Dan Aykroyd gets back to his roots in his History Channel show, “The UnBelievable With Dan Aykroyd.”
Each episode of the show (which returns for Season 2 on Friday, Nov. 15 at 9 p.m.) is hosted and exec produced by the former “Saturday Night Live” star and explores a wide range of strange stories throughout history.
Although Aykroyd is primarily known as a comedy actor and writer – “SNL,” “Ghostbusters” and “Coneheads” – he’s had a lifelong interest in historical oddities.
“My great-grandfather was a spiritualist, a paranormal researcher. And so, I just grew up with that stuff. And my mother saw a UFO in the late 40s in Ottawa, Canada … And she was always interested in it,” Aykroyd, 72, told The Post.
He added that he himself has had about three UFO sightings “that convinced me that the [flying objects] weren’t made out here, not manufactured on earth.”
His most recent UFO sighting was about a decade ago when he was staying in a hotel in Montreal, he said. Aykroyd recalled it as “a big gray rectangle with bulbs that looked like grapes underneath it. [It made] no noise, no sound, no lights. But, it was hovering there and it was a fixed position. We don’t have anything like that. It had no propulsion or wings.”
UFOs are included in “The UnBelievable With Dan Aykroyd,” but the show also explores a wide range of quirky stories, such as a brown bear that became a war hero for the Allies during WWII or a flying lawnmower that once killed a spectator at a football game.
“I like to narrate things, and I like to present good stories,” said Aykroyd.
“The researchers of the History Channel are superb, and the academic credentials of the interviewees and the writers are our first class and high quality. So when they approached me to do it, I said, ‘Sure, I love this.’ This type of material, who doesn’t like to be shocked, surprised, have their credulity challenged.”
He added, “I thought, ‘This is going to be a hit.’ And it is because people love this stuff.”
Aykroyd is himself part of Hollywood history as one of the original cast members on “Saturday Night Live.”
It’s been just over forty years since his former castmate and “Blues Brothers” co-star John Belushi died of a drug overdose at age 33 in 1982.
Reflecting on his late friend, Aykroyd said that shortly after Belushi’s movie “Animal House” came out in 1978, the duo was driving and came to a stoplight near a school.
“This was when ‘Animal House was’ big, just exploding,” he recalled.
“And he got out of the car, and he went to the front [of the school]. When he went to the bottom row of windows, he knocked on the windows and started to dance up and down… And the people threw open the windows. And then the second floor of the windows came up. People were looking out, and there he was, just twirling on the lawn.”
Aykroyd said by the time Belushi got back in the car, “all the floors were just alive with people yelling and screaming and laughing and shouting. And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s the power of stardom right there.’”
