During my travels, I have stayed in some disgusting hotels. I never have, though, stayed in anything like the Cecil Hotel. Can you imagine bathing and drinking odd coloured water and then realising it was because a dead body was contained in the water tank. It is an incident symbolic of a Stephen King book. However, this happened to more than 100 patrons of the hotel.

Holiday Plans

The body found in the water tank was that of Elisa Lam. She was a 21-year-old student from Canada. Her parents were immigrants from Hong Kong. Lam, like many of us, was an avid blogger. Her platform of choice was Tumblr. She used Tumblr as a personal diary, documenting her thoughts, dreams and life. She had an easy way of writing and a natural talent for relating to the readers.

She wrote in her blog how she longed for adventure and to travel, so she embarked on visiting the USA. She spent a couple of days in San Diego and then moved to Los Angeles.

She had booked into a hotel called the Stay on Main. The hotel had some good reviews and seemed a safe place to stay. 

Many people who made the same mistake didn’t know that the hotel was nothing new. It was three redecorated floors of the terrible Cecil Hotel. Management had renamed the floors to encourage travellers. 

Although the Stay on Main had a separate entrance, it shared the elevators with Cecil Hotel. The other factor that the advertising literature failed to mention is that the hotel is situated on Skid Row. Skid Row is a dangerous part of LA, home to the homeless, drug dealers and prostitutes.

The Cecil Hotel is also the home to some of these residents. These were the patrons that Elisa Lam shared the elevator with, described by many as a vertical toilet.

The Disappearance of Elisa Lam

On 1st February 2013, Elisa Lam was reported missing. Having failed to check out on that day. The hotel management removed her belongings from the room to allow the next patron in. The items were stored in a plastic bag in the basement; it is unclear how much evidence was destroyed by this action.

Although she had booked into a three bunk female room, it was thought she was moved due to complaints from her roommates. Her original room 506 had a shared toilet block along the corridor. Females who had stayed there previously reported they felt watched in the communal washing area.

CCTV Footage

On the night of her disappearance, the only evidence of what happened to her was bizarre CCTV footage. In it, she is seen getting in and out of an elevator. It also appears she is frightened of someone or hiding from someone. She is then seen exiting and walking down the corridor. When she disappears from view, it is the last she is seen. 

It has also been reported by professionals that the video looks altered. In addition, the timestamp is not consistent throughout, a factor the hotel denies.

Lam is also seen hand waving in the elevator door as if it is refusing to move. Many months ago, I felt a little mischievous in a local store. A couple of women got into the elevator as I left. Every time they tried to close the doors out of sight, I pressed the button to stop them from closing. Finally, one of the women came out and made precisely the gesture that Lam does in the video.

Was Lam looking for something stopping the automatic closing of the door? If so, what was blocking the door from closing or who? Is it possible, as suggested, she accidentally pressed the button to keep the door open and then couldn’t understand why it didn’t close?

Police Investigation

The police investigated the disappearance as much as they could. But unfortunately, the incident happened in 2013 when most of the department searched for the cop killer, Christopher Dorner. 

The lead detective said that resources were diverted away from her disappearance. Scent dogs were brought in and followed Lam’s scent to an outside fire escape. The police searched the roof, but in hindsight, not well enough.

Nineteen days after Lam had gone missing, following multiple complaints from residents about poor water pressure, maintenance man Santiago Lopez went to investigate. As he looked into one of the water tanks, he found the floating body of Elisa Lam, naked. Her clothes and personal effects were later found at the bottom of the tank.

The Los Angeles coroner took four months to issue the autopsy report. In it, they noted no sign of physical assault and ruled the death an accident. The department cited her bipolar condition and suggested she had gotten into the water tank to escape voices. 

Lam had no drugs in her system to explain her strange elevator behaviour. Furthermore, the levels of her description medication show that she had stopped taking it, further providing proof of a psychotic incident. They failed to look into any other reason.

She could have been hiding from an attacker in the water tank. Whether this attacker was actual or a hallucination. She took her clothes off to keep them dry to put them back on. Failing to climb out of the water tank, the clothes then dropped to the bottom.

Unexplained Factors

Researchers also state that shortly after Lam was in LA, a tuberculosis outbreak occurred in Skid Row. Again, not shocking in itself, except there is two strange coincidence. First, British Colombia, the University Lam went to has a tuberculosis research centre. The second peculiar coincidence is that the test for tuberculosis is called the Lam-Elisa.

One of the more extreme theories is that she was playing a game called The Elevator Game. Originating in Korea, this is a series of rules and moves you follow that gain you access to another world. For example, people report opening the elevator doors on the tenth floor to an alternative reality with a cross in the distance.

The tragedy also has strange similarities with the film Dark Waters. A woman sneaks to the roof of her apartment and finds a backpack near the building’s water tower. She then finds her daughter floating in it, wearing a similar jacket that Lam was wearing in the video.

Was Lam murdered by someone in the hotel or the evil spirits that haunt it? Was it an accidental death, or did she take her own life during a mental health break? Whatever the truth, the fact remains that a beautiful twenty-one-year-old lost her life in a hotel that has claimed the life of many others.

Tell me in the comments, what you think happened to Elisa Lam.