The Terrifying Incident That Led a Young Girl to Pursue a Career in the Paranormal
What happens when an eight-year-old girl sees a ghost?
A few years ago, while watching an episode of the TV show A Haunting, I recognized the Edmonton skyline. I realized the story took place in my city. If you’re from New York or Los Angeles, you’re probably used to this, but it’s rare to see my home city in the Canadian prairies featured on a popular television show.
The subject of the episode was a woman named Morgan Knudsen. I reached out to her and even took part in one of her Edmonton Ghost Tours. I was struck by how intelligent and knowledgeable Morgan was regarding paranormal issues.
In the years following a terrifying ghost-sighting as a child (more on this below), Morgan pursued a career in the paranormal and is now a recurring guest on the TV shows Paranormal 911 and Haunted Hospitals.
I’ve always had an interest in the paranormal. Even though I’ve never experienced anything that can’t be explained rationally, I’ve always enjoyed such stories. Perhaps that’s why horror is my genre of choice in my career as a screenwriter and filmmaker. Fiction can only satisfy so much, however, and I was eager to learn more about the “real life” side of the unknown.
That’s why, in January of 2021, I launched the Paranormal Phenomena Podcast. Elizabeth Chamberlain, an actor I’ve worked with on multiple film projects, is my co-host and we endeavoured to dig deeper into the mysterious world of the unexplained.
Morgan Knudsen seemed like the perfect first guest for the podcast. We contacted her and were thrilled that she agreed to come on the show.
The following is an excerpt from the podcast where Morgan describes what happened to her as a child that led to her pursuit of the paranormal.
Brandon Rhiness: Hi, Morgan! I first discovered you when I saw your episode of A Haunting.
Morgan Knudsen: What’s funny is that it’s one of the only episodes they filmed in Canada, which was super cool for me that they picked Edmonton. But it was the only episode up until that point that they shot in Canada.
Brandon: Let’s start at the beginning. What made you want to get into the world of the paranormal?
Morgan: The initial incident was when I was eight years old. We were living in B.C. at the time and I had a really frightening experience. We lived in a four-plex. It was two levels and we had some very strange goings-on. We didn’t know what it was. I’d never experienced anything like this before. My mom and dad were trying not to freak me out but the incidents just kept piling up.
One morning, I came downstairs because I heard somebody in the kitchen. It was 5:00am and still dark outside. I came around the corner and I could see the lights on in the kitchen. From the stairs, you couldn’t see into the kitchen but you could tell if the lights were on. I said, “Hello?” As soon as I said that the noise in the kitchen stopped dead. It was such an eerie silence. I thought I’d walked in on a burglar. I tried to turn on the living room lamp but it wouldn’t turn on, which was weird because there was nothing wrong with it. I heard footsteps come out of the kitchen but there was nobody standing where there should have been someone. Then this opaque figure came around the corner and within two seconds, it was in my face. I just lost it. I was terrified. I screamed for my mom and dad.
I was half-way up the stairs when my parents came down. My dad was of the same mindset. He thought someone broke into the house. He went downstairs and the first thing he did was reach for the lamp and it turned on no problem. There was no one there, no one in the house, nothing disturbed. We realized at that point that we had to acknowledge what was going on.
Even though it scared the crap out of me as a kid, I was so curious as to what the hell happened. I couldn’t leave it alone.
Elizabeth Chamberlain: Did your parents believe you when it first happened?
Morgan: They did. My parents were very much believers in the paranormal. They’ve had numerous incidents happen to them although they weren’t willing to bring up a lot around me before this happened.
Brandon: What was the state of the paranormal field when you first decided to pursue it?
Morgan: At the time, the level of education with the public was very limited. I always felt fortunate because there were no paranormal entertainment TV shows on at that time. The investigators that were featured on shows like Sightings were reputable people. Doctors in parapsychology, for example. All these influential individuals who really knew their stuff. So when I started looking into it, I was fortunate enough not to have this entertainment, jump-scare world. I had the academic side.
Brandon: You said your parents frequently had these things happen to them and after watching A Haunting, I know other things happened to you as well. I’ve never had a single paranormal experience myself, so is it a personal thing where some people have these experiences and others don’t?
Morgan: There have been university studies trying to answer this question. They’ve realized there are personality traits that make people more prone to experiencing this stuff. Openness is one of them. How open you are to the idea of the phenomena. In Ganzfeld experiments, where a person is receiving imagery from another person, in another room, the level of success will depend on the subject’s outgoingness, their openness, their own self-doubt. There’s a whole pile of factors. Another part is people’s state of being. This is something I’ve discussed in my teachings for a long time. What we experience in an emotional state and how we are emotionally seems to have a direct influence on what we experience on a paranormal level.
Elizabeth: I watched your video on that and I think there’s a lot of truth in there. So you do a lot of things. You do presentations, you do “ghost hunting,” you’re an author, a visual artist. What are all your jobs? What kind of things do you do in the paranormal?
Morgan: When people ask me that, I’ll tell them I’m a researcher in the paranormal. They can usually buy that but when I tell them I breathe fire, I lose them. They’ll suspend belief for the first part, but not the second part. I’ve got my finger in a million pies but my main purpose is the exploration of consciousness and our understanding of the world. What is consciousness? That is the root of the name Entity Seeker (Morgan’s website).
I also do a lot of live shows. That’s where my passion lies — in the teaching. I’ve taught psychology and social work in post-secondary education. It’s been quite the adventure.
With my fire work — I breathe fire, I eat fire — I bring that into my lectures and teachings. We talk about things like mind over matter and paradigm shifting. Understanding that it’s possible to go against the grain with something as fundamental as our fear of fire. We translate that into the paranormal.
If I can break down somebody’s paradigm that fire is only for destruction and burning, then I can break down their paradigm that the paranormal doesn’t exist or that this is something that’s all in people’s heads.
Brandon: Thanks so much for speaking with us, Morgan!
To listen to the full interview, check out the Paranormal Phenomena Podcast
To find out more about Morgan Knudsen, check out her website: Entity Seeker Paranormal
