I was transfered to Boden, which was part of the Luleå Branch. The first branch activity that I attended was in the old Luleå chapel, which was next door to the hospital. It used to be the residence of the Bishop of the local Lutheran church many years before. The house was huge, in Swedish standard.
There were people going in and out of everywhere so I wandered upstairs to look around. I saw one of the sister missionaries with a piece of paper walking around upstairs as if she was looking for something. I said hello, and asked what was going on. She told me she was looking for secret passageways. One of the members gave her a list of all the hidden rooms and secret passageways that ran thoughout the building. The member claimed that there were eleven. We didn't find all of them but I remembered that they were not too secret because the branch president used the one in his office for storage.
I found out that that was only half the story. The building was reported to be haunted. For years it was haunted by the Lutheran bishop and his wife until someone went through the temple to do their missionary work. But there were other spooks that roamed the halls. This disturbed some of us so we inquired of the mission president about it. We found out that when he was a missionary he lived in the upstairs of the house. He said that it was indeed haunted, and related the following story:
"We would be lying in our beds at night and every time you would hear a strange sound you would have to investigate it. You could not just try to ignore it or your imagination would take over. One day my companion and I were downstairs with some of the other priesthood brothers after a branch activity when we heard footsteps across the floor above us. My companion went up the front stairs to investigate, I then snuck up the small backstairs. Just as he reached the top of the stairs I turned on all the lights and started banging things around. He ran back down the stairs and I got there just as he was telling the brethren 'I felt hands reaching around my neck...' Come to find out that the footsteps they heard were one of the sisters who had left something upstairs and went back to get it. "
Clark Graham
December 3, 1996
