Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
March 11, 2024
Yesterday, I got a fascinating email from someone named “Sammy,” who says he speaks to Candle Face by the creek—the same place where I used to get ambushed on my way to school. In his email, Sammy talked about these one-sided conversations he believes he has with Candle Face whenever he takes his dog for a walk. This creek, showing up in both Sammy’s account and my own experiences, feels like a hotspot for Candle Face’s activity.
This is what he wrote in his email:
Hey Arthur,
For the purpose of this email, my name’s Sammy and I live near the creek where you say Candle Face hangs out. I’ve been reading your articles about her and, dude, I gotta say, I’m totally on board. I walk my dog, there every evening, and sometimes we just stop on the bridge. I kinda talk to her. I never hear her talk back or nothing, but I feel her answers in my gut.. Like this one time, I asked if she was sad, and the wind picked up real quick like she was saying, “Yeah, kinda.” Another time, I was super stressed about work, and I swear the water in the creek got all calm all sudden, like she was telling me to chill out.
I think it’s super cool you’re writing about her, Arthur. More people need to know she ain’t just some scary ghost – she’s got this kindness, man. Like, she really wants to help us out. I tell all my friends about her, trying to spread the word. Some think I’m just making stuff up, but others, they get real interested.
Now, here’s the crazy part I gotta tell ya. Last week, I was at the creek, and this shadow comes outta nowhere, right next to me while I’m talking to Candle Face. I don’t see this shadow any other time, just when I’m there talking about serious stuff, like asking Candle Face to help with with bullies. It’s like this shadow understands me and Candle Face? I got this weird feeling it’s Candle Face in another form, just checking in.
But hey, if you wanna use this in your blog or something, that’s cool with me. Just don’t put my email out there. It’s a fake one anyway, haha. We gotta keep spreading the word about her, showing people she’s not what they think.
Keep doing what you’re doing, Arthur. Candle Face needs more believers, and what you’re doing could really help her find peace or whatever it is she’s looking for. And maybe, just maybe, we can make our neighborhood a better place, knowing there’s someone like her watching over us.
Thanks for listening, man. And remember, not everything you hear about ghosts is meant to scare ya. Some of them, like Candle Face, they’re just misunderstood.
Later, Sammy
Sammy’s story stands apart from the stories we usually encounter, presenting Candle Face as misunderstood and even capable of empathy. This perspective could broaden our collective understanding.
I wonder if I should share Sammy’s experiences. On the one hand, it’s important to include diverse viewpoints that might enrich our overall understanding of Candle Face. On the other, I must remain mindful of my responsibility to remain as neutral and factual as possible, especially when much of our understanding about entities like Candle Face is pieced together from subjective encounters.
So where do we draw the line? How do we respectfully handle personal testimonies like Sammy’s without turning them into sensationalized stories or inadvertently dismissing other, more ominous accounts? It may be helpful to present them as precisely what they are: deeply personal perspectives that can exist alongside our more evidence-based investigative work.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how best to include stories like Sammy’s. How do we honor individual experiences and still uphold our commitment to unbiased inquiry? I just thought about something. A few days ago, I mentioned exposing Candle Face’s evilness to the world. But that doesn’t mean I can’t expose the good too, right? I think Sammy would agree. Please share your ideas and analysis at our interactive website: https://www.branchingplotbooks.com.
Is Candle Face real?
This is a complex and deeply personal question. On the one hand, there's the possibility that Candle Face is a manifestation of my childhood trauma, a figure created by my mind to cope with fear and emotional turmoil. On the other hand, the consistent details, physical evidence, and shared experiences with others suggest that Candle Face may be a genuine supernatural entity. Whether Candle Face is real or a creation of my psyche, her impact on my life has been undeniably profound. Ultimately, the answer to this question is up to you.
How are you able to communicate with the dead? Are you a psychic or medium?
I don’t consider myself a psychic or medium, although many in the paranormal community believe I have some kind of gift, perhaps one that I haven’t fully tapped into yet. Unlike those who claim to communicate with any spirit, my ability seems limited to connecting with Candle Face’s victims and Candle Face herself. While I’m not sure how this works, the connection is strong and focused on these particular Lost Souls, allowing me to share their stories and seek justice for them.
