Identified? Candle Face Victim #2: Mama's Last Embrace

January 24, 2024

Main Subjects: Candle Face

• Victim #2

For the past three months, spirits claiming to be victims of Candle Face have been coming to me. Each one has asked for help finding their remains and identifying the people who killed them. I’ve done what I can, but so far it hasn’t amounted to much.

That may be starting to change.

A former colleague, a private investigator who worked 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, where I spoke openly about these spirits coming to me.

Watch the Beyond Believe Talk podcast here:

Note: Beyond Believe Paranormal Investigators pulled this video from YouTube.

Interested, he picked one of the cases, Victim #2, and turned up something that caught my attention.

I first encountered Victim #2 on November 18, 2023. She appeared to me as a young African American girl, around four or five years old. In her account, she said Candle Face lured her away from a swing in front of her mother’s mobile home in Austin, Texas. She also spoke about missing her “Mama” and “Granny.”

Using those details, he searched Austin missing-children cases for similar circumstances. That led him to the Charley Project website, where he found what appears to be a strong match: Tanisha Lorraine Watkins, who disappeared on January 5, 1984, at the age of two. According to the Charley Project, Tanisha vanished while playing on a swing outside her mother’s mobile home. Her mother stepped away from the kitchen window briefly, and when she looked back, Tanisha was gone.

Read the Charley Project report about Tanisha Lorraine Watkins here: https://charleyproject.org/case/tanisha-lorraine-watkins

Tanisha’s case closely matches the spirit’s account:

1. Both involve a mobile home.
2. Both involve a child playing on a swing before disappearing.
3. Both point to a young African American girl missing from Austin, Texas.
4. In both accounts, the child disappears in the short moment when her mother turns away.

These details line up too closely to dismiss. For the first time, I may have a real lead. Victim #2 may be Tanisha Lorraine Watkins. I can’t say that with certainty yet, but it’s the strongest connection I’ve found.

My next step is to look into this lead more carefully. Even if it means revisiting a very old case, it would move us one step closer to giving her, and possibly her family, some measure of peace.

After months of asking paranormal investigators, mediums, and psychics for help, I’ve started to accept that I may not need them as much as I thought. Maybe the spirits chose me for a reason. Maybe the reason is thirty years of working missing persons cases.

Outside help still has value, but I’m prepared to carry most of this work myself. Many of the people in that world are busy with their own podcasts, appearances, and merch, and that limits how much time they give to real cases. I’m in a different position. I can put my full attention on these Lost Souls and on the clues they leave behind.

Even so, I’m still struggling with what comes next, especially if Victim #2 really is Tanisha Lorraine Watkins, a little girl who disappeared forty years ago. How do I even begin to think about contacting her mother after all this time? I can’t just show up on her doorstep with this. If I ever reach that point, it will require caution, research, and probably advice from professionals, including social workers, on how to handle something that sensitive.

The other option is to hold off on contacting the family until I’m far more certain who she is. Emotionally, that may be the safer course. But it may also leave her waiting. For now, I’ll keep digging and move carefully, both for the spirits who have come to me and for the living people the truth may affect.

The investigation continues in the three most recent entries below. Each adds to the record on Candle Face (Isabel), the Lost Souls, and the Fugitives. You’ll find every entry to date in The Journal.