the early 60s, we would have found an article in Sydsvenskans digital archive when we searched for the surname. In the 1960s, Australia actively sought European immigrants to expand the countrys economy and increase the population, including through subsidised travel. The newspapers bitter article about the country down under stealing well-educated people from Malmö was an explanation, but no solution. Perhaps Lenas family had done the same thing.

In the bag lay a handwritten note that read: Lena has my permission to take this bus. She will sleep over at Annas tonight. Signed Mrs Rune Svensson. In those days, a married woman signed herself with her husbands name. It indicated that she was presumably a housewife. It was still over 70 per cent, meaning that 3 out of 4 married women managed the household full-time. Anita snorted, her voice suddenly filled with the independent sharpness that made her famous worldwide. Mrs Rune Svensson... To erase ones own name and identity in this way. I dont understand how women stood it. To become their husbands property.

To a modern woman, it felt like a slap in the face. But the woman had actually gained greater freedom in 1957. She was officially of age and no longer needed her husbands permission to work. That she didnt receive equal pay for equal work is another matter. She also had voting rights for thirty years, but joint taxation still prevailed, and her income was added to the husbands, so much remained to be done. In Lenas mothers case, that question was academic, since she was likely a housewife with no income.

Rune Svensson was no uncommon name. It was so widespread that the term Medelsvensson came to be used to describe the average Swedish citizen. The same was true of Rune. Assuming the girl was in her teens, the father was probably born just before World War I, and his first name was among the most common at the time. Tens of thousands of Swedish men were named Rune.

All in all, there was little indication that it would be possible to find Lena Svensson through her father. Her first name did not make matters any easier. In 1956, Lena was a trendy name, and there must have been thousands of them in Sweden. The mother signing a note as Mrs Rune Svensson did not help at all. We didnt even know her first name.

My amateur detectives and I were not facing an easy task. Even though Sweden is now thoroughly organised and most things are recorded in data, that helps very little when going back in time.

On a slightly soiled envelope with a handwritten note, Lena had documented her love story. On the envelopes flap was written: Where I met Agathon Roland Nilsson. On the lower attached part was written: After the next evening at Kirseberg, we went steady.

It was really sweet, but it didnt make you much wiser. She had written neither the time nor the place. And finding a Nilsson was just as hard as finding a Svensson, two of the eras most common names.

We wondered why Lena had written something so precious on a traditional envelope, which one usually opens to take out a letter and then throws away. But writing paper was expensive, and for a teenage girl, you took what was close at hand a sort of recycling, you could call it.

The envelope itself is the letter: In the 1950s, it was common among teenage girls to write short diary entries, poems, or memories directly on the backs of envelopes, scraps of paper, or admission tickets.

The calendar also served as a diary. On the loose pages, Lena filled the gaps around the dates with her declarations of love to Walt and other things she wanted to remember. It was these short, handwritten notes that finally solved the riddle.

The bag lay beneath the floorboards for over 60 years. Over time, several of the pieces of paper had become fragile, stained, and partly rusted together with paperclips and pins, which made the work no easier. It was a moving collage of memories.

To think the rats didnt eat the whole thing, Karna said, shuddering so that her misty figure trembled. Those beasts usually like both paper and old linings.

Naturally, we looked for all the names we had received in the Malmö Volume of the Royal Telephone Directory 1957. The three royal crowns on the front page were a result of the publisher being a state enterprise. However, the enterprise was no longer royal. That connection disappeared in 1946, when the Royal Telegraph Agency ceased to exist and became simply the Telegraph Agency. For the authoritys 100th anniversary in 1953, the name was modernised to Televerket, but it remained state-run and unprofitable.

A whole book of just names? Karna wondered, looking deeply sceptical. How in all the world could everyone fit into a single piece of writing?

Oh, Malmö wasnt that big back then, Karna, Anita chuckled. But believe me, those directories grew thicker over the years.

We found several Rune Svenssons at different addresses in Malmö. To be safe, the same name also appeared in Vellinge, Oxie, Lund, and several other places in the Malmö area. Since we didnt know what profession Lenas dad had, the titles didnt help either. There were many professions represented among these Runes, including one who titled himself director. The name Svensson knew no class boundaries.

In 1912, when one might think Lenas dad was born, most of Swedens population lived in the countryside. There, the so-called patronymic system was still in use. If Rune was the son of Sven Jansson, he was given the surname Svensson, not Jansson, because he was Svens son, not his grandfather Jans. Surnames thus changed with each generation, as they had since the Middle Ages.

Karna nodded eagerly, her semi-transparent face lighting up with recognition. But that is exactly how it should be! Its the only natural way. I was indeed Karna Jönsdotter because my father was called Jöns.

Indeed! It was just as bad on the womens side, I continued. If Rune had a sister lets call her Karin she would have received her own surname, which she would keep for life, even if she married. She would be named Karin Svensdotter. Had the old system prevailed when Lena and her siblings were baptised, Lena would have been named Lena Runesdotter and the brothers Runesson. Now, that was not the case.

