Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
November 17, 2024
Now, I know the name of the lost soul who reached out to me in March and whose final moments I relived just a few nights ago. His name is Jacob, but that discovery only led to more questions. Determined to find out who he was, I turned to the internet, searching for every clue I could find. I began with the testimony he gave me back in March and the name “Jacob” that Candle Face revealed during the vision a few days ago.
I started by Googling his name paired with “Missing Central Texas,” but nothing actionable came up. So, I refined the search, swapping “Central Texas” with specific towns and cities: Austin, Round Rock, and Georgetown. Still, nothing. It wasn’t until I tried “San Marcos” that something clicked. Suddenly, multiple hits appeared about a man named Jacob Newhouse from San Marcos, a college town south of Austin.
Jacob Newhouse, according to several local news reports, was 45 years old when he disappeared last year. He was last seen on November 28, 2023, and tragically, he was found dead on December 9, 2023. The reports state that foul play wasn’t suspected, but they did mention concerns about his mental health. Some sources suggested he might have been suicidal.
After finding his name, I turned to Facebook, hoping to learn more about this man who may have visited me as a lost soul. I found an account belonging to a Jacob Newhouse from San Marcos. The most recent posts were emotional—two desperate pleas for help on November 29, 2023, asking if anyone had seen him. These posts were made after Jacob went missing. According to a comment thread, someone had found Jacob’s phone and used it to send out those distress posts.
Scrolling through his older posts, I came across one from October 23, 2023. It showed a dirt path sloping down into a dense wooded area. The scene was similar to the one I saw in my vision. Could this be the exact place where Jacob ran, fleeing from shadows?
But the most terrifying revelation came when I stumbled upon a video post from October 5, 2023. In the video, Jacob was playing on what looked like a leather-bound instrument—perhaps a makeshift drum, or even a suitcase. As I hit play, my heart skipped a beat. The rhythm—it was the exact drumbeat I heard during my vision. The same beat that synchronized with my heartbeat and the flickering lights in my kitchen. The caption under the video simply read: “Help me… sound is… incomplete!!!”
I played the video over and over, trying to make sense of it. The beat was relentless yet mesmerizing, a hypnotic rhythm that Jacob seemed both proud of and frustrated with. At the end of the clip, he abruptly stops, shaking his head and waving his arms in frustration. That’s when I realized what he meant by “…incomplete.” Jacob was searching for the perfect ending, an elusive conclusion to his music. And in both his March testimony and my vision, Candle Face taunted him, mocking his obsessive quest for musical perfection.
The connection is too strong to ignore. Candle Face called me Jacob in the vision, and I found a “Jacob” who lived in San Marcos, played the same drumbeat, and went missing shortly before being found dead. What are the odds?
Personal Note to My Readers
I know some of you may notice something different in this journal entry—I included his name this time, despite me previously saying I wouldn’t reveal the names of the lost souls, out of respect for their living relatives. The truth is, I’m struggling with this decision every single day. How can I truly help these lost souls if I can’t reveal who I think they are? After all, the souls come to me to be identified. They want their stories told, their names spoken. If I don’t name them, what good is the information I discover? Intelligence, after all, must be actionable.
But is this the right action? By revealing names, am I helping them find peace, or am I dragging their families into a nightmare they never asked for? Am I opening wounds that should stay closed? What if I got the identities wrong?
I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m walking a razor’s edge between helping these souls and violating the privacy of their loved ones. If I reach out to Jacob’s family, will they see it as an act of compassion, or will they call me a freak, another lunatic obsessed with ghosts? I fear the latter, yet the pull to do something is almost unbearable.
I’m asking you, my readers, for your guidance. Should I continue to name these lost souls, even if it risks causing pain to their families? Should I reach out directly to their loved ones, knowing I might be branded as some sort of monster? Or do I keep their names hidden, knowing that this might mean leaving their stories unfinished, their souls still bound to Candle Face?
I don’t have the answers. I’m just trying to find a way to do right by these souls who reach out to me, and by their families who may or may not want to know the truth. If you have any advice, please let me know.
I’m haunted by Jacob’s drumbeat, by the plea in his music. Is it a cry for help, a message he’s desperate for me to decipher? Or is it simply the beat of a lost soul who can’t find his way home?
The lost souls are counting on us, and so am I.
While the name “Jacob” was revealed to me in a vision, I want to clarify that any connection to real individuals, including Jacob Newhouse from San Marcos, is based on publicly available information and shouldn’t be taken as definitive proof. My intention is not to cause distress to any living relatives, but rather to seek understanding and provide help to those who reach out to me.
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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