REAL GHOSTS AND CRYSTAL SKULLS THE WEIRD LIFE OF DAN AYKROYD
Dan Aykroyd is a world-famous comic actor, widely known for such classics as Ghostbusters and The Blues Brothers, but he is also a prominent advocate for paranormal issues. BRETT TAYLOR explains how the creation of the ghostbusters wasn’t just a question of comedy, but the result of a lifelong fascination with the unexplained.
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) defended TV 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.
he has expressed a wish for more dna testing on samples of ectoplasm
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 much like a performance, and I make the point in the book… The medium was the main performer… very much like a theatrical performance.” Peter’s work as a civil servant involved the planning of public activities, and he worked as a production manager on a 1951 film, Breakdown, so he had picked up a little knowledge of stagecraft; clearly, the notion of ghosts as show biz was passed on to Dan.
The actor has said that his family’s history and stories fired his imagination and fed into the creation of Ghostbusters. Even Dan’s birth was heralded by ghosts. His mother Lorraine, normally sceptical, recalled seeing two apparitions while nursing little Dan. As the apparitions faded, she realised they were her parents, who presumably came back from the dead to see their newborn grandson.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Dan would grow up to cultivate an eccentric image. Working on the show that made him famous, Saturday Night Live (SNL), Aykroyd liked to describe himself as “a genuine mutant” due to his webbed toes. He told a friend: “When you look at that floor and see the floor, I look at the floor and see molecules.” 4
On getting married, Aykroyd and his new bride Donna Dixon bought a 4,828-squarefoot (450-square-metre) mansion on Woodrow Wilson Drive in Hollywood, only to find it haunted by a pair of ghosts; they had mischievous habits like playing with Dixon’s jewellery and turning on her husband’s Stairmaster. One of these spooks was apparently the spirit of a previous male inhabitant who’d died on a hillside next to the house and was buried on the same spot. The other was more famous: the ghost of singer “Mama” Cass Elliott, who had lived in the house in the Sixties. Cass died in London, but that didn’t bother Ackroyd: “I’m sure it’s Mama Cass,” he insisted, “because you get the feeling it’s a big ghost.”
Aykroyd had a close encounter with the male spirit, which he took to be gay, when he felt his bed mattress depress, as though someone was sitting on it. “Not meaning to discriminate,” the actor said, “I just wiggled up right next to him and it was a rump-to-rump sleep for the night… A gay ghost doesn’t bother me.” This bed incident was the inspiration for Ghostbusters’ raciest comic bit, the so-called “ghost blowjob”. In the brief scene, Aykroyd’s character Ray Stantz is visited by a blonde female ghost who makes the finger-to-lips “Ssshh” gesture and disappears, followed by a closeup of the actor’s pants being unbuckled and unzipped. Many viewers interpret this as an indication the ghost is about to perform oral sex on Aykroyd. The scene’s concluding shot shows him falling out of bed, indicating that this was probably just a dream. Aykroyd liked to recount his own, seemingly real, experience, though his wife disapproved, thinking it would make it difficult if they ever wanted to sell the house.6
Dixon’s fears were unfounded, because in 2008 the mansion was bought by actress Beverly D’Angelo. She too had a strange experience, witnessing her carefully laid out jewellery rearranging itself to the accompaniment of a “skittering of sound”. “That was absolutely freakish,” the actress said. No word on whether the jewellery went back to her preferred arrangement afterwards. Both Aykroyd and D’Angelo’s experiences sound like waking dreams. Aykroyd admittedly awakening “in a trance”, while D’Angelo was in “drifting-off mode” when she saw the jewellery moving on her mantlepiece.7
WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
Reading parapsychology journals proved to be a lucrative habit for Aykroyd, as it inspired his biggest comedy hit: “One day I read an article on quantum physics and parapsychology, and I thought wouldn’t it be great to marry this concept in a fantasy, that there could actually be equipment which would enable one to, you know, entrap a phantom spirit?” He began work on a 40-page treatment for a movie in which he envisioned he would star with his friend John Belushi. The movie, of course, was 1984’s Ghostbusters, which grossed around 300 million dollars, making it the highestearning comedy hit yet made. Belushi didn’t make it as the movie’s star, dying in 1982 of a speedball overdose, but he did live on in the movie in the form of the green ghost Slimer, whose ravenous hot dog-craving personality was inspired by Aykroyd’s late friend.9
For the movie’s eventual script, Aykroyd accepted Harold Ramis as co-writer, but first Ramis had to pass a test. Ramis didn’t believe in life after death.10 Aykroyd wasn’t just kidding around. He claims his mission was “bringing in the vernacular and the real science of the paranormal into a comedy”. Ramis knew that to work with Aykroyd he’d have to show respect for the belief system of Spiritualism. What impressed Aykroyd wasn’t so much Ramis’s sense of humour as “the breadth of knowledge that he had about quantum physics and Spiritualism and myth… You know, the history of mediumship. He knew who Madame Blavatsky was, the psychics. He knew who the Fox Sisters were. He was aware of all these names, of Swedenborg… Also Zecharia Sitchin and ancient biblical myths… He got all the references”. 11
