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I knew that they were going to make a success of it because these people Danny was working with were the best in the business, the father replies diplomatically. He cheered us on. [But] we had some disagreements with some elements in the _script_. He didn't think the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would work. Dan rolls his eyes. I thought it was a bad way to end it. Peter chuckles softly. But of course, that was the best part of the film. The two then banter about spooky phenomena: an uneducated man who could speak Mandarin when channelling people from beyond, a doctor who could diagnose at a distance, materializations. Mr. Aykroyd's book tells only a selection, and includes some of the best-known mediums and believers, including Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and several respected men of science: Charles Richet, a French doctor, Glen Hamilton, a Winnipeg doctor, and Oliver Lodge, a British academic. At the end, I lost my sight, explains Mr. Aykroyd Sr. of the painstaking research and writing process. Aged 87, he suffers from macular degeneration. Not because of writing the book, quips his son. He didn't eat enough broccoli when he was a kid. The book took six years to complete. I'm not a skeptic about the phenomenon at all. I'm a believer. Still, he has never seen a ghost. His son has seen a presence, at least - once, in his Los Angeles home. Something got into bed with me. The mattress depressed in the shape of a body. I know what I saw, he says, bugging his eyes. Has he ever gone to a clairvoyant? I've never gone, he responds. I don't want to know what's going to happen. That's why I left my sitcom [Soul Man] at ABC. I had a beautiful job, he says, gesticulating in the air. I walked away from $100- million but I had to go to work everyday at 10:30. I don't want a desk job, thank you very much, and I don't want a seer telling me what's going to happen in the future. That's the land of nuts, fruits and flakes, says his father about Hollywood. Dan unleashes a booming laugh. Your son is one of them! I'll take nut. I ain't a fruit. Not that I wouldn't be proud of being one if I was. I ain't a flake, because I follow through when I say I'm going to do something. But you know what, Pop? I'm a nut! The conversation shifts to the peaks of spiritualist interest at various times in history. I don't know if I'm enough of a cultural philosopher to answer with any authority, demurs the senior. Oh, it's always been there, insists his son. From the caveman contemplating the moon. It's part of the psychic atmosphere of our planet. Well, there's plenty of evidence of humankind's preoccupation with these things, agrees the father. But his son is off on a manic riff about world events that have encouraged spiritualist inquiries. The 1880s was a turbulent time - industrial revolution, famine, he booms like a circus ringmaster. World War I. Lots of people died. Millions! People were actively seeking ... to bring back the lost son, the lost brother. The twenties! You have the crash! And in the thirties! The economic cataclysm! And then World War II, and the Nazis and their devotion to the occult. His enthusiasm practically lifts him off his chair. The fifties? he continues, unprompted. The spookiness of the Cold War. We buried our heads under desks and buried ourselves in the culture of the pink toilet seat and Mamie Eisenhower and the homogeneous avocado-coloured kitchen. And in the
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