“Ghostbusters” star Dan Aykroyd shares horrifying story of seeing 7 dead bodies as a child

The actor told a grim story of his first public performance during an appearance on Dana Carvey and David Spade's "Fly on the Wall" podcast.

Dan Aykroyd has been acting since the '70s, arrived on SNL at 23, and is reviving what may be his most iconic character, Ray Stantz, in the upcoming Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. So, it's natural to ask about how he got the urge to dedicate his life to comedy.

However, the answer Dana Carvey and David Spade got during Aykroyd's appearance on their Fly on the Wall podcast probably involved more dead bodies than anyone expected. As a youngster, Aykroyd went from the high of a performance to the terrifying low of standing in front of the corpses of an entire family.

"I'm in grade three," Aykroyd, who grew up in Canada, began, "they're doing an Irish St. Patrick's Day concert and they compelled me to learn 'McNamara's Band.' They put me in a green bowler and a green vest and green pants and leprechaun shoes."

He performed the song reluctantly, but was elated by the reaction. "I get to the end and give the tap dance finish, and they're howling, the crowd. 'Whoa. Really? You like that that much?'" he recalled thinking.

After stepping off stage, he was still processing how much he enjoyed the rush, but his friends had other ideas. "Two of my friends come up and say, 'Hey, that was nothing, man,'" he said, equating his childhood pals to "the bad donkeys in Pinocchio."

He said the other boys took him to a funeral home across the street from where he'd just performed to see a gruesome sight.

"I go from the elation of singing 'McNamara's Band' and getting cheered to, two minutes later, walking into the funeral home where seven bodies are laid out," the actor shared. "A family that had drowned in a car the night before. Seven. The father, the mother, the brothers, the sisters."

"They bring me from euphoria to whoa," Aykroyd said of his friends. He said he still remembers the details of the bodies and the feeling of seeing this horrifying scene, which made him lose his appetite for entertainment after his success earlier that day. "I didn't do any jigs for years and years afterward," he said. "That turned me right off performance."

Though, of course, that didn't turn him off performing permanently. By age 12, he said, he was already working on improv and honing the skills that would lead him to Second City and Saturday Night Live.

Although he made no mention of it while telling the story, one of Aykroyd's later performances may have drawn on the experience. In 1991's My Girl, his character runs a funeral parlor out of the home he shares with this morbid young daughter (Anna Chlumsky).

Listen to the full episode of Fly on the Wall below.

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