The Empty Lot Next Door: The Origin of Candle Face

December 28, 2023

Main Subjects: The Empty Lot Next Door

• Candle Face

Let me tell you the story I wrote about in my memoir, The Empty Lot Next Door. It began in the 1970s, when my family moved from the city projects to a small house in Austin, Texas. Back then, I was just a kid called Ray, and I was immediately drawn to the empty lot next door, a strange place where a house once stood. All that was left was a gaping hole in the back.

Our new neighborhood was packed with kids, and we turned that lot into our own playground. But it wasn’t just an ordinary patch of dirt. The lot came with a grim tale that terrified me and drew me in anyway. The house that once stood there had burned down years earlier, and rumor had it that a little girl died in the fire. According to the local kids, her ghost still haunted the lot and went after anyone daring or foolish enough to jump into that hole.

Being young and reckless, I couldn’t resist the challenge. I jumped into that hole to test the ghost story, and I’ve regretted it ever since. That’s when I first encountered the ghost I came to call “Candle Face,” named for her charred appearance. She invaded my dreams and even left handprints around the house in broad daylight.

But the story behind The Empty Lot Next Door goes deeper than a ghost. It came out of survival, kids left to fend for themselves while their parents worked long hours, facing real and imagined horrors. Sibling abuse and bullying left marks we didn’t understand at the time.

One day, I worked up the courage to face Candle Face. The standoff was fierce and terrifying, and I thought I had defeated her, banishing her back to hell.

After high school, I enlisted in the Army. The Army let me see the world and sharpen my analytical and investigative skills. In 2010, I wrote The Empty Lot Next Door, hoping it would bring closure for me, my family, and the friends who lived through it. For a time, it did.

Now that I’m retired and back in Texas, I’ve decided to find out whether Candle Face was real or just a product of childhood trauma. If she’s real, is she still out there? And who was she before she died?

Over the years, I’ve received countless emails from people claiming to have encountered Candle Face. I used to brush them off. But being back here made me curious enough to follow up. Most of the people I contacted were too terrified to talk, fearing her revenge. One man, an 82-year-old named Mr. John Doe, stood out. Unlike the others, he eventually agreed to talk.

I met with him in October 2023 under strict conditions of anonymity. During our face-to-face interview, Mr. Doe gave his account of the fire that destroyed the house next to where I grew up. According to him, the fire started when one of the children knocked over a gas can while the father was cleaning a carburetor in the kitchen. A young boy, whose name may have been Paul, died in that fire. His body was later recovered from the wreckage.

This clashed with what my friends and I had always believed as kids. We thought it was a young girl who had died and become Candle Face.

More than his account of the fire, I kept thinking about Mr. Doe’s belief in Candle Face. He described an encounter near the creek at Wilson and El Paso Streets in 1990 and offered me a piece of advice: “It’s better to believe, just in case. It’s akin to an insurance policy. If you believe, you’re safe. If not, you might end up with a visit.”

Since that interview, my nights have turned into a blur of nightmares much like the ones Mr. Doe described. Candle Face seems to be part of them, but the voices are harder to place. Some rise in shouts. Others fade into whispers. I can’t make out what they’re saying. I’m surrounded by voices that argue, cry, and plead.

Are these visions hallucinations, or are they messages from Candle Face herself?

Maybe she’s been waiting for me all along.

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.