When hundreds of thousands of people from the villages moved to the cities because that was where the jobs were, the problem soon became apparent. In Oxie, with fourteen hundred inhabitants, there could be two or more people with the same name, for example, Rune Svensson. They solved this by adding clarifying details, such as Rune in the bend, because he lived in the curve where the road through the village turned towards Malmö. The other was a master painter named Housepainter Svensson. Everyone knew who they were, and when a stranger arrived, it was just a matter of pointing.

But in the cities, the situation became hopeless. When thousands of people, all with the surnames Johansson, Andersson, or Svensson, ended up in the same workplaces and blocks, it became impossible to keep them apart. The change came gradually, but the 1963 Name Law required all Swedes to adopt a fixed, hereditary family name. The old system was completely banned. When Lena was born, there was thus no argument; she had to be named Svensson, like her father.

What has happened since then is much harder to sort out if you dont know exactly who you are looking for. If you do, the parish registers can tell you a lot, first and foremost whether they are alive. Lena, who ought to have been born in the early 40s, is now over 80if she is still alive. Then these books show whether you have married, moved, or changed your name. If Lena had married, she would have automatically taken her husbands name, but during the 50s many women changed their names on their own, especially those named Svensson.

The new names were often as inventive as they were odd: Apelmoos, Fiskefjärt, and Bjelkeknut, to take a few examples from the telephone directory. However, someone who wished to change his name to Pinkenstrahl with the prefix von received a refusal from the parish office.

Anita burst into one of her characteristic, rich laughs, which echoed between the walls of the house on Norra Vallgatan. Fiskefjärt! That was the worst Ive heard. What a fantastic lack of taste!

Searching for Lena Bjelkeknut and other imaginative new names was easy because there were so few. It was also easy to do on both Hitta.se and Eniro.

How did you find her? I suspect you did, asked Anita.

Of course we did. Two female friends and I helped each other in the search. I thought we were smart to start with Lenas boyfriend, Agathon. None of us had ever met anyone with that name. The name Agaton was unusual, very unusual, actually, and if you also spelt it with th as the boyfriend did, there were only thirty-five people in the whole country, all according to Wikipedia. When we searched for Agathon Nilsson on Eniro, we found only one result: he lived in Gothenburg and was 20 years old. How disappointed we were. There were three possibilities, and all were equally bad. Agathon could be dead, have lost his phone, or have changed his surname. It was much later, through the historical registers, that we understood why he was completely missing as a Nilssonhe had taken the name Strachs! But across all of Sweden, there was no Agathon with any other surname who was over thirty, so we dropped the boyfriend and concentrated our investigations on Lena. It was her we were looking for.

We visited Malmö City Archives and searched through Malmö Borgarskolas registers for the entire 1950s. Not a single Lena Svensson, and no Agathon either. We understood from the start that the mystery of the girls name would be difficult to solve, since both Lena and Svensson were so common. Obviously, we had checked both Eniro and Hitta.se. There were 1,182 people named Lena Svensson in the country, of whom 55 lived in Malmö. The oldest listed was 69. When I checked for the five-hundred-and-eleventh time and flipped through the same names, it struck me that a 69-year-old woman was named Anna-Lena Ingegärd Svensson. Perhaps our Lena also had a double name. She may not have liked the combination but used only the middle name, Lena. Bingo! A renewed visit to Malmö City Archives.

The first time we searched the schools old yearbooks for a student named Lena Svensson without success. However, we found an Eva-Lena Svensson who attended Malmö Borgarskola in 1957 and was born in 1943. It matched perfectly. But what help was that? A single Eva-Lena we found on Eniro, and she wasnt even sixty. In Sweden, there were 70 Eva-Lenas in total. The oldest was 69. It felt as if we were back at square one. Though not quite, because we now had what we needed to run her name through a genealogy database. We could, on good grounds, assume that Lena was, in fact, Eva-Lena. But did it really suffice? We didnt really know much more than that she was named Eva-Lena Svensson, lived in Malmö in 1957, and must have been in her teens thensomewhere between 13 and 16 years old. Since Svensson is such an incredibly common surname, we thought at first it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it turned out that the combination of the double name Eva-Lena and the right registers did the trick!

How did you do it? Anita asked, curious.

Since she was a teenager in 1957, we calculated that she ought to have been born between 1941 and 1944. The school register listed her birth year as 1943. With Svensson as the maiden name, we realised the best approach was to search the Sveriges befolkning 1960 (Swedish Population 1960) database. If it was the right Eva-Lena, she ought to have been 17 years old at that time, and it was likely she still lived at home with her parents and hadnt had time to marry yet. We used smart searches with wildcards (Eva* Lena*) to avoid missing her if the hyphen was missing from the register, and we filtered strictly on birth year and Malmö.

Exciting! But they cant find me in the same place, can they? Karna said anxiously.

