Coast To Coast AM - 10-28-09 - Spirits & The Paranormal

Spirits & The Paranormal



Date: 10-28-09

Host: George Noory

Guests: Dan Aykroyd, Peter Aykroyd



Celebrated actor and businessman Dan Aykroyd was joined by his father Peter Aykroyd (first hour only) the author of A History of Ghosts, to discuss their family's interest in the paranormal, which has spanned four generations. Peter's grandfather Samuel was a spiritualist in Kingston, Ontario. As part of a group known as "Dr. Aykroyd's Circle," they met regularly with a trance medium named Walter Ashhurst, who communicated with deceased spirits. Peter said he joined in on some of these seances, when he was a young boy. Of the various types of phenomena, "materialization" has impressed Peter the most, and he cited the case of when a medieval monk reportedly appeared before one group during a seance.



Dan talked about "precipitated spirit paintings," works of art said to appear on canvases without the use of human hands. He grew up seeing American Psychical Research journals around the house, and some of the paranormal knowledge he was steeped in later helped to inspire his hit film Ghostbusters, which took a lighter look at the subject matter. "One of my favorite things to do is to drive in the middle of the night, 'planet crawl' as it were, across America or Canada and listen to Coast to Coast. It's just one of the treats of being alive," Dan Aykroyd shared.



Dan discussed unusual psychic phenomena such as apports, describing an incident in China in which a container ship had a black void that sucked equipment away-- some of this equipment later emerged 2,000 miles away, he said. He also talked about his interest in UFOs, and cited a recent case in Ottawa in which a ball of lights was seen making right and left turns before crashing into the water.



The last hour of the show featured Open Lines.



Book(s):

# A History of Ghosts