Dr. Samuel Augustus Aykroyd was born in 1855 near Kingston, Ontario. In 1884 he married Ellen Jane Wemp, and had two children, Lillian and Maurice. Initially a schoolteacher, he became a dentist in 1892 and remained so until his death in 1933. He came to Spiritualism in the early 1900s, and around 1908 made his first visit to Lily Dale, New York, where one of the largest fixed Spiritualist camps existed. From 1920 onwards, Dr. Aykroyd and his wife hosted numerous séances at their cottage near Lake Loughborough (and occasionally in Kingston and Toronto), often using a medium named Walter Ashurst (1890-?). These séances were also variously attended by his son and daughter-in-law (Marjorie), and later their children (Peter and Maurice Jr.). The séances often resulted in a variety of psychic phenomena such as table tipping and voices, including many regular spirit communicators such as Irishman “Mike Whelan”, Ming dynasty-era “Lee Long”, Egyptian prince “Blue Light”, and Native American “Broken Arrow”. Although they attempted to achieve materialization of spirits, the Aykroyd group was never successful in that regard.

(Samuel Cuthbert) Peter Hugh Aykroyd was born in 1922 in Ontario, Canada. He was a policy advisor to the Pierre Trudeau government and has currently retired with his wife Lorraine to the house that his grandfather lived in on Lake Loughborough. He participated in some of the séances of his grandfather as a small child (1929 onwards) and has had a lifelong interest in Spiritualism and the supernatural. In the 1990s, he and his sister Judy discovered many of his grandfather’s journals and other papers. Peter eventually wrote and published the book A History of Ghosts (2009) that is largely based on those papers and his own experiences. He is the father of actors Peter J. and Dan Aykroyd, both of whom are still connected with the paranormal – Peter created the TV series PSI Factor (1996-2000), while Dan, who also hosted the show, co-wrote and acted in Ghostbusters (1984), which was partly derived from childhood memories and stories.