WATCHING THE SKIES
Besides his ghostly encounters, Aykroyd has had his share of other odd experiences. During the Eighties he and Donna were in upstate New York on a night when thousands of people across Canada and New York State witnessed a pink vortex in the sky, many of them claiming they had been compelled to go outside, whereupon they witnessed the strange phenomenon. Aykroyd didn’t see the vortex, but he claims he was awakened in an unusual manner, telling his wife: “They’re calling me. I want to go outside. Something outside wants me to come and see them.” However, his wife convinced him to go back to sleep.12
On the Larry King show in 2013, Aykroyd responded to J Michael Long’s Facebook query, “Have you personally seen a UFO”? by simply stating, “I’ve seen four”. 13 For the BUILD live interview series, Aykroyd was more specific, mentioning a sighting on his farm as well as “a really weird one” on the 23rd floor of Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel: “I’m sittin’ there with some friends, and I see this… it looked like an air mattress. But 150ft [46m] long by 50ft [15m] wide.” He and his friends watched this strange illuminated air mattress (through the window, presumably) as it glided over the St Lawrence River.14 Not only that, he has also described a sighting at Martha’s Vineyard of two strange craft moving simultaneously. He somehow estimated the craft to be at a height of 50,000ft (15,240m) in the air, moving at a speed of 20,000 miles per hour (32,190 kp/h).15
CRYSTAL SKULLS
In 2008 Aykroyd debuted his Crystal Head Vodka. Aykroyd and portrait artist John Alexander were inspired by a mutual fascination with the legend of the 13 crystal skulls (see FT327:28-35). The bottle’s designer was the aptly named Bruni Glass, who boasted that his work was of a “quality and complexity” never before attempted in a liquor bottle. The bottle was modelled on the real crystal skulls, of which there are supposedly seven in existence today. (Aykroyd noted that a woman in the American Southwest had to put her skull in the closet after it began to speak to her).
The vodka was launched with a promotional video beginning with the statement: “I am Dan Aykroyd. Since childhood I have been fascinated with the invisible world.” He showed Hubert C Provand’s famous picture of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall (FT215:50, 218:17, 415:20) before dipping into the legend of the skulls. He went on to imply that his vodka bottles would bring us the closest we have ever been to this invisible world: “There is no jar of ectoplasm, and they won’t show us the bodies at Roswell. We’ve had nothing to touch, until now.” Citing a recent Indiana Jones movie, Aykroyd suggested some of the skulls could be “extraterrestrial in origin”, noting that the Mayans claimed they received theirs as a gift “from a higher power”. The skulls represented the “symbiology of life” and Aykroyd hoped his vodka would connect modern drinkers to “the skulls’ purpose on Earth”, mainly “a less violent and more harmonious world” based on “respect” for “higher power sources” and steeped in acceptance of the afterlife.
“We are challenging traditional belief with the legend”, Aykroyd boldly claimed. He believed that such a challenge was easier to accept if powered by “joy”, and what better way to spread joy than with liquor? “Very pure alcoholic beverage”, he specified, “deep aquifer pure spirit vodka… created in an earnest and heartfelt power” and crafted with a “very slight creamy sweetness” by the Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Organization, noted for the purity of their Newfoundland water, “far away from most forms of pollution”.
The actor closed by implying that this marvellous life-affirming tonic was even okay for sceptics, to be enjoyed “whether you wish to explore the implications of your existence on this amazing plane of existence or not”. YouTube poster ‘Freemasonry Watch’ claims Aykroyd can be seen making a Masonic “Cut Sign” at the 23 second mark, supposedly as a mystic plea for success with his new liquor business. The actual gesture, in which Aykroyd places his right hand inside his jacket pocket, just before the commercial cuts somewhat haltingly to a closeup shot, actually occurs at about 20 seconds in. The mundane explanation is that Aykroyd was simply giving a signal to his cameraman to cut and move on to the next set-up.
THE TV FILES
Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal premiered in 1996 and lasted four seasons, featuring a team of paranormal investigators placed in fictionalised scenarios familiar from fortean legend. The show claimed to be inspired “by the actual case files of the Office of Scientific Investigation and Research”. Viewers who tuned in to see the comic actor hosting this goofy X-Files knockoff could easily have assumed the whole thing was a joke, and yet Aykroyd’s poker-faced introductions and closing summations were convincing enough that some people were convinced the yarns were true.
