Candle Face Chronicles: The Night I Became The Murderer

November 9, 2024

The Lost Souls’ testimonies are becoming more vivid with each visit. I’ve been documenting every word, every glimpse of their final moments, hoping to piece together the facts behind their deaths. But some details remain out of reach. It’s like working a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, always close but never quite there.

I’ve tried everything: late nights, old notes, new techniques. I’ve hit a wall. For a year now, I’ve asked the paranormal community, investigators, psychics, mediums, anyone who might help identify these Lost Souls and the stories behind their deaths. Every time, it’s the same response. They’re too busy, too wrapped up in their own pursuits. What happened to the willingness to help?

Finding readers has been just as difficult. I’m competing against millions of other authors chasing the next viral story. Meanwhile, I’m trying to solve real cases and bring peace to souls who haunt me every night. I’m practically begging readers to get involved, and it feels like I’m screaming into a room where no one hears me.

Every now and then, I question if all of this is worth it. The exhaustion of trying to reach a disinterested audience is wearing me down. But then, late at night, when the Lost Souls return, desperate and pleading, I know I can’t turn away. I can’t abandon them. I keep hoping they might offer fresh clues if I can just get a few dedicated readers to notice. More eyes catch what I miss, especially when the memories are broken.

But here I am again, mostly on my own. It’s a lonely road, but it’s the one I chose. I’ve said it before. I know I have to do the heavy lifting. Even so, part of me still hopes someone will step forward.

Tonight, I stopped waiting, for help and for another half-ass testimony. I pushed my abilities as far as they would go. The idea came in a moment of frustration: what if I could see through the killers’ eyes? What if I could use remote viewing and the crystal ball to become the one who took their lives?

I dimmed the lights in my dining room. I could feel the tension in the air, as if the very shadows were watching, waiting to see what I would do. I placed my hands on the crystal ball, the cold surface familiar yet different this time, resisting me. My fingers trembled.

The mist inside the ball began to swirl, faster and faster, as if something within it was waking up. I could feel it pulling at me like a magnet. For a moment, I hesitated. Was this really the path I wanted to take? Was I prepared for what I might see? But it was too late to turn back. I closed my eyes, letting go of everything: my identity, my thoughts, my fears. I let the crystal ball pull me in.

And then, suddenly, everything shifted. I was no longer myself. I was him: the killer.

The Vision (The Killer's Point of View)

I pace the room and try not to hit her. The whiskey sits hot in my gut, and every word out of her mouth makes it worse. Bills. Drinking. The way I act around people. Same old crap. She keeps at it like I’m supposed to stand there and take it.

“Why can’t you just be quiet for once?” I yell.

She keeps talking.

My jaw aches from clenching it. My hands will not stay still. My knuckles are still split from the last time I punched the wall. She sees how mad I am and keeps going anyway, looking at me like I’m nothing.

I try to hold it in. I tell myself to walk out, sit down, do anything else. But she will not stop. She always has to keep going. Always one more word. Always one more look.

Then she spits at me.

It hits my cheek and the corner of my mouth. Warm. Wet. For a second, everything goes blank. Then I hit her. Hard. My fist lands before I even know I moved. Her face jerks to the side and she drops.

I go down with her, close enough to smell blood and sweat. Her eyes are still open. Still looking at me like she isn’t scared. Like she’s still better than me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, but I don’t mean it. I just want her quiet.

Then she spits at me again.

That tears the last bit of control out of me.

“You don’t get to look at me like that!”

I get to my feet and bring my boot down on her head. I feel it all the way up my leg. I do it again. And again. Blood jumps across the floor and walls. Bone gives under my heel. I keep stomping until her face is gone and the room is finally quiet.

I stand there trying to breathe. My chest burns. My hands will not stop shaking. I look down at her and lean toward what is left of her right ear.

“Carmen, you should’ve just listened.”

Then the panic hits.

She wasn’t supposed to die tonight.

I stare at what is left of her and feel the liquor clear just enough for the fear to get in.

“She’s going to be furious,” I say to the empty room. “I was supposed to wait. I was supposed to sacrifice you later.”

What have I done?

Personal Note to My Readers

After that vision, I couldn’t get past the name I heard him say: Carmen. The experience was so vivid, so visceral, that even after coming back to myself, I could still feel his rage, the force of each brutal strike of his boot, and the twisted satisfaction that came with it. I went back through my old journal entries, combing through them for anything that might connect. And then it hit me. On June 5, 2024, a spirit had come to me, identifying herself as Cayman. She spoke of a violent death at the hands of her husband, but at the time, I wasn’t certain if that was her real name or if I had simply misunderstood. What convinces me now is one specific overlap between that earlier testimony and tonight’s vision: in both accounts, she spat at him twice. That’s too exact to dismiss.

After living through this vision tonight, I’m starting to believe that I wasn’t just witnessing a killer’s memories. I was the killer.

I believe I became the husband, the one who killed Candle Face Victim #32, whom I had documented as Clean Shaven. Everything lines up: the rage, the twisted justifications, the spitting, the panic when he realized he had killed her too soon, and the name Carmen spoken in that final moment.

Writing about this was harder than anything I’ve done before. The vision pulled me in until I was trapped inside it, feeling his anger, his intoxicated thrill, his need to silence her. Remote viewing and the crystal ball didn’t just show me his memories. They put me inside them. In a strange twist, I’ve become interactive with the Lost Souls’ killers instead of my readers being interactive with me.

I never expected this ability. It’s powerful and terrifying. For a year now, I’ve documented the Lost Souls’ accounts from a certain distance. Now, I’ve crossed a line I never imagined I would. I’m no longer just listening to their stories. I’m becoming part of them, stepping into the very people who ended their lives.

If I can slip into the mind of a killer this easily, what does that mean for me? Am I losing myself in the process? Remote viewing and the crystal ball have unlocked something I’m not sure I can control, or even want to. Will this ability help solve these cases, or will it consume me?

For now, I have to keep piecing together the lives of these Lost Souls, hoping to find answers. I’m left wondering who I’m becoming, and whether there will come a time when I can no longer tell the difference between myself and the memories I’m inhabiting.

I can’t stop now. I owe it to these Lost Souls to keep going, no matter the cost. Every time I reach for that crystal ball, I wonder if this might be the moment I lose myself for good.