Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward Aykroyd, known throughout his publishing and broadcasting career as Dan, is the contemporary inheritor of a Spiritualist and psychical-research interest that runs back through four generations of the Aykroyd family in Canada. His great-grandfather Samuel Aykroyd, a Kingston dentist, attended seances and corresponded with mediums in the late nineteenth century. His grandfather Maurice Aykroyd continued the family interest. His father Peter Aykroyd, a senior Canadian civil servant who worked in the Prime Minister's office under Pierre Trudeau, wrote A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters (2009). Dan Aykroyd has been a Mutual UFO Network lifetime member since the 1980s, has spoken publicly about the UFO question across more than two hundred recorded appearances since the early 1990s, hosted Out There with Aykroyd across three seasons from 2009 to 2012, and remains the most consistent mainstream-entertainment voice for civilian UFO research in the contemporary North American media environment.
A Life
Daniel Edward Aykroyd was born on 1 July 1952 in Ottawa, Ontario, the elder son of Lorraine Helene (Gougeon) and Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd. The family was Catholic, francophone-bilingual, and rooted in the senior Ottawa civil service. His father Peter was a career civil servant who rose through the Privy Council Office to become a policy advisor to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s. The boy was raised partly in Ottawa and partly at the family farm at Sydenham, near Kingston, the property his great-grandfather Samuel had bought in the 1880s and the family had held ever since.
He was educated at St Pius X and St Patrick's, Catholic boys' schools in Ottawa, and was briefly intended for the priesthood; he entered St Pius X Minor Seminary at fourteen and stayed three years before deciding the vocation was not his. He attended Carleton University in Ottawa, reading criminology and sociology, and worked summer jobs that included surveying and one short period as a Canadian railway brakeman before joining the Toronto Second City improvisational comedy company in 1973 at the age of twenty-one. Second City was the institutional gateway into the American comedy industry of the 1970s: John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and the wider Saturday Night Live ensemble all came through its Toronto and Chicago houses. Aykroyd was named to the original cast of Saturday Night Live at its launch in October 1975 along with Belushi, Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman.
He stayed with SNL through four seasons to 1979, departed with Belushi to develop The Blues Brothers (the 1980 film grew out of their Saturday Night sketch act with the live band), and moved into the studio film career that has remained substantially active across four decades. The credits include National Lampoon's Animal House (1978, uncredited story contribution), The Blues Brothers (1980, co-writer and co-star), Trading Places (1983), Ghostbusters (1984, co-writer and co-star with his late-period reflection on the Aykroyd family Spiritualist tradition), Dragnet (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988), My Girl (1991), the Coneheads film (1993), Driving Miss Daisy (1989, supporting role with Academy Award nomination), and continued work through to the present including the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot and the 2021 Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
The non-film career has included Crystal Head Vodka (the spirits brand he co-founded in 2007 with the artist John Alexander, the skull-shaped bottle a reference to the Aztec crystal-skull tradition), House of Blues (the music-club chain he co-founded in 1992 with Isaac Tigrett), and Blue Line, a Niagara wine brand. He has been a member of the Order of Canada since 1998 and was awarded the Officer of the Order of Canada in 2018. He divides his time between Los Angeles, Martha's Vineyard and the Sydenham family farm.
I've been a member of MUFON forever. The Mutual UFO Network. I'm a serious researcher. I've read the literature. I've studied the cases. I've talked to the witnesses. I believe.Aykroyd, interview on Larry King Live, CNN, 2005
Photographs
Aykroyd has been photographed extensively across his film and television career by the studio publicity machinery, by the entertainment press, and by his own publishing operation. The Crystal Head Vodka and House of Blues publicity material adds the brand-photography stream. The Sydenham farm and the Aykroyd family material adds the personal-archive stream. One press portrait is currently filed in the archive; the wider photograph grid remains at the sourcing-verification stage.
The Four-Generation Aykroyd Spiritualist Tradition
The substantial archive-relevant material in Aykroyd's biography is the four-generation Spiritualist and psychical-research tradition that runs through the family from the 1880s onwards. The principal account is his father Peter Aykroyd's A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters (Rodale, 2009), which Dan Aykroyd introduced with a substantial foreword and which is the primary published source for the family's account of itself.
