Samuel Augustus Aykroyd , a teacher - turned - dentist who kept a farmhouse near Sydenham , Ontario , like to host séances . He like them so much , in fact , that he bid a sensitive named Walter Ashurst to be his houseguest in 1921 . Ashurst did n’t leave for 12 year .
Joined by a close - knit group of friends who shared an sake in the paranormal , the Aykroyds held veritable effort to communicate with the numb — an forum of enjoined hand around a table in the parlour elbow room where Ashurst would come out to make it along messages from beyond . Aykroyd ’s 7 - year - old grandson , Peter , would view from a doorway or a staircase as Ashurst ’s vocalization took on dissimilar inflections , his clapper overtaken by transcendental entities .
Peter would develop to have kid of his own , Peter Jr. and Dan , with tales of Samuel Aykroyd ’s academic experimentation into the paranormal being passed around the dining way table . Copies of theAmerican Society for Psychical Researchjournals found their mode into Dan ’s hands as a adolescent . He would later have the idea to write a movie about extrasensory investigators who plow the cosmos of ghosts as a scientific dilemma .
Ghostbusters , which grossed over aquarter - billion dollarsin theaters following its release in 1984 , was adirect extensionof an Aykroyd family tradition : hunt down ghosts .
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Samuel Aykroyd was born in Ontario in 1855,the Old of 14 children . It took him until his early thirties to bring in his first line of work — teaching — wasn’t for him . He entered dental school and opened a exercise in 1894 , doing his best to conciliate anxious patients in a time when topical anesthetic agent consisted mainly of take a besotted drinking .
Though he was n’t a practitioner , Samuel had come across mention of dentists who had strain using hypnosis to soothe anxiety and promote a relaxed country for treatment . His grandson , Peter Aykroyd — who researched Samuel ’s life story for a 2009 book , A chronicle of Ghosts : The True Story of Séances , Mediums , Ghosts , and Ghostbusters , believes Samuel shortly began to take an interestingness in the idea that some somebody can be get into a spell that allows them to act as a conduit between the sustenance and the dead .
He was n’t without company . Samuel met Ashurst , a machine operator , in 1917 ; the two shared a captivation for spirit communication , and Ashurst differentiate Samuel he believed he could act as a right culture medium for the séances Samuel intended to conduct on his farm property in Ontario . By 1921 , Ashurst was a intermediate - in - abidance , and Samuel was host skinny - weekly gatherings in an endeavor to tune up into what he perceive to be the intangible frequency of the afterlife .
According to thejournalsleft by Samuel that detail his exploration of spiritualism from 1905 to 1933 , Ashurst was able to draw the attention of a former member of the Ming Dynasty , a prince of ancient Egypt , and even Samuel ’s great - grandfather . In one séance carry on in the home of Samuel ’s son , Maurice Aykroyd , a trumpet - like instrument used to correspond with the dead was say to have floated above the head of the attendees .
Samuel go on notes , and in them he point a level of dissatisfaction with the body process . What he really desire to do was provoke a materialization , or forcible embodiment of a spirit . The séances were held on a docket and with the same friends in an attack to make the supernal more well-off with showing themselves . Through Ashurst , the John Barleycorn would foretell they were working on it and ask for forbearance .
One of Samuel ’s giving preoccupation was with ectoplasm , a seeming manifestation of a spiritual apparition that had been advert in religious writing but was impossible to document : the gooey material take cast only fleetingly , was visible mostly in the dark , and had no physical prop . Again , the spirits suggested the rest of their presence would arrive in unretentive order .
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Perhaps the spirits did n’t keep sentence on a mortal ’s schedule . Samuel Aykroyd passed aside in 1933 , with his séance group slowly dissolving over the next decade . Samuel ’s Logos , Maurice , a Bell Telephone engine driver , was positive spiritsmight be reachablethrough a radio frequency gadget and endeavor to fabricate one . He was unsuccessful .
These stories and others like them made their way down the Aykroyd family tree , with Maurice ’s son , Peter , inheriting his granddad ’s journals and a considerable program library of spiritual lit . Peter ’s Word , Dan , was intrigue by his capital - grandpa ’s pragmatic approach to such phenomena ; recondite trances and ectoplasm both make appearance inGhostbusters , the film he conceived of , then co - write with Harold Ramis .
Upon being show the script , Peter was enthusiastic about the prospect of seeing his family ’s root word in extrasensory inquiry being honored . think over on the repeat themes in his family Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in 2014 , Dan summarized his inherit passion for the paranormal : “ It ’s the sept business , for God ’s sake . ”
extra Sources : A History of Ghosts : The True Story of Seances , Mediums , Ghosts , and Ghostbusters
