There’s been an obscure mystery involving a missing Canadian woman skimming the local LA news. She went missing on January 31, but many of the details and attention have been diverted by the attention-grabbing Christopher Dorner fireworks show that has monopolized news coverage for most of February.
Elisa Lam, 21, was supposedly en route from her home in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Santa Cruz, California, but for an unknown reason, she ended up at the Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles beginning January 26. The hotel is a legendary Los Angeles artifact which has been retrofitted to make it more hip and trendy, but the fact of the matter is that it sits in the middle of one of the seediest neighborhoods of Los Angeles proper, Skid Row. It is a bleak, apocalyptic area abundant with homeless people, drug addicts, and the ugliest prostitutes in the world. It’s an urban way station that is a temporary home to hordes of transient and criminal journeyers. Adding to the unbecoming nature of the Hotel Cecil is its dark history of murders, suicides and legendary hauntings. Richard Ramirez, the “Night Stalker” killer who terrorized Southern California in the 80s, stayed there for a while.
There’s a nice, chilling summary of the Hotel Cecil’s spooky history detailed in a post at “The Memories Project” blog and accompanied by some personal anecdotes about sinister experiences at the hotel.
Today they released a video taken from an elevator security camera at the Hotel Cecil that documents the last known images of Lam taken on January 31. Lam enters the elevator and begins madly poking multiple floor buttons while peeking her head out continuously as if looking for someone. At one point, she presses into one of the elevator corners as if hiding, and later she steps out and appears to be talking to someone again and gesturing with her hands. But no one is there, or not on the camera. I suppose I could choose to analyze the video logically and assume it is capturing the psychotic or drug-induced paranoia of an unbalanced woman who has gone missing, but I can’t help but entertain the spooky fascination that she is in fact talking to something that cannot appear on the camera. We can’t see it. Perhaps I’ve watched too many Paranormal movies. But it is the Hotel Cecil.
**edit, 3/3/2013**
You know, I posted this first on Valentine Day after tying Elisa’s disappearance and the Cecil Hotel’s odd history together. I’m not a great believer in paranormal shit, but it made for a spooky post, so I couldn’t resist. Los Angeles’ spooky noir crime history has fueled the speculation and people have put together all kinds of bizarre theories explaining this bizarre story. It is truly odd, and grows odder the longer it goes unsolved. I didn’t mention it at the time, but the elevator video reminded me completely of Japanese horror movies. Her odd behavior, the invisible intruder, the baffling disappearance. It all made too much sense. But I was really just kidding about the whole thing, but the internet is now awash in all kinds of crazy theories! One of my favorite, presented here:
I do not know if you realize it, but the Greyhound Bus Terminal used to be accross the street from said Hotel Cecil.
I will second SE’s assesment of the surrounding area of the Hotel Cecil.
Maybe think of the apocolyptic landscape of The Walking Dead.
Nah, not as nice as The Walking Dead.
It is the ONE place in greater Los Angeles that I would truly avoid at all costs and even in broad daylight.
I know that a lot of people minister to these besotted souls, but I know that is not something I could do.
So I do think that Elisa Lam was looking for something bad there. No one goes there for something good.
Hey, I thought I saw SE trying to grab her! LOL!
So I assume with your detailed description of the area you have spent a lot time in Downtown LA? Try saving your comments for something you actually have knowledge of. Downtown LA has an amazing spirit and is blossoming with art and culture. 20 years ago, yes it was a wasteland, but Downtown LA is going through an amazing gentrification, hopefully one that doesn’t include closed minded people like yourself. Seems like an uninformed comment from someone that lacks culture and any kind of realistic world experience.
Josh, yes I HAVE spent time in Downtown Los Angeles. All that is happening is that the homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts and people that have given up on life are being more compacted in to the Skid Row district. What do you think that they just all went away? And trust me, my stepson lived in one of the lofts that, by coinkidink, was NEAR the Hotel Cecil. I don’t think that the high electric fence that they had is gone because of the sudden move from the dregs to the high-rent district. The problem has not and will not go away anytime soon. No matter HOW much the Hotel Cecil maybe spruced up.
She’s a student, she got the name of the hotel off a hostel website, she doesn’t drink, do drugs. She wanted to see LA before she went to Santa Cruz
This turned into a brief “amusement post” and I didn’t treat the subject terribly serious. Some of the items I threw in there were pretty much parroted off Youtube comments which is a risky proposition, always.
I will say I believe you. I have no reason to, but my instincts tell me Elisa Lam in not highly “unusual” in the sense that she acted in ways which tempted fate. Which makes this story all the more mysterious.
I think it was reported in one news article that she suffers from “mild depression.” Whatever that means in the 21st Century. Who doesn’t suffer from that?
I truly hope she is found safe.
If that is true, that she got the name the Hotel Cecil off of a hostel website, then once she got there and saw what a seedy place it was in a horribly seedy part of Los Angeles (actually the most horribly seedy part of the city), why did she go in?
Maybe her “mild depression” got to her. Maybe she forgot her meds and thought maybe she could score there.
Living in quick driving distance of said Hotel Cecil trust me, it is in the bowels of Lower Slobovia.
I do hope she is found OK too, but something is not right about all of this.
This might be her. Sad and Gross.
Hope they all didn’t drink too much.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/residents-disgusted-after-womans-body-found-in-hotel-water-tank.html
Yeah, heard about this. Some of the hotel guests checked out right after finding out.
If she had been in that tank 3 weeks, I can only imagine the state of her body…and the water.
Sad. You hope it’s not Elisa Lam, but on the other hand, if it’s not, it’s somebody, in which case, it’s still sad.
I’ll take 2-1 odds its Elisa.
Sorry because I did not want it to end up that way.
But I am sorry, this is not the best part of town and one should be very careful and I don’t think that she was.
I guess I should have taken even money since it turned out to be her. I heard something that it might have been a suicide?!
Crack is a hell of a drug! She was just a crack hoe. Me love you long time type.
Here’s a bizarre little twist!
Someone discovered a “project” that was posted to Vimeo at the end of 2011. It is a series of very short videos taken of the area in and around the Cecil Hotel. The videos are brooding, dark, and a little spooky. Someone on Reddit conjectured that this might be the killer :) I wouldn’t go that far, but it is a little disconcerting, nevertheless.
http://vimeo.com/supersecretsexyface
This video was one of the creepier:
the beast awoke in LA from The Cecil Secret Project on Vimeo.