The night Dan Aykroyd spooned with a ghost: “When you’re dead, you’ll take what you can get”
Dan Aykroyd might have found acclaim with his role in the fantastical supernatural comedy Ghostbusters, which he co-wrote with Harold Ramis, but he has genuinely experienced a few ghostly happenings in his time, and one of them even involves Mama Cass.
The actor moved into a Hollywood home once occupied by the legendary singer, who tragically died when she was just 32 years old… She didn’t die in Hollywood – she actually died in a London apartment, where, four years later, Keith Moon would also die in the same bedroom – but Aykroyd was convinced that she haunted the home he lived in.
Of course, ghost sightings and haunting will always divide people. There are those of us who believe it all to be a load of nonsense, that when you die, that’s it. But others aren’t so certain about what comes in the afterlife, and to many, the idea that spirits can wander the earth, tormenting humans or simply visiting locations that once meant something to them, isn’t all that preposterous. After all, ghost stories have been recorded since the beginning of time.
But was Aykroyd really haunted by Mama Cass? It’s highly unlikely, even if ghosts are real, that someone like the Mamas and the Papas singer would come back just to linger in the home of an SNL star she’d never met. In fact, SNL hadn’t even started when she died. She wasn’t the only person that he was convinced was keeping him up at night, though. He also thought that a ghostly man wanted a bit of action.
“I’m pretty sure there were two spiritual presences in that house. Mama Cass herself, and then another guy, who died in the hillside next to the house and was buried there. As far as I know, his body is still buried in the hill,” he told Esquire.
Referring to the male ghost, he explained, “I had several experiences. I saw things moving around on our counter and doors opening and closing. The staff also had experiences, direct contact in terms of tactile touching, and then turning around, and there’s no one there. Somebody crawled in bed with me once.”
The idea of a ghost crawling into your bed sounds like a nightmare, but perhaps that’s all it was. We get ourselves into all kinds of strange mental states when we’re half asleep, and it’s easy to dream so realistically that we’re convinced that what happened in the dark was very real.
“I was alone in the house and decided to take a nap,” he noted, adding, “I closed the door to the bedroom, but didn’t lock it… I woke up in this kind of trance, where you don’t know whether you’re sleeping or not – it’s what the abductee feels when he’s being taken, I saw the door open, and I rolled over and looked at the bed, and I saw the depression in the mattress, like somebody was getting in there.”
Sure, he might’ve had evidence in a shape in the mattress, but if he was in this trance-like state, he probably just imagined it. Telling the story allowed Aykroyd to bring out his comedic wit, though, because he leaned into the story, admitting that he embraced the potential supernatural intruder. “And I thought, I’m just going to roll over and snuggle up next to it.”
He concluded, “Maybe that guy was gay, and he wanted to have some fun. I’d be surprised if I was his type, but when you’re dead, you’ll take what you can get.”
