Dan Aykroyd has always embraced the weird in all its varied manifestations. For example, in 2005 the Canadian actor hosted a documentary called Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs and has even been described as “the celebrity face of MUFON [Mutual UFO Network]”.1 On a recent podcast appearance he (somewhat half-heartedly) defendedTV psychic John Edward to a sceptical Joe Rogan, who repeatedly stated that Edward’s credibility had been debunked.2 Aykroyd encourages people to read about ‘The Ghost of Flight 401’, which he calls “the most famous ghost story of all time”, and regularly namechecks such fortean figures as Oliver Lodge, Lord Hill-Norton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Hans Holzer, whom he has saluted as “the greatest ghostbuster of all time”. He has publicly expressed a wish for more DNA testing on samples of ectoplasm.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Aykroyd came by his interests naturally, growing up in a family of Spiritualists. His great-grandfather, Dr Samuel Augustus Aykroyd, was a regular visitor to the Spiritualist camp at Lily Dale (see FT205:30-37) and he and his wife hosted regular séances at their home, often using a medium called Walter Ashurst. When Dan’s uncle Maurice interrupted one of these at the age of four, a ghost trumpet fell to the floor and young Maurice was blamed. Dan’s father, Peter Hugh Aykroyd, started attending his grandfather’s séances as a child, and kept the habit for the rest of his life: “From eight years old to 87 years old, it’s been a passion of mine,” he said. In 2009 Peter, after retiring from the Canadian civil service, co-wrote A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums and Ghosts and Ghostbusters. In 2014, he donated Samuel Aykroyd’s extensive papers – including letters and séance messages – as well as his own, to the University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections.
Peter insisted there was nothing religious about the Spiritualist movement, which he said should be called “Spiritism”: “It’s very Peter’s work as a civil servant involved the planning of public activities, and he worked as a production manager on a 1951 film, , so he had picked up a little knowledge of stagecraft; clearly, the notion of ghosts as show biz was passed on to Dan.
