The death of Elisa Lam on the premises of Cecil Hotel remains one of the most chilling and bizarre cases in recent times.
Do you remember the haunted hotel from The Shining? There’s a hotel in downtown Los Angeles that makes Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel seem tame by comparison.
The Cecil Hotel in LA has been the location of several suicides, murders, and mysterious disappearances for several decades.
The most infamous death to ever occur at the Cecil Hotel happened in February 2013 when the body of 21-year-old Canadian student Elisa Lam was discovered inside a water tank on the hotel’s roof.
The exact circumstances of her death remain a mystery but her story is inevitably tied to the nightmare hotel where she met her end.
Background
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Los Angeles, CA is one of the world’s top travel destinations and a bustling metropolis, but in the 1920s the city had only just started to boom, bolstered by the Hollywood film industry and it’s silent movie productions.
It was during this time in 1924 that the Cecil Hotel opened its doors. Billing itself as a destination for middle-class Americans, it featured seven hundred rooms and affordable rates.
But it wasn’t long after opening that the hotel began to gain its notorious reputation. By the time the Great Depression hit in the 30s, the hotel had become known as a hub for traveling salesmen and transients.
It was during this time that the hotel gained its nickname: The Suicide Inn.
The dark history
In 1931, the first successful suicide happened at the Cecil when 46-year-old W.K. Norton overdosed on pills. In 1932, a 25-year-old man shot himself in his hotel room.
In 1933, a man was pinned to the hotel by a large truck and died. Also in 1934, 53-year-old Louis Borden killed himself by slashing his own throat with a razor.
In 1937, 25-year-old Grace Magro committed suicide by jumping from her hotel room onto the street below. She fell through telephone wires, which were found tangled around her dead body.
In 1938, a man named Roy Thompson jumped from his room and died and in 1940, the Cafe Manager of the hotel was shot and killed.
In 1954, Helen Gurnee committed suicide by jumping from a seventh-floor window. She landed on the hotel marquee.
In 1962, Pauline Otton jumped from her 9th-floor room and landed on an elderly man who was walking down the street. They were both killed instantly.
The Black Dahlia and the Pigeon Lady
On January 15th, 1947, Elizabeth Short was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, only a few blocks away from the Cecil.
Her body had been severed completely in half and her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect called a Glasgow smile.
The press would go on to dub her The Black Dahlia. The bar at the Cecil was rumored to be the last place she was spotted before she was killed.
In 1965, Goldie Osgood, known around town as the “Pigeon Lady” because of her habit of feeding pigeons in Pershing Square was found dead in her room.
She had been physically assaulted, stabbed, and strangled by an unknown assailant. The murder remains unsolved.
During the 1970s and 80s the area around the hotel was well known as a destination for homeless people, prostitutes, and drug addicts.
The hotel’s proximity to LA’s famous SkidRow ensured that Cecil’s rooms were consistently occupied by those on the fringes of society. It’s estimated that over 10,000 homeless people live within a four-mile radius.
Serial killers
From 1984 to 1985, Los Angeles was terrorized by a serial killer known as The Night Stalker. His real name was Richard Ramirez, a self-proclaimed Satanist who killed 13 people before being caught and sentenced to death.
During his killing spree, he took residence on the 14th floor of the Cecil Hotel, paying $14 a night for his room. But Ramirez wasn’t the only serial killer to call the Cecil home.
Austrian journalist Jack Unterweger was arrested for murder in 1974, but released in 1990 after the authorities believed he had been successfully rehabilitated.
In 1991, he flew to LA to write about prostitution in the U.S. He booked a room at The Cecil and proceeded to commit three other murders before being arrested the year after.
Many investigators believe Unterweger chose to stay at the Cecil as a tribute to Richard Ramirez.
The creepy case of Elisa Lam
A grim discovery in Cecil Hotel, police say the body found in a hotel water tank is that of 21-year-old Canadian student Elisa Lam. The most mysterious death to ever occur at the Cecil Hotel happened in February 2013.
The enigma began on February 1st, when Elisa Lam’s parents alerted the LAPD that they had not heard from their daughter and that she might be missing.
She was a Canadian student who had been visiting southern California on vacation. The police searched her room and the rest of the hotel, including the roof, but found no evidence of her whereabouts.
During this time, the LAPD released a 4-minute video of Lam captured by a surveillance camera in an elevator in the hopes the public could help locate her.
The video depicts her acting erratically, waving her hands in strange, unnatural ways and seemingly arguing with someone who is off-camera or talking to herself.
At times the elevator door remains open the whole time. The video yielded no clues as to her whereabouts and the search went on for two weeks but no sign of her was found.
The grim discovery
On February 19th, guests staying at the Cecil began to complain of oddly colored water coming from their sinks and baths that had an usual taste and smell.
When a maintenance worker climbed on the roof to check the large 1,000-gallon water tanks, he discovered Elisa’s body.
The guests of the hotel fled when they discovered they had been drinking and bathing in water that had been contaminated by a decomposing corpse.
The autopsy found no traces of recreational drugs or alcohol in her system, and the death was ruled an accident. However, this led many people to come up with various theories regarding her mysterious death.
The valid theory
Lam had been suffering from bipolar disorder and her toxicology report seems to confirm her illness, as several of the prescription drugs present in her system are commonly used to treat bipolar disorder.
Many of the medications, such as Bupropion, are known to cause hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. Her strange movements in the elevator could be a sign of psychomotor agitation, a condition sometimes seen in people with bipolar disorder who are undergoing a manic phase.
This causes unintentional and purposeless motion such as pacing around a room, wringing one’s hands, uncontrolled tongue movement, and other similar actions.
It’s likely that Elisa Lam was undergoing a manic episode and didn’t understand the danger she was getting herself into, or purposefully wanted to take her own life. Once she was inside the water tank, there was no way out.
However, to this day, authorities remain largely baffled about what happened to Elisa Lam in the Cecil Hotel which makes it completely bizarre and chilling.
When will the horrors end?
The Cecil Hotel has recently acquired a new owner and been rebranded under a different name, but it seems to be having hard time shaking its dark reputation.
It’s become a hotspot for ghost hunters and paranormal investigators. The hotel has also served as the inspiration for the Hotel Cortez in the fifth season of American Horror Story.
In June of 2015, a 28-year-old man plunged to his death from the hotel like so many others before him. Only time will tell if the horrors at the Cecil Hotel will ever end.