Do you use AI to create your content?
From October 2023 to around March 2024, I personally wrote the short descriptions you see on Google and social media platforms when my web pages or journal entries are shared or found in search results. These descriptions are those brief, 160-character summaries that pop up beside the URL. It was challenging to condense complex ideas into such a small space.
By March 2024, I began letting Wix, my website host, handle this task for me. Their AI generates these summaries much faster and often with more precision than I could manage within that tight character limit. It was a practical decision to let the system take over this small aspect of my work, allowing me to focus more on my writing and investigations.
The web pages and journal entries themselves are entirely my own. My writing encompasses a wide range of topics, including the testimonies of the Lost Souls, my investigations into Candle Face/Isabel, my books like Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona and The Haunted Handbook, as well as other works and research. Everything I write is rooted in my decades of experience in writing (over ten books in 15 years) and my 30+ years of expertise in intelligence analysis, missing persons cases, and human trafficking investigations. The core content you read always comes from me.
By early March 2025, I decided to create a Shopify account to sell copies of Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona, The Haunted Handbook, and to look for caretakers for The Scrolls of Souls. It was a tremendous amount of work to manually transfer all 130 journal entries from Wix to Shopify and recreate the Google SEO titles and descriptions for each entry. Shopify’s blogging platform also required a summary for each journal entry. Summarizing my work was taking around 30 minutes per entry, which became overwhelming and unsustainable.
To streamline the process, I allowed AI to create the summaries for me by uploading each journal entry and letting the AI generate the SEO descriptions, summaries, and ALT text for images. Here's a clear breakdown of what is AI-generated:
- Some journal entry titles.
- Nearly all SEO journal descriptions (up to 160 characters).
- Nearly all summaries (which are only available in the backend and not visible to the public).
Everything else you read comes from me, whether it’s documenting testimonies from the Lost Souls, researching Candle Face/Isabel, or writing my books. The AI simply handles the tedious, mechanical parts of the process, leaving the writing, storytelling, and investigations entirely in my hands.
I review all AI-generated summaries and descriptions to ensure they accurately represent the essence of my writing. My decision to use AI for these backend tasks is about maintaining efficiency and allowing me to focus on what truly matters: writing, storytelling, investigations, and giving voice to the Lost Souls, protecting the Fugitives, investigating Candle Face/Isabel, and exploring new projects. Your experience as a reader is shaped by my work, not by AI.
Why did you end the podcast?
I decided to cancel the Candle Face Chronicles Podcast for two key reasons. First, while the Get Haunted Network is a fantastic community for paranormal entertainment, it wasn't the right fit for the serious and important nature of my work with Candle Face Chronicles. The network's lighthearted tone didn’t align with my mission.
Second, the friends and family of one of Candle Face's victims reached out and asked me to stop discussing their loved one on the podcast because it was causing them too much pain. Their request made me realize that my work, while well-intentioned, was unintentionally hurting those who are still living and grieving.
These reasons led me to end the podcast, but I remain committed to continuing my mission to uncover Candle Face’s origins and methods with a renewed focus on compassion and respect for the living.
Why did you stop using www.candleface.com and start using www.branchingplotbooks.com?
I have had the branchingplotbooks.com domain since 2012, but I transferred the domain to Shopify to use it as my storefront. I needed to do this because Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona can't be published or sold via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing because of its spiral binding requirement. The same goes for The Haunted Handbook.
I decided to sell them, along with most of my other books, on Shopify because it allows me to provide a more streamlined and reliable experience for my readers. It also enables me to have full control over my work and how it reaches my audience. Additionally, all my books are still available on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), except for Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona and The Haunted Handbook due to their unique binding requirements.
I also chose to use Shopify’s blogging platform, keeping all books, my journal, and the shopping experience located in one place.
I plan on keeping www.candleface.com up for the interim, but it will likely go down as well, or at least be redirected to www.branchingplotbooks.com. In the end, I want my work to be more streamlined and easier for the paranormal community and my readers to find my work, read and help the lost souls, protect the fugitives, and care for the Scrolls of Souls.
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