Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
December 30, 2023
Last night, I slept on the couch again. As usual, I left a light on, letting it cast that familiar shadow in the far corner—a kind of beacon for my nocturnal visitors. This time, a spirit showed up right as I was dozing off. Unlike others before her, she radiated anger rather than sadness. She looked around my living room, almost as if expecting someone else to be there. When she realized I was alone, she came closer but stayed in the shadows, keeping just enough distance to hide her face.
Here’s her story:
It was one of those sweltering nights when the air feels heavy, like you’re wearing layers of jackets you can’t take off. Our group always gathered at this old café. We’d talk for hours about anything and everything, but that night, someone brought up Candle Face.
My friends described her as this terrifying, vengeful ghost. I didn’t buy it. To prove how little I cared, I showed off my devil tattoo—it’s on my butt, a private little rebellion against stories I found ridiculous. They laughed, and so did I. It felt harmless at the time.
But as the weeks turned into months, Candle Face stopped being just a story. She started creeping into my dreams. At first, it was faint voices and hisses, her voice twisting through the edges of my mind. Then she began speaking to me, urging me to kill for her, to target non-believers. I refused every time. It seemed to amuse her, like my resistance was just part of her game.
My friends noticed something was off. They told me I seemed distant, distracted. “You should talk to someone,” they said, their concern genuine—or so I thought. I didn’t tell them about the dreams. I didn’t want to scare them, and I wasn’t ready to admit how scared I was myself.
Then the dreams escalated. One night, Candle Face pulled me from my bed into the shadows. The air was hot, and every movement felt like dragging through water. In the dim light, I saw faces—my friends’ faces. They weren’t clear, but I could hear them speaking, their words feeding Candle Face’s presence, making her stronger. It hit me like a punch: they were part of this.
The next day, I went to the café as usual, but everything felt different. I watched them closely, listening to the way they talked about Candle Face. They knew too much, spoke too easily about things that felt too specific. Their smiles felt hollow, their words rehearsed. I realized then that I wasn’t just a bystander. I was part of their plan, whether I liked it or not.
That night, Candle Face came for me again. She was more vivid than ever. “Are you ready to meet the devil?” she asked.
I laughed in her face. “The devil’s not half as scary as the friends who betrayed me,” I said.
As the shadows closed in around me, her grin widened. My laughter echoed, defiant and hollow, as I disappeared into her lair.
-----
The next day, my seat at the café was empty. My friends—if I can even call them that—pretended to mourn, but I could see the cracks in their facade. They knew what had happened. They had sealed my fate, and now they were left to live with it.
After she finished telling her story, she gave me a forced smile and let out a nervous laugh before slipping back into the portal. Left on my own, I sat there, replaying her words in my mind. Her experience was steeped in betrayal—how it can outweigh friendship—and it got me thinking: does fear really carry more weight than loyalty? Even Candle Face has mentioned betrayal. Clearly, I still have a lot to learn.
Personal Note to My Readers
During this encounter, I tried harder than usual to understand her words and catch a better glimpse of her. I was hoping to see her features more clearly, to understand her story on a deeper level. But she seemed to notice my extra attention and kept moving deeper into the shadows, staying out of sight.
Her reaction made it clear she sensed the change in how I engaged with her, and I suspect it cut our conversation short. Moving forward, I’ll need to rethink my approach. These spirits are sharing something deeply personal and painful, and I have to be careful not to push them away.
Navigating these encounters alone isn’t easy, but each one teaches me something new. I just hope I’m learning fast enough to truly help them.
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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