Visiting my sister and other ghost stories

So last night I cycled down to Karlberg Castle grounds to visit my sister who has just started her 3 year education at the Military Academy there. 

When I arrived, I was taken to a guard to be registered and my sister asked if it was possible to show me the castle. Another guard came along just then and informed that the castle had just been locked down for the night. He must have taken pity on our disappointed faces because he looked us up and down and said

"Alright, I'll take you on a personal tour."

The joy! We followed him in through the back door and spent 1½ hours doing a tour of the different rooms, listening to ghost stories and plenty of laughter at the stories he could tell of previous cadets at the academy.

I was too caught up with listening to both my sister's and the guards' lively stories of the place that I didn't take any pictures but some googling brought me to this blog post with some good pictures. I will link to just two of them that I liked especially

First, a picture of the ballroom:

The ballroom is used often for dinners, wedding receptions and, of course, the famous winter ball that the cadets get to go to. This is also where the ghost story of Queen Ulrika Eleonora starts. The story can be found here, although I can say that being told the story in a completely empty castle, as the light is slowly fading as night creeps in and the storyteller is the guard who has worked there for the past 15 years was much more fascinating.

And that leads me to the second picture, the picture of Queen Ulrika Eleonora with her dead children in the background:

So finally a 3D model of the castle