Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
The Lost Souls
January 24, 2024
For the last three months, I’ve had visits from spirits who claim to be victims of Candle Face. They’ve each asked me for help finding their remains and identifying whoever is responsible for their deaths. So far, I’ve tried my best but haven’t really succeeded in giving them any closure.
That may be changing now.
A former colleague of mine—a private investigator who worked on missing persons cases with me—happened to see my appearance on the January 11, 2024, episode of Beyond Believe Talk , hosted by Beyond Believe Paranormal Investigators, in which I spoke openly about these spirits coming to me.
Intrigued, he did his own digging and found some surprising details about one of them: Victim #2 .
I first encountered Victim # 2 on November 18, 2023. She came to me as a young African American girl, around four or five years old. According to her story, she was lured away from her swing by Candle Face, right in front of her mother’s mobile home in Austin, Texas. She spoke briefly about missing her “Mama” and “Granny,” saying she could still feel their love.
Using that information, my former colleague searched for missing children from Austin who disappeared under similar circumstances. His search led him to The Charley Project website, where he found a strong match: a missing girl named Tanisha Lorraine Watkins from Austin, Texas, who went missing on January 5, 1984, at the age of two. The Charley Project notes that Tanisha disappeared while playing on a swing outside her mother’s mobile home. Her mother briefly moved away from the kitchen window, and when she returned, Tanisha was gone.
Read the Charley Project report about Tanisha Lorraine Watkins.
The parallels between Tanisha’s case and the young spirit’s story are impossible to ignore:
Both mention a mobile home setting.
Both describe a child playing on a swing before being lured or disappearing.
Both references point to an African American girl missing from Austin, Texas.
Both the spirit and this missing child case center on a heartbreakingly short timeline—in the spirit’s account, she was lured away the moment her mother’s back was turned; Tanisha’s mother also stepped away briefly.
The similarities between the missing person's report and the testimony by the spirit are striking:
Description |
Missing Persons Report |
Spirit's Testimony |
Race |
Black |
Black |
Gender |
Female |
Female |
Age |
Two years old |
Appeared to be 4-5 years old |
Missing location |
Austin, TX |
Austin, TX |
Time missing |
Winter |
Winter |
Hairstyle |
Braided |
Braided |
Living condition |
Lived in a mobile home |
Lived in a mobile home |
Relatives |
Lived with mother and great-grandmother |
Lived with "Mama" and "Granny" |
Last Seen |
While playing on a swing in front of a mobile home |
While playing on a swing in front of a mobile home |
These details line up in a way that’s more than coincidence. We have a potentially solid lead for the first time: the possibility that Victim # 2 might be Tanisha Lorraine Watkins. It’s still not certain, but it’s the strongest connection we’ve had so far.
My next steps will be to investigate this lead more thoroughly. If Tanisha truly is Victim # 2, maybe we can find more information about the circumstances of her disappearance. Even if it means reopening a very old case, at least we’ll be moving one step closer to giving her—and her family—some measure of peace.
After months of reaching out to paranormal investigators, mediums, and psychics, I’ve come to realize I might not rely on them as much as I once thought. Initially, I assumed these cases needed the collective efforts of the paranormal community. But the more I look into this, the more it seems that the spirits chose me specifically—perhaps sensing the unique set of skills I already possess. After all, I do have over three decades of intelligence and investigative experience.
This doesn’t mean I’m dismissing the value of outside help entirely, but I’m prepared to carry most of the investigative burden on my own. Many of these experts are caught up in their own podcasts, appearances, and projects, which can limit the time and energy they devote to deeper cases. Meanwhile, I’m in a position to focus all my efforts on assisting these lost souls and exploring the clues they provide.
That said, I’m still wrestling with the question of what to do next, especially when it comes to Victim #2 —the little girl I believe could be Tanisha Lorraine Watkins, who disappeared four decades ago. How do I approach the possibility of contacting her mother after so many years? It’s not something I can just reveal at her doorstep. This step may require careful research and possibly consulting professionals like social workers, who can advise me on how to handle such sensitive news with empathy and respect.
Alternatively, I could choose not to contact the family at all, at least until I have absolute certainty regarding the spirit’s identity. It’s a safer approach emotionally, but it may leave the spirit without the closure she’s seeking. There’s still a lot I need to learn and decide. For now, I’ll continue digging deeper, following the leads, and taking care with every step I take—both for the spirits who’ve chosen me and for the living who the truth might impact.
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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