5

Werewolf Radar THE LATEST CHECKOUT Almost every hotel has a ghost story. But while tales of a spurned bride haunting the honeymoon suite (drama much?) or a spectral trucker forever pounding on the malfunctioning ice machine (looking at you, Colfax Ramada) may add a bit of charm to your stay, there is always a chance that you may end up bunking with something a bit more malevolent. The Cecil Hotel was built in downtown Los Angles, like the day before the Great Depression happened. Since then, The Cecil has catered almost exclusively to serial killers and people looking to end their lives. Not kidding. There have been dozens of suicides, suspected killings and odd deaths in and around the hotel over the years, including a woman who struck and killed a pedestrian after leaping from a ninth-floor window, earning herself a rare double kill, and possibly a cartoon piano crash sound effect. In the 80s, the top floor of The Cecil was home to Richard Ramirez, aka The Night Stalker *guitar riff* and later to another serial killer named Jack Unterweger, aka Jack Unterweger *sad bassoon riff.* The hotel was the scene of the gruesome murder of one Goldie Osgood, and is even rumored to have been one of the last places Elizabeth Short visited before she went off to become the Black Dahlia. It should come as no surprise then that almost since it was built, there have been whispered rumors of The Cecil Hotel being cursed. Which is a lot like being haunted but much worse for business. But there are murders and there are suicides, and then there are deaths that seem like a little of both with maybe a dash of something else thrown in. Elisa Lam checked into The Cecil on January 28, 2013. The 21-year-old Canadian stayed there for about four days and then, instead of checking out, she disappeared completely. Elisa had a history of mental health issues and her parents contacted the hotel after she failed to call them on the day she was supposed to leave LA. The hotel notified the police and a search was conducted for a presumably missing Elisa. The police used dogs to search Elisa’s room and even checked the roof of the hotel, to no avail. For all intents and purposes, Elisa had just sort of vanished. Until about four weeks later. Her body was discovered in a water tank on the roof of The Cecil. A water tank that supplies the drinking water to said hotel. That’s actually why they found her. The water pressure was bad, and it uh, tasted funny. The death was ruled a suicide but it was most likely done so with a huge shrug and a half-hearted “I guess?” tacked on at the end, because this one was about as weird as they come. Not only had Elisa found her way onto the locked and alarmed roof without anyone noticing, she had then proceeded to reach the top of the tank, lift the heavy access lid, climb in and then close it partially behind her. As if that wasn’t strange enough, then there was the video. A few days before Elisa’s body was found, the LAPD released a video they believed to be the last footage of her alive. It was taken from an elevator security cam and it is weird to say the least. The video shows Elisa engaged in a number of odd BY JORDAN DOLL behaviors on the very top floor of the hotel. She presses all the elevator buttons (classic gag), cowers in a corner for a minute, then jumps in and out of the elevator like she is playing hide and seek or something. Elisa then gets out of the elevator and gestures as though she is speaking to someone or petting a large animal that only she can see. All the while, the elevator never moves, as though malfunctioning. At the end of the footage, Elisa walks away and nobody sees her alive again. You can watch the video on YouTube, but you probably already did because it was the hottest viral internet video since “Goat Loves Harmonica.” The junior internet sleuth squad jumped in with its particular brand of “help” and before you could say, “Hi, I’m up in room 413 and our water smells like ghosts,” we had solutions ranging from demonic influences to the restless spirit of Richard Ramirez claiming yet another victim. One commenter even suggested that Elisa was playing something called “The Elevator Game,” a supposed means of traveling between alternate dimensions. The story became a link, then a meme, and it wasn’t long before we had a full-blown internet urban legend on our hands. And that’s when Hollywood came a callin’. And honestly, who could blame them? With the history of the hotel, coupled with the bizarre and gruesome nature of Elisa’s death, it was like a horror movie screenplay was being punched out in real time right in their own backyard. A number of scripts have been written based on the death and even the fifth season of American Horror Story was inspired by Elisa’s story, according to series co-creator Ryan Murphy. But even after all the sensationalism, the strange facts surrounding Elisa’s death remain, well, strange. What was that business in the elevator all about? Why did the elevator appear to malfunction? How did she get onto the roof? Did someone help her? Was someone chasing her? What could compel someone to crawl into a water tank without any way of getting back out? Elisa Lam was bipolar. She was on medication and, at the beginning of her stay, was moved from a hostel-style shared room to a private room when her roommates complained of certain “odd behaviors” (and honestly, who wouldn’t be behaving oddly while staying at this goddamn death palace?). She had struggled with depression and her Blogspot page was bannered with a quote from Chuck Palahniuk that read: “You’re always haunted by the idea you’re wasting your life.” We will likely never know what happened to Elisa but I can’t help but wonder if maybe these words weren’t on her mind that night as she climbed to the roof of The Cecil in search of one final adventure to cap off her stay in Los Angeles. As she found the door to the roof strangely unlocked, and the door to that water tank opened welcomingly. As she slipped down through the hatch and into the long, dark narrative of a hotel that still had at least one horror story left to tell. HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PARANORMAL? SEND THEM TO WEREWOLFRADAR.COM/CONTACT-THE-RADAR IT’S A BIG, WEIRD WORLD. DON’T BE SCARED. BE PREPARED. 3 BEST OF 025

6 Publizr Home