‘Hotel Paranormal’ Narrator Dan Aykroyd Shares His Ghostly Experience
Q&A
Who ya gonna call to narrate Hotel Paranormal, a new series about true-life supernatural encounters that have sent terrified guests packing? Dan Aykroyd, cowriter and star of the Ghostbusters film franchise, of course!
We “checked in” with the Saturday Night Live legend and longtime believer.
Why do hotels host so many spirits?
Dan Aykroyd: I think it’s pure volume. If you have an old house and the farmer who lived there for 90 years dies, well, you might see one ghost. But if you have a hotel with hundreds of rooms, hundreds of employees, hundreds of years of history, including foul play, there’s a lot of residual psychic energy.
The dramatic reenactments are chilling—in Saturday’s episode, a demonic entity attacks a widow at a B&B. How dangerous are these spirits?
Some are flat-out evil. They’re very, very scary. Sometimes not only psychological but religious intervention is required to get clean of them.
(Jeremy Kohm)
Paranormal experts help explain the run-ins. Are you ever skeptical of the show’s subjects?
These people aren’t making these stories up. They’re traumatized. When you say you’ve seen a ghost, many think you’re insane. We give them a place to talk about it and be accepted.
Have you ever met a hotel ghost?
Nothing that radical—maybe certain feelings? In Boston once, the complimentary toiletries were rearranged overnight. We were told a maid had died in the hotel and was known to do that. But no, not even at the Chateau Marmont [where comedy partner John Belushi died in a bungalow in 1982]. A friend thought he saw John, but I took the bungalow next door for many years after and never had an experience.
You reprise the role of parapsychologist Ray Stantz in 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. What would he do here?
Would that there was technology to take care of these problems! He and Spengler [played by the late Harold Ramis] would come into it as psychologists and hear the stories…and if they had their [proton] packs, just deal with it. I say zap the evil ones!
Hotel Paranormal, Saturdays, 10/9c, Travel Channel