Psi Factor was created by Dan’s younger brother Peter along with ufologist Christopher Chacon, but Aykroyd was the public face of the show, and thus awarded in absentia a “Snuffed Candle” Award for “Distorted Treatments of Science” by the sceptical group CSICOP. A statement by the group called Aykroyd “a long-time promoter of all sorts of paranormal claims”. Council member Joe Nickell (see pp. 28-37 this issue) joked about informing Aykroyd “by mental telepathy”, to no response. Nickell wrote Aykroyd requesting the actor provide “full particulars” on a Psi Factor episode in which a NASA meteor investigation led to a discovery of giant eggs, one of which produced a flea the size of a hog. Nickell was intrigued by an Aykroyd appearance on Entertainment Tonight during which the actor stated that
sceptics would change their minds after he produced scientific data supporting such outlandish claims as seen on the show. Twenty-four years later, Aykroyd has yet to produce such data.
Aykroyd attempted to get his UFO message across to the public with a new SciFi Channel TV show. The eightpart series, to be called Dan Aykroyd’s
Out There, featured high-profile ufological names like John Mack, Steven Greer and Linda Moulton Howe. In 2002, Aykroyd was standing on New York’s 42nd Street talking on the phone to Britney Spears, who wanted advice about the SNL episode on which she was appearing. He noticed a tall man in a black SUV giving him a “dirty look”. Two hours later, he received word that the SciFi Channel would not air his show, despite many episodes already being filmed. He took the tall figure to be a “Man in Black”. Men in Black, of course, are those mysterious people known for silencing people who want to tell the truth about UFOs (FT250:29, 251:30-31, 341:24, 342:29).17
FAMILIAL SPIRIT
Both Peter Aykroyds have now passed on: the father who wrote A History of Ghosts and the son who co-created Psi Factor. This leaves Dan to carry on the paranormal family tradition. When Peter died in late 2021, Dan took to Twitter to announce that he was celebrating his brother’s life by cracking open a Crystal Head. 18
Keeping with family tradition, Aykroyd is passing on his belief in the afterworld. A viewing of the Ghostbusters movies caused Aykroyd’s two oldest daughters to ask if their father believed in ghosts. When he replied in the affirmative, the children were surprised, expecting him to say that Ghostbusters was
“just a movie”. “What’s funny,” the actor noted, “is their wide-eyed response.” The kids were spurred on to learn more about the subject, which Aykroyd felt would serve them well: “They will be equipped for some of the revelations that we’re about to, uh, see in the new millennium”. He didn’t specify what changes he was expecting. Was he thinking of the Mayan calendar? UFO revelations?
Does Aykroyd really believe all this paranormal stuff? He has said he likes Spiritualism because “I think it’s entertaining,” and has described his father’s lifelong séance sessions as “like a show”. But is the paranormal anything more to him than just entertainment? In 1999, speaking about ghosts from LA’s House of Blues, he elaborated: “Even if they’re not real, they’re very real in our culture, in our folklore. They’re as real as fairies were 100 years ago. You know, today aliens have replaced fairies… and everyone knows about Roswell. Whether it happened or not, or whether this is going on or not, it is part of our folklore and I find that interesting from a sociological standpoint.”
During the same interview, Aykroyd offered an explanation for the existence of spirits: “It’s all explainable within the realm of physics… There’s really nothing that can’t be explained… you can even grasp the reality of ghosts if you think about molecules and hydrogen in the air and how it’s all composed of molecules and the ether and the air around us really has a substance and it’s all moving. You have atoms, which make up everything in nature.You have a nucleus and you have particles rotating around that nucleus. Well, what’s in between? There’s space in between. That, and I think the space in between a nucleus and an electron is as infinite as the space out there. So, think in those terms you know, I think anything is possible. It can all transmute and change… To understand spirits and phantasms you have to take into account the Big Bang, what people are saying about parallel dimensions, and uh… I encourage people to keep reading and keep an open mind.”
However silly the Ghostbusters franchise might be, a Parade magazine special claims that the movie’s popularity as a comedy is secondary and that “the film’s biggest contribution to modern culture is that it sparked considerable interest in paranormal investigation, leading to today’s new breed of ghostbusters seen on reality shows like Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted.”
If so, Aykroyd seems to have fulfilled his mission to embed paranormal “science” into popular culture.
✑ BRETT TAYLOR is the author of poetry collection Old Roads (Red Moon Press, 2021) and The Burning Typewriter, a new study of authors in the movies from BearManor Media. He’ll believe in anything, so long as there’s a steady paycheck.