Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
December 15, 2023
I stayed up later than usual tonight, assuming there wouldn’t be a visit since these nightly encounters typically happen every five to eight days. My wife had gone to bed earlier, so I was by myself, casually scrolling through Facebook and watching YouTube videos.
That’s when it happened—I saw movement in the corner of my eye, coming from the sunroom, which was pitch black by midnight.
She hovered there, as though waiting for me to notice her. I opened the double doors and stepped into the room. I must have gotten too close, because she backed away a few steps. There was exhaustion in her eyes, and she looked worn down, yet at the same time, she radiated a desperate need to tell me something.
Once she started speaking, she kept having to pause—her words interrupted by deep sobs. Still, she did her best to hold it together and share her story:
It was the autumn of 2011, a season of change, but for me, it marked the beginning of an unending nightmare. It started innocently enough—just a dark bedroom, cold and quiet. Then, from the corner of the room, something moved—a figure crawling deliberately. It was Candle Face.
She came to the foot of my bed and slowly rose to kneel before me. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just waited. It felt like some kind of ritual—a communion both sacred and terrifying. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible, “Do you believe?”
I did believe. I always had, even when people in town laughed it off as superstition. I wasn’t lying. “Yes,” I answered back, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst. Fear and something else—exhilaration, maybe—mixed in my chest like a drumbeat.
Her reply was simple, her voice like a sizzling breeze against my skin—both burning and chilling. “Thank you.” And just like that, it was over. I’d wake up gasping in the pale light of dawn, shaken but ready to pretend it hadn’t happened.
But the dreams changed in the weeks that followed. They stopped feeling like dreams at all. I wasn’t just watching anymore. Candle Face started taking me to places I can only describe as endless, empty spaces where she showed me the horrors she inflicted on disbelievers. I could hear their screams, and every time, she’d turn to me and say, “Bring more to me.” I would then jerk awake, drenched in sweat.
Then, one night, I was lying in bed, watching TV like always, when the room shifted. Shadows stretched across the walls, and she was again, slithering out from the corner. This time, her presence was more solid. There was no mistaking her purpose.
“Find them,” she hissed, her voice sharp and grating, cutting through me like a blade. “Bring me the disbelievers, and I’ll reward you.”
My voice trembled, but I forced myself to answer. “I believe in you, but I won’t do this. I won’t bring them to you.”
She moved closer, her form taking on an eerie solidity. “Belief is only the beginning. Your soul is the prize.”
Again, she repeated her demand, her voice a low, serpentine whisper: “Bring me the disbelievers, and I’ll reward you.”
Those nights became a cycle I couldn’t escape—her demands replaying in my ears, her presence haunting my every moment. During the day, I could still hear her voice, faint but constant. But no matter how relentless she was, I resisted. I’d fought my own demons before, and I wasn’t about to bow to her.
But Candle Face doesn’t wait forever. One night, as the wind howled outside and the room filled with a suffocating dread, her patience ran out. She came for me, her anger obvious. I couldn’t move as she began her assault; starting at my feet, she started to consume me. The pain was beyond anything I’d ever known, burning from the inside out. She took me piece by piece, stripping away everything until there was nothing left of me.
Now, I’m not me anymore. I’m part of her. I see the world through her empty eyes, her sockets filled with evil. I watch as she moves through the night, spreading fear, consuming those who deny her. I’m trapped, a silent observer to her chaos, unable to stop it, unable to escape.
She retreated into the corner from where she emerged. Before completely disappearing, she said, “Help me, Ray. Please find my body somewhere in the Barton Creek Greenbelt...”
Before she could utter another word, two skeletal arms burst from the portal behind her. With a force so violent, her legs were lifted off the ground as she was yanked back into the portal. Accompanying this terrifying scene was a scream so disturbing, so filled with agony and fear, it seemed to echo endlessly throughout the house.
I hurried downstairs, needing to capture every detail of what she shared. My hands were shaking, and my heart ached with guilt over what she’d just gone through—maybe as a result of revealing too much to me. In the chaos, I lost some of the finer points of her story, and I’m sorry for that.
Personal Note to My Readers
This is the second time I’ve seen a spirit apparently suffer consequences for either touching me or saying too much. I’ve been trying my best to help these lost souls, but I’m starting to worry that I haven’t held up my end of the deal. As I share their stories, it’s becoming clear that I might be making things worse instead of better.
Doubts are creeping in, and I’m questioning whether I’m the right person for this job—so far, I haven’t really been able to help them in a meaningful way.
I don’t think I can keep doing this alone. If any paranormal investigators, mediums, or psychics aren’t afraid to get involved, I could use your help.
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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