Frozen Empire’ and ‘UnBelievable’ New Series

Yes, Dan Aykroyd believes in ghosts—and his latest endeavor might make a believer out of you, too. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Newsweek, the 71-year-old actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter discussed the paranormal, his latest sequel in the Ghostbusters franchise, the likelihood of a Trading Places 2, and his return to television where Saturday Night Live audiences first fell in love with him.

Before such successes took place in the land of the living, Aykroyd maintained a longstanding interest in and connection to those on the other side. His great-grandfather was a “spiritualist psychic researcher” and his father wrote a book about mediumship. With such deep roots in the metaphysical, Aykroyd said there has “never been a question” for him about whether ghosts are real.

‘UnBelievable’

That belief—along with a general interest in “all things strange,” led him back to his roots in television—this time as an executive producer and host of The History Channel’s latest nonfiction series, The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd.

It’s a 10-episode series that explores real people, events, and places that seem as implausible as they are incredible to learn about. Aykroyd promises the show will leave viewers “entertained, awestruck, and gob-smacked with jaw-dropping, surprising stories.”

Viewers will learn about events like the time a poodle fell from a tall building and ended up killing three people; the deadly dancing plague of 1518; the time a man laughed himself to death; the surgery that people lined up for despite it having a 300 percent mortality rate; and the time a 25-foot tidal wave of literal syrup demolished an entire neighborhood, known as Boston’s Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Aykroyd said there’s “almost a humor” to some such stories because of how far-fetched they seem, but adds that they stop being funny when you realize each story is 100 percent true and that “people actually died” as a result.

Other stories explored in the series get downright spooky, like the island in Brazil that people are prohibited from visiting because it has an average of five venomous snakes per square meter; or the haunted island of dead dolls in Mexico where more than 4,000 dirty and often deformed dolls hang from trees, ostensibly paying homage to a young girl who died there. “The joyous thing about this show is that it takes you to places and shows you things you are fascinated with but wouldn’t want to go to yourself or have anything to do with,” said Aykroyd.

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, is another such place. Beginning in 1910, it stood as a treatment center for tuberculosis patients for more than 50 years and some 60,000-120,000 patients ended up dying there. “Hospitals are very very haunted, usually,” Aykroyd said, adding that some are especially so. “The Waverly Sanatorium,” he said solemnly, is one place “you can be damn sure is haunted.”

Passion for the Paranormal

Though his new series explores that now-abandoned hospital and the countless ghost sightings that are said to have transpired there at length, and despite his longtime career association with the paranormal thanks to Ghostbusters, Aykroyd confessed to Newsweek he’s “never seen a ghost.”

He has felt the unseen presence of ghosts in his home, however, and says he “may have seen ectoplasm once.” (Ectoplasm is a form of spiritual energy that some people believe lingers where a ghost has been.) He also owns a farmhouse he says is haunted, and claims his guests have “heard things: stuff on the stairs, thumps, coughs, maybe residual energy of the people who lived there.”

Aykroyd says the paranormal world needs more “scientific inquiry,” but cites the “great evidence” he has witnessed from mediums knowing things “they couldn’t have possibly known about [without help from people] in the beyond;” plus “a lot of credibility” from research gathered by “the American Society for Psychical Research, the British Society for Psychical Research, and the community at Lily Dale [which have] very seriously tried to find out how a ghost manifests chemically [and] physically and how channelers [mediums] can work so beautifully to find those who have gone before and bring them back to us if we wish.”

Return of Dr. Ray in ‘Ghostbusters’

This passion for the paranormal, he said, long predates his new History Channel series and is what drove him to write the screenplay for the original Ghostbusters movie. The film became the highest-grossing movie of 1984 and kicked off a franchise that audiences are obviously still hungry for nearly four decades later, since Ghostbusters: Afterlife became one of the highest-grossing films of 2021.

Aykroyd returned to his iconic role as Dr. Raymond “Ray” Stantz in the franchise and was instrumental in bringing back fellow Ghostbusters alums Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson to briefly reprise their roles from the original movie. (The other original Ghostbuster, Harold Ramis, died in 2014.)

Aykroyd told Newsweek the three of them had “too much fun” working together again and they especially liked welcoming in “the next generation of players” to the franchise; namely Carrie Coon (Gone Girl), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), Mckenna Grace (Gifted), and Paul Rudd (Ant-Man). “When we marry the old lore and some of the traditions with these four spectacular new performances, you get a blend-in service of a really neat New York story that gives us faith in carrying on with the Ghostbusters concept,” he told Newsweek.

It’s a concept that will be tested again when Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire releases in March of next year. “We’ve never done this to Manhattan before,” Aykroyd teases of the project. He promises the film’s opening will be especially exciting to viewers.

“There’s a historical base to it that’s quite beautiful,” he said. “We took full advantage of CGI technology but we also, where we could, kept old-school effects alive.” He said the new film confronts themes like loss, betrayal, and forgiveness even deeper and “more emotionally” than the other Ghostbusters movies we’ve seen. “All that, along with some great scares and effects,” he said. “It’s really going to work.”

‘Trading Places 2’?

Aykroyd was also part of Trading Places, another iconic ’80s film he thinks deserves a fresh take for modern audiences. In the 1983 movie, the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Aykroyd’s Louis Winthorpe character is suddenly taken from him when his millionaire employers force him to switch places with down-and-out street hustler Billy Ray Valentine, played by Eddie Murphy.

Aykroyd praised the film’s “great script” as it was written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod and said that screenwriting duo would need to be involved if a Trading Places 2 is ever to happen. For his part, Aykroyd would love to reprise the role and has even gotten the ball rolling.

“Last year, I generated a sequel for Eddie and I that I submitted to Paramount,” he said. If the studio decides to pick it up, he’ll want Harris and Weingrod to contribute to it or at least help with securing the rights, but he thinks his idea for how the story would take place today has promise. “It’s good, man, it’s good,” he said.

Looking back on ‘SNL’

Aykroyd also talked fondly about his early days of working on Saturday Night Live and praised show creator Lorne Michaels for how he is handling the largest cast turnover since the early 1990s.

“Lorne is not a dictator, nor is he a prison warden,” Aykroyd told Newsweek. “If an artist comes to him and says, ‘I’ve got to go, I want to move on to other things,’ Lorne has always been gracious about it.”

He said that was Michaels’ attitude when Aykroyd and John Belushi left to do Blues Brothers and it’s an attitude he believes Michaels has maintained for every cast member who has left the show since. “He doesn’t jump up and down thrilled about it when key members move on, but he’s always supportive.”

Aykroyd explained that Michaels is “like a father” to former cast members and is “certainly the best empresario to ever come to American shores from Canada or anywhere else, I believe.”

Some might say the same of fellow Canadian Dan Aykroyd.

The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd premieres on The History Channel on December 1 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.