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Ghostbusters Is Real!
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Seriously. Just ask Dan Aykroyd and his father, Peter, whose real-life family history with the supernatural inspired Ghostbusters. The two talk to Benjamin Sarlin about the science behind the paranormal.
Peter Aykroyd, father of the famed comic actor Dan, isn’t afraid of ghosts.
Even when the long-deceased spirits of Ming Dynasty Chinese, ancient Egyptian princes, and the family’s 18th-century patriarch, Samuel Aykroyd I, called out to him as a young boy in Ontario, Peter says he felt no fear.
And why should he have? Ever since he was 8 years old, purported communication with the dead was a regular occurrence, part of a long series of séances conducted by his grandfather, Dr. Samuel A. Aykroyd, a dentist with a side career as a psychic investigator, and the family medium, Walter Ashurst, who would channel the spirits’ voices through his body.
Once while sitting in a family farmhouse Dan had planned to tear down, he says he felt a massive jolt of electricity and witnessed pops and sparks all around him. “It was just like I had been struck by lightning,” he recalled.
“Even extraordinary things in life, experienced enough, become commonplace,” Peter, now 87, told me as we sat together with Dan in Manhattan’s Essex House. “If you see a ghost 10 times—”
“—it’s like the family pet,” the younger Aykroyd interrupted, completing his father’s sentence.
A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters. By Peter Aykroyd. 264 pages. Rodale Books. $25.99.
Dr. Aykroyd’s research into the paranormal continued with his son, who sought to create the first device capable of capturing ghostly voices only to be told by the ghosts themselves that such a contraption was impossible to build. Peter participated in the family’s rituals, and Dan continued the legacy by creating Ghostbusters, a movie rich in the details and vocabulary of the family’s paranormal trade and filled with gadgets and gizmos of the type his ancestors tried to invent. The tale of the Aykroyds’ four-generation obsession with the occult, as well as the psychic investigators who inspired them, is detailed in Peter’s newly released book, A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters.
It’s a subject dear to Dan, who grew up listening to tales of his great-grandfather’s experiments and reading journals from the American Society for Psychical Research, the premier organization for supernatural studies since 1885. The academic approach employed by his ancestors and by figures such as author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and “ghost hunter” Hans Holzer led him to develop the core concept for Ghostbusters: a group of bookish researchers fighting ghosts using modern science.
“It was around the time I had just finished Saturday Night Live, and I read an article on quantum physics and parapsychology in the ASPR and said, ‘Why not marry the actual scientific discipline of psychic research to an old-style comedy?’” he said.
Dan, a wholehearted believer in the world of spirits, found a perfect writing partner in Harold Ramis, who believed in nothing of the sort but had a detailed if skeptical knowledge of the occult. Ramis’ interest in early civilizations also helped round out the main plot of the 1984 film, in which an ancient Sumerian cult tries to summon an evil god.
“Even though he wasn’t a believer, we were definitely speaking the same language as Ghostbusters,” Aykroyd said. “He knows all about parapsychology, he had all the references, all the terms, all without me giving them to him.”
Peter said he was “elated” with early drafts of the script, especially the opening scene, in which a ghost wreaks havoc in the New York Public Library.
“It was a pure poltergeist phenomenon and absolutely true to form” he said. “Let’s face it, he was writing this thing from conviction. There was truth in that, even though it seemed fantastic.”
He did, however, have problems with the film’s now iconic ending, which featured the King Kong-size Stay Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging about a block away from where our interview took place.
“I thought it wouldn’t play,” he said, “but that was a mistake on my part.”
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I am a skeptic about ghosts. But I am a real skeptic. Usually people who claim to be skeptical are really very certain that ghosts (or whatever) do not exist. See the "Skeptical Enquirer" magazine for details.
Everything modern science knows goes against the existence of ghosts. But the anecdotal evidence from people who think they have seen ghosts should not be dismissed out of hand. Science does not know everything, even though it is our best guide to reality.
When I think about ghosts, I always think of the Buddhist conception of "hungry ghosts." These are people who were so attached in life to something that when they die they are reborn as hungry ghosts, always trying to grasp the thing of their desire. Some Buddhists offer hungry ghosts symbolic meals and try to teach them to let go of their desires. I find this touching, whether or not there is anything to it.
Western ghosts are almost always unhappy creatures as well. If you should ever think you are encountering a ghost, I suggest you try to pray for and with it. Can't do any harm.
Thank you.
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