The four generations as the published account presents them: Samuel Aykroyd (Dan's great-grandfather), a dentist who emigrated from Lincolnshire to Canada in the 1880s, settled in Kingston, Ontario, bought the Sydenham farm in 1882, attended seances in Kingston and corresponded with the British Society for Psychical Research from the late 1880s. Maurice Aykroyd (Dan's grandfather), who continued the family interest through the early twentieth century and hosted seances at the Sydenham farm. Peter Aykroyd (Dan's father), the senior Canadian civil servant who in his retirement researched the family records and wrote the 2009 book, framing the Aykroyd interest as one strand of the wider North Atlantic Spiritualist-research tradition. Dan Aykroyd himself, who has been the public-facing fourth generation across his entertainment career.
Ghostbusters (1984), which Aykroyd co-wrote with Harold Ramis from an Aykroyd original treatment, has been read repeatedly across film criticism as the comic transposition of the Aykroyd family Spiritualist tradition into the studio-entertainment register. Aykroyd has confirmed the reading in multiple interviews. The original 1983 treatment Aykroyd produced was substantially more occult and substantially less comic than the released film; the Ramis collaboration shifted the project into the wider studio-comedy frame while retaining the family-tradition source material as the substantive ground.
Peter Aykroyd's book is the principal published source for the Aykroyd family Spiritualist tradition. The Dan Aykroyd foreword (pages xi to xvii of the first edition) is the most extensive on-record discussion Dan Aykroyd has given of his own engagement with the family inheritance. The book covers Samuel Aykroyd's late-nineteenth-century Kingston seances, the wider Society for Psychical Research correspondence of the period, and the family's continued engagement with the tradition into the twentieth century. The book is held in the archive's Spiritualism collection alongside the wider North Atlantic psychical-research literature.
MUFON and Out There with Aykroyd
Aykroyd has been a lifetime member of the Mutual UFO Network since the 1980s. The membership is on the public record through his repeated mention of it in television and print interviews from the early 1990s onwards, including extended discussions on Larry King Live (CNN, 2005), Coast to Coast AM (multiple appearances across the Bell years), and the Joe Rogan Experience (multiple appearances from the 2010s). MUFON has confirmed his membership status in its own publications. He has attended MUFON Symposia and contributed material to MUFON publications across the period.
Out There with Aykroyd ran across three seasons from 2009 to 2012 on a variety of platforms, including initial distribution through HuluUFO TV and subsequent placement through the Sci-Fi Channel adjacent networks. The format was a structured discussion of contemporary UFO cases, civilian-research developments and the wider strange-phenomena literature, with Aykroyd presenting from a fixed studio set and interviewing guests including David Sereda, Stanton Friedman, Travis Walton and Linda Moulton Howe. The series produced approximately thirty episodes across its run and remains in circulation through online video platforms. The format was a direct continuation of the Bell-era Coast to Coast AM broadcast tradition into the early-online-video era.
The 2005 Sereda Interview and the MIB Claim
Aykroyd interviewed the Canadian-American documentary filmmaker David Sereda in 2005 for what would become the long-form video documentary Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs (2005), released through Sereda's production company. The interview ran across multiple sessions in Aykroyd's Hollywood and Martha's Vineyard locations and covers Aykroyd's family-tradition material, his MUFON involvement, his cumulative case-knowledge across the civilian-research literature, and a series of his own claimed encounters with anomalous phenomena across his adult life.
Aykroyd has stated in subsequent interviews (notably on Larry King Live, on the Joe Rogan Experience, and in print profiles) that on the morning following one of the 2005 Sereda interview sessions, two individuals he characterised as Men in Black appeared at the location where the interview had been conducted and that footage of one such encounter was captured incidentally by Sereda's production equipment. The footage has been published through Sereda's distribution channels and discussed in subsequent civilian-research literature. Aykroyd has presented the encounter as an attributed personal account; he has not adjudicated on its substantive nature.
Aykroyd's published and recorded engagement with the UFO question across four decades has been consistently positioned as an interested civilian voice drawing on civilian-research sources, not as a witness-testimony or insider-disclosure register. His MUFON membership places him inside the institutional civilian-research community alongside the substantial membership of that organisation; his Out There series sits inside the entertainment-media tradition that Bell's Coast to Coast AM and the wider postwar broadcast UFO tradition built. The archive holds his contributions as documentary record of his stated positions and family tradition; the wider claims of the civilian-research community Aykroyd has engaged with are held under their own separate sourcing and adjudication standards.
