Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
March 4, 2024
I think I finally dozed off sometime around 4:00 a.m., after hours on the couch scrolling through Facebook and watching YouTube videos. Suddenly, my house alarm blared, jolting me out of sleep. In the confusion, I caught sight of a man dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt. He began speaking right away, not giving me a second to wake up or gather my thoughts fully.
In Austin, Candle Face isn’t just some campfire story. She’s a warning—a reminder that not everything can be explained away. But me? I didn’t buy into it. I’m a software engineer. Logic, reason, science—that’s what made sense to me. Ghosts? Ghouls? They were just figments of overactive imaginations.
My run-in with Candle Face started like any other night. I was deep into my work, the glow of my screen the only light in my apartment. Everything was normal until it wasn’t. The air got hot. I brushed it off at first, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.
She was standing there—small, charred, and completely unreal. Her face looked like it had been burned away, but her eyes locked on mine. I froze.
“Why do you reject my existence?” she asked, her voice calm. Too calm.
I shook my head, trying to stay rational. “Ghosts aren’t real. You’re just... I don’t know, a trick of the mind.”
She didn’t flinch. “Am I?” she asked. Her voice was steady, but there was something sad about it, like she’d heard it all before. “Is it not arrogant to dismiss what you cannot explain?”
I stood up, hoping that if I moved, this... thing would disappear. “You’re a myth. A story. That’s all you are.”
She stepped closer, and the heat in the room spiked. “Your disbelief offends me. It denies the pain of my existence.”
I turned back to my computer, trying to block her out. “You’re not real,” I muttered, though even I could hear the crack in my voice.
She laughed, this low, soft sound that crawled under my skin. “You will learn,” she said. “In time.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt like someone was watching me. I kept seeing her face in my head, burned and twisted. The shadows in my apartment seemed to move on their own. Even the quiet wasn’t right—it was too still.
The next day, I tried to shake it off, but something had changed. I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder, couldn’t stop thinking about her. It felt ridiculous—me, letting some creepy vision get to me—but I couldn’t help it.
Things only got worse. Objects started shifting around the apartment. I’d feel these sudden bursts of heat for no reason. And her voice... her voice was everywhere. “Why will you not believe?” she’d ask, over and over, like she was trying to wear me down.
I started staying out as late as I could, wandering the streets of Austin just to avoid going home. But even out there, I couldn’t escape her. She was always just out of sight—close enough that I could feel her, but far enough that I couldn’t prove it.
One night, I’d had enough. I was tired, I was scared, and I wanted answers. “What do you want from me?” I yelled into the empty apartment.
She appeared, stepping out of the shadows like she’d been waiting for me to ask. “Belief,” she said. “Acknowledge my pain.”
I shook my head, still clinging to whatever logic I had left. “I can’t... I can’t believe in something that doesn’t make sense.”
Her expression changed—like she was disappointed, but also angry. “Then you leave me no choice,” she said.
And just like that, everything around me changed. The walls of my apartment faded, and I wasn’t in Austin anymore. I was somewhere else—somewhere extremely hot and empty. She stood there, glowing faintly, her hollow eyes fixed on me.
“Where am I?” I asked, my voice shaking.
She tilted her head. “In the place of the disavowed. A place for those who deny the truth.”
Panic hit me. “Let me go. I’ll believe, I swear!”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s too late for that,” she said with an evil smirk.
I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. She moved closer, her burned hands reaching out for me.
“Please!” I begged, the fear finally breaking through. “I believe in you! I do!”
She didn’t stop. Her hand touched my face, and it was like fire seared through me. I screamed, but there was no one to hear.
After that, I was gone. They found my apartment untouched, but no sign of me. The people around here talk about it, though. They say I was taken by Candle Face—punished for not believing.
Without saying a word, he turned around, walked back into the dark corner of my living room, and disappeared. I checked my surveillance footage, but there was no sign of my nocturnal visitor.
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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