June 17 - 2000
Meeting at the Phantom Theme park where we decided to form the Scandinavian Chapter

First meet

June 17 2000 Eskilstuna

Attending members: Brian Jensen, Torbjörn Onegård, Jan-Ola Sjöberg
Guests: Helén Sundell

You can’t accurately tell the story of the first meet if you don’t include the story about how it all began so here goes…

As a keen reader of Bryan Shedden’s site deepwoods I of course wanted to be one of the first to sign his guest book as soon as he launched that service to the site. At that time I thought I was pretty much the only adult Phantom collecting Swede in existence so you could bet I was surprised when I through that guest book saw there was another one! His name was (and still is) Torbjörn Onegård and by what he had written in the guest book I knew he was just the right age for me to ask some questions that had bothered me about the Swedish publishing schedule in the sixties. He graciously answered my questions and soon trough the amazing power of e-mail a friendship had been formed. After some time we thought it would be nice to meet face-to-face and what better place for two Phantom fans to meet then at the Phantom theme park in Eskilstuna? We had a great day together discussing all things Phantom for hours and seeing all the sights of the park, before we left we decided to met again at the Comic’s fair in Gothenburg later that year. We again had a great time together, to be able to talk about your greatest interest with someone who truly understand cant be emphasized enough. Slowly an idea of meeting more people of the same kind started to develop in our minds. Torbjörn knew of some people who shared our passion for the Phantom and through the power of the Internet surely we could round up some more? I started digging on the web and found quite a few Swedish Phantom site but surprisingly not more than 10 % or so answered my e-mails. Anyway through our combined efforts we actually found 5 others who thought it could be fun to meet. A plan was made to again meet at the Phantom theme park but this time of course with all 7. We had decided that t the park we would together write a letter to the Swedish Phantom magazine and congratulate them on the upcoming 50:ieth anniversary and hopefully get it printed in the magazine. We would also try to jointly come up with a letter to ask Richard Fry and Tony Di Dio permission to start a Swedish Chapter of the Lee Falk Memorial Bengali Explorers Club. This seemed a good idea for several reasons, a few of us were already members and they seemed to have found a good form for Phantom fans to meet, one that we also would like to try. As history has shown, we did get that letter printed in the anniversary edition but we didn’t get permission to form a Swedish chapter. What we got was permission to form a Scandinavian Chapter! Some of you had probably figured that one out already…

Several mishaps occurred a long the way of this first meet so we wound up to be only three that actually met at the theme park, some had sick children that prevented them of coming and such. This didn’t prevent the three of us, who then also became the only ones who could call ourselves founders, to have a truly great time! As luck would have it, the “third guy” Jan-Ola lives along my driving route to the theme park so I picked him up and we then, of course, discussed the Phantom the most of the way both to and from! A word of appreciation must here go to my girlfriend at the time who had to listen to all that!! If you think something along “why on earth did he bring his girlfriend to a thing like that”; my simple answer is, why not? The park is a great place for everyone, they have a big Zoo with all kinds of animals, you name it they got it. The Zoo also has the worlds biggest breeding program for the big cats, mostly white tigers, along with a small amusement park with all kinds of rides and a water park so it’s much more then just a Phantom theme park. So besides being a bit quit in the car for obvious reasons she had a good time to!

That’s all I could think of writing!

Best regards
Brian