FORGOTTEN BUSINESS. The Elisa Lam case, this young girl disappeared in the most haunted hotel in America


Elisa Lam, 21, disappeared on January 31, 2013 as she was about to leave the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Closer returns to this mysterious case.

The name Elisa Lam may mean nothing to you. However, the disappearance of this young Canadian student intrigued and fascinated the whole world in the mid-2010s. It was in Los Angeles, on January 31, 2013, that this affair took root. Without news of their daughter, who had gone to visit Southern California, a couple living in British Columbia, Canada, alerted the Los Angeles police. According to her parents, Elisa Lam was preparing to leave the Cecil Hotel, where she had been staying since January 28, when she stopped giving news. Without waiting, a search is organized at the Cecil Hotel. The room of the missing student has been combed through, but nothing can be found to find her…

We have to wait until February 14, 2013 to see the investigation progress. Two weeks after Elisa’s disappearance, the Los Angeles police published a video of the young woman on the internet, recorded by a CCTV camera at the Cecil Hotel just hours before her disappearance. The young woman of Hong Kong origin appears tense, disoriented, pressing all the elevator buttons as if she was trying to escape someone. She then glances down the hall several times, before returning to hide in the cabin and interacting with an unseen individual, frantically waving her arms in front of her. Note that no other video shows her leaving the hotel.

“Many people wonder if the Cecil Hotel is being ravaged by dark forces”

Particularly disturbing, the video of the elevator arouses many reactions on the Web and gives rise to incredible theories. Some internet users speculate that Elisa had to deal with a supernatural presence, a spirit or a ghost, especially since the reputation of the Cecil Hotel leaves much to be desired. A business hotel ruined by the Great Depression of the 1930s, this large Californian hotel is known for the many mysterious deaths that have taken place within it. Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia, would have passed there in particular, but also serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez, who lived in Cecil at the time of their crimes. For these many reasons, the 700-room building is believed by many to be haunted. “Many people wonder if the Cecil Hotel is being ravaged by dark forces”explains Josh Dean, journalistin the Netflix documentary Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. “Strangely, this hotel carries a kind of madness within its wallsadds Jim McSorley, inspector sergeant at the LAPD. Drug dealers, prostitutes, rapists, murderers…”

But the revelations of the parents of the victim give rise to another hypothesis. Depressed, Elisa Lam suffered from bipolar disorder. A mood disorder for which she was being treated, although she occasionally stopped taking her medication. On these occasions he would hallucinate and hide under his bed for protection. Could it be that the young woman disappeared during a manic episode? According to hotel manager Amy Price, Elisa had indeed exhibited some strange behavior after arriving. First housed in a common room, she sometimes blocked the door leaving notes saying “Go home” Or “leave“to his roommates…

“The Cecil’s water was colored. It was a dark color, a brownish tint.”

But a question arises. If Elisa Lam was going through a manic episode, where did she go? On February 19, 2013, this question finally found its answer. At the reception of the Cecil Hotel, Mike and Sabina Baugh, British guests, report the drop in water pressure in their room. We noticed that the water pressure was very low.says Mike in the Netflix documentary Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. We open the tap, the pressure is blocked.(…) And the water was colored. It was a dark color, a brownish hue.” “We brushed our teeth with this water, remembers Sabina. We showered with this water. We also drank it, but it tasted weird.” Informed, the management sends Santiago Lopez, an employee of the hotel, to check the proper functioning of the water tanks on the roof of the Cecil. Here is the shock. In one of the tanks, Lopez finds the naked, decomposed body of Elisa Lam. In all likelihood, the young Canadian has been there since the day of her disappearance.

An investigation was immediately opened. The autopsy found no evidence of sexual assault, physical violence or self-inflicted abuse. The report concludes with a death by accidental drowning, but many questions continue to arise. How did Elisa Lam get to the roof, which was only accessible by a ladder and whose door was locked? Why did she jump into the tank when it would have been impossible for her to get out on her own? The hypothesis of the manic episode is put forward, especially since at his death, Lam had only a very small amount of medication for his bipolar disorder in his body. She would therefore have stopped taking them, or would have taken them badly, which would have led to her crisis.

For a time, the thesis of a bad meeting within the hotel itself was considered. However, no concrete element has ever made it possible to support it. Ten years later, the death of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel therefore still retains a part of mystery.



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