During the National Democratic Congress' eighth delegates’ congress which was held in Tamale in 2010, the founder of the party told a story of his friend named ‘Atta Mortuary Man’.

The late former president speaking at the event said his drunkard friend was one time mistaken for a ghost by a military man when he had stepped out at dawn to urinate.

Rawlings in his speech was quoted as saying “One night, Old Man Atta could not go home, so he decided to stay at the mortuary. It got so cold that he pulled a white sheet off one of the corpses and wrapped himself in it.

As someone who had got used to handling corpses, this was normal with him. When he stepped out to urinate, something happened. A soldier, who saw what to him was an apparition or a ghost, took to his heels. When Old Man Atta saw the soldier running away at top speed, he also ran after the soldier without finding out the cause of the soldier’s action."

Ghana’s longest-serving president died on November 12, 2020, after battling a short illness at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital at age 73.