Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
February 21, 2024
Another wet, lost soul visited me. It started with the sound of wet footsteps and water dripping onto my face, jarring me awake. The moment I opened my eyes, he barked, “Wake up, we’re doing this now.”
Still half-asleep, I forced myself to sit up, rubbing my eyes and trying to shake off the grogginess. He fixed me with a hard stare. “You ready yet?” he demanded, his voice resonating with urgency and frustration. I nodded in uneasy agreement, unsure what else to do. Without wasting another moment, he launched into his story:
Downtown Austin at night isn’t for the faint of heart, and I lived right on the edges of it, where most people wouldn’t dare to go. Being homeless meant staying detached from the world—survival didn’t leave much room for anything else. Days and nights blurred together, and laughter was rare. Mockery, though? That came easy. It was my way of coping, my armor against how harsh things really were.
The stories about Candle Face, the ghost child, always made the rounds among the homeless. To me, they were nothing but entertainment. I’d laugh at anyone who believed in her—some burnt-up kid haunting people who didn’t believe in ghosts? It sounded ridiculous.
I had a spot near Town Lake, under Congress Avenue, where I could be alone, away from downtown’s chaos. It was my little corner of quiet, and I didn’t have to listen to the others talk about Candle Face like she was real. I’d poke fun at them every chance I got.
“Why waste time on that nonsense?” I’d say, shaking my head. “A ghost kid? Come on, we’ve got real problems to deal with.”
But one night, when the fog started rolling in over Town Lake, something shut me up real quick. She showed up—a small figure stepping out of the mist. Her face was burned so badly it didn’t even look human anymore.
“Why do you mock my pain?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it radiated around me. It had this strange, sorrowful sound that didn’t belong to a kid.
I tried to brush it off. “You’re not real. You’re just some story people made up to scare each other.” I even laughed, thinking maybe I’d had too much to drink.
But she kept coming closer. The air got really hot, and I couldn’t pretend she wasn’t real anymore. “I am as real as the suffering you live with every day,” she said. “So why do you mock those who believe in me?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I shrugged, trying to act like I didn’t care. “It’s easier to laugh than to believe in ghost stories.”
She tilted her head, looking at me like she understood more about me than I wanted her to. “You know what it feels like to be invisible, unheard. So why deny others their belief?”
“Belief doesn’t put food in my stomach or keep me warm at night,” I snapped.
After that, she started showing up every night. It didn’t matter if I wanted to see her or not—she was just there. The more I mocked her, the more real she became. People started noticing, too. They talked about me, said I was losing it. “He’s taunting her,” they’d say. “She’s going to get him.”
And they were right.
The night it all ended, she was waiting by the edge of Town Lake, her shape half-hidden in the fog. “Your mockery ends tonight,” she said, her voice echoing off the water.
I felt this heat in my chest, like something had grabbed hold of my heart. I couldn’t keep up the tough act anymore. “What are you going to do to me?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“You will see,” she said. “It is time you understood the cost of your ridicule.”
Before I could move, the ground under me gave way, and I went straight into the lake. The water was freezing, and I fought to get to the surface, but something kept pulling me down.
I saw her under the water. Her burned face was right there in front of me, her empty eyes staring straight through me.
“Why?” I managed to choke out.
“Your mockery brought you here,” she said, her voice calm but final. “You denied others their pain. Now, you will face your own.”
I tried to scream, but the water swallowed me whole. Everything went dark, and the last thing I saw was her fading away, leaving me alone in the cold.
They found my body the next day, floating near the shore. The news talked about another drowning in Town Lake. Some people said it was a serial killer, but the homeless community knew better. Candle Face had claimed another victim—someone who mocked her believers.
He finished telling his story and made a move like he was about to backhand me. I flinched, and he laughed, clearly enjoying that I was startled. Then he did it again. This time, I didn’t flinch. Instead, I stood up and shoved him. To my surprise, I actually touched him—my hands connected with his chest. It was the first time I’ve had any physical contact with a lost soul. His eyes went wide, and he let out a horrible, waterlogged gasp. I stepped forward and shoved him again, pushing him toward the portal. Seeing I was ready for another move, he backed up and disappeared into the portal.
Personal Note to My Readers
Once he was gone, I found myself right back at my computer, feeling compelled to write down everything he said. But as I stared at the screen, I couldn’t shake a question: Why bother sharing this particular spirit’s story? To be honest, I don’t feel much sympathy for him. A big part of me wants him to remain stuck in Candle Face’s lair forever. My reaction was anger and a strange sense of satisfaction at pushing him. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve done more than shove him.
Even so, here I am, typing it all out. Maybe it’s a sense of responsibility, or maybe it’s just my way of trying to understand the tangle of his story and Candle Face’s role in it. Either way, I decided to record every word. By doing so, I’m not just giving voice to someone stuck in a nightmare—In writing it all down, I’m trying to wrestle with my anger and my curiosity, realizing that, for better or worse, this story needs to be told.
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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