Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
June 7, 2024
I slept early last night. Just as I hit the pillow, the shadows in the living room corner began to flicker, along with the kitchen lights I left on to help cast a shadow in that corner. I sat up and saw two figures exit the portal and walk towards me. As they neared, I saw that one was a white man around 60. He was rather short, standing around 5’8” or so. The other lost soul was a much younger female, maybe 25 or younger. She appeared black or light-skinned Hispanic, but I couldn’t tell for sure.
The male spirit spoke first.
“Hello, Ray. Moana and I need your help.”
Moana looked puzzled. “What did you say?”
Standing to her left, the male spirit switched sides with Moana and nearly yelled in her right ear, “I told Ray we need his help.”
“Oh yes, Ray, we need your help,” she repeated.
We just looked at each other, waiting for the other to respond. I wanted to ask them how to help, but I knew better than to ask.
After looking around confused, Moana spoke. “Ray, we drowned in Lake Travis around 20 years ago. We both had dreams of Candle Face the night before. Even though we weren’t together the night before, we had the same dream from our own perspectives.”
The male spirit nodded. “I always believed in Candle Face, but I didn’t want to follow her directions, like bringing non-believers to her. I drew the line at participating in killings.”
“Me too, I didn’t want any part of that,” Moana added.
“In my dream, Candle Face said if I didn’t listen to her, I’d be her next victim,” the male spirit continued. “Moana had the same dream.”
The male spirit paused, then added, “Candle Face chooses her followers carefully. She targets those who already believe in her legend but are weak enough to manipulate. She preys on our fears and desires, making promises and threats in our dreams. We were chosen because we both had a history of dabbling in the paranormal and were curious about the other side. She exploited our curiosity and fear.”
Moana nodded in agreement. “She promised us power and knowledge beyond the grave if we brought non-believers to her. At first, it seemed harmless—just convincing people to believe in Candle Face’s power. But soon, she demanded more. She wanted us to lead people to their deaths, to feed her power.”
“We couldn’t do it,” the male spirit said, his voice shaking. “We refused to become murderers. But defying her came with a price.”
“Soon after we got in the middle of the lake that day, the boat nearly tipped over, and we both fell overboard. Moana didn’t know how to swim, so she went underwater. I dived down after her. Once I was underwater, I could see about a dozen skeletal figures grabbing her legs and pulling her down toward the bottom. I tried to pull her back up.”
Moana continued, “But the monsters were just too strong. They kept pulling me down to the bottom. I was almost out of air by then, but I saw a few more monsters on the bottom, holding up a large rock. I was placed at the bottom, and the rock was placed on top of me, finishing the job.”
The male spirit said, “I was almost out of air, too, but I continued to swim down after her. When the rock was in place, the group came after me. They, too, put me under a large rock. Our bodies are still under those rocks, near the marina where we launched the boat.”
“Ray, help free us from the rocks,” Moana pleaded. “If you can find our bodies, our souls will also be free from Candle Face. Please help us.”
The two spirits thanked me and walked back towards the portal. The male whispered something in Moana’s right ear, but I couldn’t hear it. They both stepped in and disappeared.
Personal Note to My Readers
During my high school years, I visited this general area often. I would jump off the cliffs at Pale Face and relax in the water at The Flats. I really enjoyed my time there hanging out with my friends. But many people have drowned in those waters, and many of their bodies were never recovered. It’s possible some of those who never resurfaced could be the “monsters” pulling down Moana and her male companion.
In December 2023, a Candle Face victim visited me to tell me his testimony. I kept putting off writing his story in my online journal. On February 13, 2024, he revisited me, hit me a few times, and even vomited in my mouth. He warned me not to ignore any more spirits. This spirit also drowned in Lake Travis while he was on an overnight boat trip with his two young sons.
Recently, an alarming pattern emerged: three spirits in a row who visited me were all victims of drowning, their lives claimed by Candle Face. This pattern prompts me to investigate deeper and understand the thread weaving through these spirits’ testimonies.
I think there have been four drowning victims so far, and there are likely many more. There have been a lot of bodies found in Town Lake or what the new generation of Austinites call Lady Bird Lake. Many believe there’s a serial killer on the loose.
A few months ago, hunched over my desk in the quiet night hours, I began my investigation. The stories of these lost souls, each ending in the cold embrace of water, point to a horrifying possibility: Candle Face is the serial killer responsible for the drowning deaths in Austin and nearby Lake Travis.
Despite the police’s best efforts, the cases remain unsolved, the only link being the victims’ supposed interactions with Candle Face. One of my visiting spirits thought he was helping a drowning child only to be pulled under the surface by Candle Face.
Water appears to play a significant role in Candle Face’s evil activities. Several of her killings are associated with bodies of water, and she often appears near lakes, rivers, and the creek near my childhood home. There are several eerie hypotheses about why water is so central to her actions:
Elemental Connection: Candle Face may have an elemental connection to water, using it as a conduit for her power. Water might amplify her abilities, allowing her to easily manipulate and kill her victims.
Portal to the Underworld: In some cultures, like the Mayans, bodies of water serve as portals to the underworld. Through these portals, she can drag her victims into a realm of eternal torment, beyond the reach of the living.
Manifestation of Fear: Water may manifest the deepest fears of her victims. Many people have a primal fear of drowning, and Candle Face exploits this fear to exert control and terror over her targets.
To understand Candle Face, on 30 October 2023, I interviewed an 82-year-old gentleman who claimed to have seen her. Around 1990, while walking his dog near the creek at the intersection of Wilson and El Paso Streets in Austin, TX, he saw a young girl with long dark hair seemingly bathing in the water. They locked eyes, and he thought he heard a voice asking, “Do you believe?” He whispered, “Yes.” He never saw her again, but he knew it was Candle Face.
Mr. Doe’s story, along with the spirits’ testimonies and the serial killer rumors, paints a disturbing picture of Candle Face as a vengeful ghost or a collective manifestation of the city’s fears. As the chosen confidant of these visitors, I find myself tasked with solving the case of the serial killer rumors that haunt Austin.
The task is daunting yet necessary. By weaving together the personal tragedies of the spirits with the broader story of fear and uncertainty that envelops Austin, I want to shed light that looms over the city and perhaps help prevent further tragedies in the waters of Town Lake, Lake Travis, and everywhere else Candle Face’s presence lingers.
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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