SUPER SPOOKY CECIL HOTEL
Death Galore + Elisa Lam's Vanishing
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Crime Scene: The Vanishing At the Cecil Hotel, which is available to stream on Netflix.
There is a video on YouTube that created an internet frenzy and captured the attention of internet sleuths all over the world for years. The video shows a young woman, Elisa Lam, in an elevator, seemingly in distress, confused, entering and exiting the elevator, pressing all the buttons and making strange hand signals; perhaps conjuring ghosts, looking outside to see if a killer is following her, or having a debate with her hallucinations. In 2013, Elisa was found drowned in a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel. The death of Elisa is a mystery that haunts the Cecil Hotel, as well as damages the hotel’s reputation as a bastion for newcomers of Los Angeles. Elisa’s story is a topic of a Netflix true crime series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing At the Cecil Hotel. Watch the full video here.
The documentary directed by Joe Berlinger features the tragedy of the death of Elisa Lam and explores the history of the hotel and its infamous neighboring LA district – Skid Row.
This true crime story involves a haunted hotel, where crime and murders occurred over the span of years. String of murders, suicides, and other crimes that occurred in the Cecil Hotel made for important news, especially that of college student Elisa Lam. The hotel is the real story here, though, with a slew of crimes happening within its walls. Cecil Hotel was even the inspiration behind American Horror Story: Hotel. If its walls could talk, it would scream.
In addition to the official investigation led by LAPD, a group of internet sleuths and web moguls researched the disappearance of Elisa. The evidence online shows Elisa exit the elevator and never return. This opens a story to the documentation of Elisa’s disappearance through an active social media profile. Elisa’s bipolarism played into her everyday life, pursuing treatment in medication and doing therapy through online blogs that voiced her stresses. Elisa documented her experiences chronologically via Tumblr and this offered a map of where she traveled while in the hotel in 2013. The documentary tries to find the answers through interviews with investigators, YouTubers, and online social groups dedicated to Elisa’s cause. Several theories related to Elisa’s cause of death are presented, from conspiracies involving government, through paranormal activities, to simple murder. The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is an interesting undertaking, documenting not only Elisa’s story but the story of Cecil Hotel and downtown LA.