Connected People
Senior Canadian civil servant (1922 to 2021) who served in the Privy Council Office under successive Canadian governments and as a policy advisor to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Author of A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters (Rodale, 2009), the principal published account of the Aykroyd family Spiritualist tradition. The bridge generation between the Victorian-era family interest and the contemporary continuation.
The second generation of the Aykroyd Spiritualist tradition as the published family record presents it. Maintained the Sydenham farm as a family seat through the early twentieth century and continued the seance hosting that Samuel had begun. The principal in-family transmitter of the tradition through the inter-war period.
English-born dentist who emigrated to Canada in the 1880s, established a practice in Kingston, Ontario, and bought the Sydenham farm in 1882. Attended seances in Kingston and corresponded with the British Society for Psychical Research from the late 1880s. The founder of the four-generation Aykroyd family interest in Spiritualism and psychical research.
American actor, writer and director (1944 to 2014) who collaborated with Aykroyd on the Ghostbusters screenplay from Aykroyd's original 1983 treatment, played the character Egon Spengler in the 1984 film, and directed extensively across the comedy genre across the following three decades. The collaborator who shifted Aykroyd's original occult treatment into the studio-comedy register the film eventually occupied.
American actor and comedian (1949 to 1982), Aykroyd's principal collaborator from the Second City and Saturday Night Live years through to the 1980 release of The Blues Brothers. Belushi was originally cast for the role of Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters before his death in 1982. The substantial loss in Aykroyd's working life and a recurring reference in his subsequent published interviews.
Canadian-American documentary filmmaker and alternative-research broadcaster whose 2005 long-form interview with Aykroyd produced Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs. The interview is the most substantial single recorded discussion Aykroyd has given of his own civilian-research engagement and the proximate event of the Men-in-Black claim Aykroyd has subsequently discussed in multiple interviews.
American-Canadian nuclear physicist and civilian researcher (1934 to 2019). Frequent Out There guest across the 2009 to 2012 run. The senior civilian-research figure with whom Aykroyd's MUFON-tradition engagement has been most closely associated and a long-standing personal correspondent.
American documentary filmmaker and reporter, recurring Out There guest, and the principal Bell-era civilian-research voice with whom Aykroyd has had the most consistent on-record dialogue across the 2000s and 2010s. Has continued to appear on Aykroyd's subsequent media projects.
In the Archive
Aykroyd appears across three sections of the archive. The Aykroyd family Spiritualist tradition is documented through Peter Aykroyd's A History of Ghosts and through the wider archive's Spiritualist tradition coverage. The MUFON-tradition civilian research context is documented through the archive's MUFON organisational page and through the wider American civilian-research collection. The Out There with Aykroyd series and the related broadcast tradition is documented through the connections to the Bell-era Coast to Coast AM material the archive holds in its broadcast collection. The Canadian regional context is documented through the archive's Canada country page.
The Aykroyd family Spiritualist tradition runs through the archive's Spiritualist tradition page and connects to the wider nineteenth-century North Atlantic psychical-research literature. The MUFON-tradition civilian research context is documented through the archive's MUFON coverage. The broadcast-tradition continuity from Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM through Out There is documented through the archive's Art Bell biography.
Sources
Aykroyd, Peter and Angela Narth. A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters, Rodale, 2009 (with Dan Aykroyd foreword). Sereda, David. Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs, Sereda Productions, 2005 (video documentary). Out There with Aykroyd, 2009 to 2012 (three seasons, approximately thirty episodes, distributed through HuluUFO TV and subsequent platforms). Larry King Live, CNN, multiple Aykroyd appearances, principal interview 2005. The Joe Rogan Experience, multiple Aykroyd appearances. Coast to Coast AM, multiple Aykroyd appearances across the Bell years (1990s and 2000s). Aykroyd, Dan. Various interviews and statements on the UFO and Spiritualist traditions, collated through the MUFON publications and the wider civilian-research literature. Saturday Night Live production archive, NBC, for the 1975 to 1979 cast period.
