Identified? Candle Face Victim #2: Mama's Last Embrace
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Time to read 4 min
Three months of testimonies, and finally a possible break. A former colleague who saw my podcast went looking on his own and found a decades-old Austin missing-child case that matches Victim #2's account almost point for point. I can't be certain yet, but it's the strongest lead I've had.
January 24, 2024
Main subjects:
- Victim #2
Candle Face
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 have done what I can, though; so far, I haven’t been able to give them much closure.
That may be starting to change.
A former colleague of mine, 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: www.facebook.com/kimmikorpse/videos/337451305770787
Interested, he started looking into one of the cases on his own and turned up something that caught my attention. He focused on Victim #2.
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,” and said she could still feel their love.
Using those details, my former colleague searched for missing children from Austin whose cases involved similar circumstances. That led him to the Charley Project website, where he found what appears to be a strong match: Tanisha Lorraine Watkins of Austin, Texas, 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:
Both involve a mobile home.
Both involve a child playing on a swing before disappearing.
Both point to a young African American girl missing from Austin, Texas.
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 have found so far.
My next step is to look into this lead more carefully. If Tanisha is Victim #2, then there may be more to learn about what happened to her. 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 reaching out to paranormal investigators, mediums, and psychics, I have started to accept that I may not need to rely on them as much as I once thought. At first, I believed these cases would require the wider paranormal community. As I work through this, it increasingly seems the spirits may have chosen me for a reason, perhaps because of the skills I already bring to this. I have over three decades of intelligence and investigative experience.
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? That isn’t something I can simply show up and say at her doorstep. 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 with care.
The other option is to hold off on contacting the family unless I reach a far higher level of certainty about the spirit’s identity. Emotionally, that may be the safer course. But it may also leave the spirit without the closure she’s asking for. There’s still a great deal I need to figure out. For now, I’ll keep digging, follow the lead where it goes, and move carefully with each step, both for the spirits who have come to me and for the living people the truth may affect.
Arthur Mills
Arthur Mills served for more than two decades as an Army Intelligence Warrant Officer, specializing in piecing together what others missed: patterns, threats, enemy intent, and clandestine activity. He trained intelligence professionals, built threat models, and briefed commanders and world leaders on global threats and battlefield strategy. After retiring from the military, he moved into private investigation, focusing on missing persons, human trafficking, opposition research, and domestic terrorism. He holds a degree in Counter Terrorism Studies.
He has been writing books since 2006 and is an award-winning author. He publishes under his own name, though much of what he has written has appeared under pseudonyms. Readers may already know those titles without knowing they are his. The separation is intentional. His books invite readers to interpret what is hidden, and so does the way he publishes them.