Of course you exist. You have to search for your full name, Karna Jönsdotter Möller. I have done that. But you can be completely calm. Your current address is not listed. But we found Eva-Lena.

That was lucky for me, Karna sighed, relieved.

Our new search method was a bullseye hit! The 1960 register gave her exact birth date and the specific Malmö parish where she was born. Since she, quite rightly, still lived at home, we also got her parents' and siblings' names in the bargain. It gave us the foundation we needed to unravel more of her life. If she had moved from Malmö before 1960, our backup plan was to consult the register Sveriges befolkning 1950, where she would have been a child, but we got everything we needed on the first try!

This is like a thriller, Anita said. One could make a film out of this! But wait You dont get someones full personal identity number in those programmes, do you? Or??

Yes, actually, Kajsa answered, smiling at her. In Sweden, almost everything is public in a way that foreigners usually find shocking when they hear about it. In these historical databases from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, you get the whole lotall ten digits, including the last four. Thats what makes Swedish genealogy so incredibly effective.

But I, as a ghost, dont have such a number, do I? Anxiety returned to Karnas voice. She guarded her privacy fiercely.

Even on that point, you can be completely calm, dear Karna, Kajsa explained. The system of personal identity numbers was introduced in Sweden in 1947. Everyone who lived at the time and everyone born thereafter received a personal identity number. You and everyone who left earthly life before 1947 have thus never had a personal identity number. Are you satisfied with that answer?

Yes, Karna sighed with relief.

Even I, who have emigrated, have a Swedish personal identity number, Anita chimed in. When my ashes were brought home from Rome and buried in Skanörs old cemetery, my death was registered under my Swedish personal identity number. There I remain as long as the register exists.

Lucky one escaped that, Karna said defiantly.

Once we had her exact birth date and personal identity number, it suddenly became much easier to trace her forward in time, Kajsa continued. The big dark cloud was that she had presumably married in the 1960s or 1970s and changed her surname from Svensson to something else. But we had a secret weapon: her birth date never changes, making it a unique key in the Swedish registers.

In the next step, we completely ignored the surname. We moved forward chronologically and searched in Sveriges befolkning 1975 and 1980 for the first name Eva Lena combined with the exact birth date. And sure enough, there she was! The system matched her personal identity number directly, and we had it in black and white that she had married Agathon Roland Strachs on September 23, 1970. He was born in 1939 and was previously known as Nilsson before adopting the name Strachs. At their shared address, we suddenly uncovered a new branch to explore: they had, namely, four children together. The registers showed the daughters Barbro (later married Dickens), Lena (married Calsing), Alicia (married Cyrrán), and Agneta Strachs, who remained unmarried.

To tie up the sack and see how their lives had finally shaped up, we turned to Sveriges dödbok (The Swedish Death Index) to check whether they were still alive and in good health. Unfortunately, neither Agathon nor Eva-Lena would be able to receive the old handbag. Instead, the death book held the last moving pieces of their shared history. Agathon passed away in June 2023 at the age of 84. But the most touching was Eva-Lenas fateshe followed her youth love just two months later and passed away in August of the same year.

Oh dear, Anita sobbed. How tragic! Karna said nothing, but let out a deep, ghostly sound that could be taken as sympathy.

We had looked for the famous needle in the haystack, but against all odds found it. It feels completely incredible that we managed to make our way from the little handbag from Malmö, 1957, to follow along on her lifes journey, her marriage to Agathon, and, sadly, how their long life together ended during the summer of 2023.

What has happened to the bag? asked Anita, who preferred happy endings.

It was a bit like starting from the beginning. We had the details from the civil registration, including the address where they were registered, but no phone number. Sending letters still works if you have an address. In various clever ways, I managed to get hold of some numbers for Eva-Lenas children. I called the döttrar but was met with voicemails and numbers that had been disconnected. Fewer and fewer want a landline today and have only a mobile. Unfortunately, there are no telephone directories that list only mobile numbers. Many do not want to display their mobile numbers for fear of telemarketers and scammers. I left a message on the voicemail of Barbro Dickenss older sister. I told her briefly that I had a handbag full of items that belonged to her deceased mother and that I wanted her and the sisters to have them. Then it was to wait.

Three days later, she called. She apologised, explaining she had been on a business trip. Barbro told me I had recorded my voicemail message on September 23, the day Eva-Lena would have turned 82. Since she also married on her birthday in 1970, mother Eva-Lena and father Agathon would have celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary, their emerald wedding. She said their father had also passed away, which I already knew. When we met, all the sisters and I, not a single eye was dry. We were shocked, Barbro said. It was fantastic to see how outgoing she was as a teenager. She went to dances and had many friends.

Mother was an artistic soul, Alicia said, describing her mother as a joyful woman who always made time for her children and grandchildren. Its incredible how much mum could fit into that little bag, Lena said. THERE IS MORE TEXT!. Please contact