Subject of Interest:
The Scrolls of Souls
February 12, 2025
I never expected to hear from Mr. Smoe’s brother again. The last time we spoke, he had asked if I wanted to claim Mr. Smoe’s body since none of his family wanted it. I had said no, suspecting it was just a way to push the cost of burial onto me. That was supposed to be the end of it. But then, early this morning, he called again.
He said he had finished clearing out his brother’s house but found additional “cult” boxes in the attic. He didn’t want to deal with them, didn’t care what was inside. He just wanted them gone. He asked if I wanted them, but I had to pick them up in a day or two. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was worth the drive to Austin from Houston. The last boxes had been full of frantic notes, old maps, and the strange white and yellow notepads—pieces of a puzzle I was still struggling to put together.
I agreed to come. I jumped in my car and started my two-and-a-half-hour drive.
When I arrived at the house around noon, it felt different. The first time I had been here, after Mr. Smoe’s death, the air had felt stagnant and abandoned. As I stepped inside, it felt full of energy, even though the house was now empty of his belongings, except for the boxes in the attic. His brother led me to the attic door and pulled the cord. The ladder creaked as it unfolded. "They’re up there," he said. He didn’t offer to go up with me. He just turned and walked away.
Being a fan of late-night 80s horror movies, I knew what going into the attic meant, so I ensured the .45 on my right hip was secure. I climbed into the attic, the dim light of my camera light cutting through the dust. The boxes sat in the far corner, stacked neatly, as if someone had placed them there deliberately. When I opened the first box, I didn’t find maps or loose scraps of paper. I found scrolls. Hundreds of them. Each one was wrapped in yarn.
I ran my fingers over the parchment. The paper felt too thick, too smooth, too unnatural. It wasn’t like any paper I had handled before. It felt like skin. I unrolled one carefully, and as soon as my eyes fell on the inked characters, a voice—clear, human, real—spoke in my mind.
As I read the scroll, it was like a narrator was reading it for me. I rolled it back and secured it with the yarn. I read another one, then another. The voices didn’t belong to anyone I recognized. That's when it hit me. The words on the scroll weren’t just records. They weren’t stories. They were spirits. Spirits who were killed and forgotten.
Mr. Smoe had been housing these scrolls. But why? Had he known what they were? Or had he just been collecting them without realizing their purpose? I opened another box. More scrolls. Each rolled and sealed. Each containing a spirit, a voice that hadn’t been heard in years, decades, maybe centuries. Mr. Smoe wasn’t just an obsessive collector of strange notes. He was something else. Was he a registrar of the dead? But why?
The attic felt suffocating now. The presence of hundreds of forgotten voices filled the silent space. The air was thick with dust, and it was way past time to get out of here. I had no interest in staying up here any longer than necessary. This was not the place to go through them. Not alone. Not in the dark. My light beam felt weak, barely illuminating the boxes stacked around me, each one filled with names, stories, and questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
I exhaled and started packing. Thirteen boxes in all. They felt heavier than they should have, as if I were carrying more than just parchment.
With one last glance around the attic, I shut the boxes, carried them down, and loaded them into my vehicle. I’d go through them later, at home, in the light, where I could see what I had brought with me.
I wasn’t sure what I had discovered yet, but I knew this was bigger than anything I had found before. These weren’t just stories. They were lives, sealed in ink, waiting for someone to remember them.
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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