The Empty Lot Next Door

The Empty Lot Next Door

More than a ghost story

The First Record of Candle Face

Before Candle Face Chronicles existed, there was only a memory.

In the late 1970s, my family moved into an old house on Ben Howell Drive in Austin, Texas. Next door was an empty lot where a house had once stood before it burned to the ground. At the back of that lot was a strange hole in the earth. No one could clearly explain why it was there.

Neighborhood children told stories about the fire, the girl who died in it, and the warning tied to the hole left behind. The details changed depending on who told them. Some said the whole family had been buried in the lot. Others said only the girl had died. But one part of the story stayed the same. Anyone who jumped into the hole would be haunted by her.

Eventually, curiosity got the better of me. One night, I jumped into the hole to prove the story was only a rumor. At the time, I believed I had settled the matter.

I was wrong.

That choice marked the beginning of something that followed me for years.

The Origin of the Investigation

The Empty Lot Next Door is my award-winning and best-selling (First Edition) memoir that first documented those childhood events. It was written long before Candle Face Chronicles became a larger investigation.

The book recounts my experiences growing up in Austin during the late 1970s and mid 1980s. What began as ordinary childhood exploration slowly turned into something far more disturbing. A presence began appearing in my dreams. Strange signs began showing up around our home. Handprints appeared on windows where none should have been.

I eventually gave the figure a name.

Candle Face.

The name came from the burned appearance of the little girl who began appearing in my dreams. Her face looked as though it had been melted by fire.

At the time, I believed these experiences were something I needed to forget.

Instead, they became the foundation of everything that followed.

The Story Inside the Book

The Empty Lot Next Door is more than a ghost story. It's a record of childhood lived under a quiet and constant fear.

The book explores the strange events surrounding the empty lot and the burned house that once stood there. It also tells the story of growing up in a family struggling with poverty, instability, and silence. Many things went unspoken in our home and neighborhood. The haunting became one more secret I carried alone.

The empty lot eventually became the center of our childhood world. My friends and I played there, built a treehouse in the large oak tree, and spent endless afternoons exploring the area. Yet the strange hole at the back of the lot never stopped troubling me.

The more I tried to disprove the legend, the deeper the mystery became.

How It Connects to Candle Face Chronicles

Decades later, memories from that time began returning.

The handprints.
The dreams.
The burned face of the little girl.

Those memories eventually led to a new investigation into the identity of the spirit I once called Candle Face. That investigation became Candle Face Chronicles.

The Lost Souls, The Fugitives, Isabel, and the later discoveries all trace their origin back to the events described in The Empty Lot Next Door.

Without that childhood experience, Candle Face Chronicles would never have existed.

Learn More About The Empty Lot Next Door

The full story of those events is told in The Empty Lot Next Door, originally published in 2010 and later revised in a second edition in 2023. The first version was written as a young adult story. The second edition reworks that material into a more accurate account of what happened.

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The Empty Lot Next Door

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Also Available on Amazon

You can purchase The Empty Lot Next Door directly from my website or from Amazon. Each option has its advantages. Buying here means you'll receive a personally signed copy and directly support me as an indie author, since Amazon takes a significant percentage of sales and doesn't offer signed copies. However, Amazon provides faster and sometimes free shipping, plus easy returns, whereas signed copies from my website are non-returnable. The choice is yours, and I appreciate your support either way!

The Empty Lot Next Door

Read The Journal

For more details about Candle Face (Isabel), The Lost Souls, and The Fugitives, visit my journal. There, you'll find entries that explore their past, document findings, and invite you to take part in the investigations.