Marvel studio's template of light-hearted characters with a tightly told narrative has emboldened the DC studio too to explore beyond their otherwise dark and gloomy universe. Latest upcoming offering from the studio will be SHAZAM. It is the story of a valiant orphan boy Billy Batson who finds himself receiving the ancient magical powers of six immortal elders, whenever he calls out their name as a magical acronym SHAZAM. The trailer was very catchy and promising. However a train sequence from the trailer caught my eye and reminded of a popular folktale from Sweden.
This is the folktale of the Ghost train of Stockholm. Legend says that a ghost train keeps making trips around Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden. With an appearance of metallic silver, unlike the regular coat of Green painted on trains there, lends it the name Silverpilen. It was rumored to be made as just a test unit or a backup bogey. But during 1980s, the townspeople began considering Silverpilen as a ghost locomotive. As personal accounts would go, it appeared out of nowhere with completely empty coaches and picked unsuspecting passengers up, who would mysteriously disappear. Some would return weeks, months, even years later with no memory of their whereabouts. Kymling is the abandoned station where this ghost train is considered to make its final stop. And this gave rise to a popular phrase in the city "Bara de döda stiger av i Kymling", translating to "only the dead get off at Kymling".
Some believe that the train is never empty but full of invisible ghosts. Some others theorized conspiracies ranging from aliens to secret government experiments. Some believed it to be a locomotive bound to ferry souls to the Hell itself and returning those whose time is yet to come. Whatever the naysayers may speak, but if I find an empty train arriving on my platform next time, I will think thrice before boarding. Fortunately, I live in India!
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