I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Aykroyd at a liquor store recently. As if that weren’t surreal enough, he promptly smiled and handed me a skull. A glass skull, in fact, full of vodka. “Her name is Joy,” he told me.
I am not making this up.
I had come to talk to Dan about the group of guys outside convincingly dressed up as Ghostbusters, complete with their own ecto-gear, sound system and modern interpretation of the iconic Ghostbusters car. (Now, there’s something you don’t see every day. Unless, of course, you’re Dan Aykroyd.) Instead, we ended up talking about his new line of Crystal Head Vodka, which I’m told is superb. I’ll never know, because the autographed skull bottle is just way too cool to open. Dan did, however, promise to send me an autographed copy of his dad’s new nonfiction book, A History of Ghosts, if I could see my way toward getting a whole case of Crystal Head Vodka.
This man is good. I don’t even drink vodka.
The book arrived as promised, autographed and all. It turns out, surprise surprise, that Dan Aykroyd’s family has a history of investigating the spirits of the dead and attempting to contact them. His great-grandfather even presided over a regular seance circle. From these childhood experiences, among other things, sprang the idea for Ghostbusters.
Oh, and those costumed Ghostbuster fans outside the liquor store? At their behest, Dan autographed all of their home-made gear. Including the hood of their car. How cool is that?
A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters (Hardcover)
by Peter H. Aykroyd with Angela Narth, introduction by Dan Aykroyd
ISBN 978-1605298757
How cool is that? I'd save that bottle, too.