Sonya Lwu is a successful American Youtuber, who wrote a book about the Cecil Hotel. Soberly titled “the curse of the Cecil Hotel”, it immerses us in the true history of this establishment.
The web ignites
Residents of Los Angeles know more or less by name or reputation the Cecil Hotel, which is located in a particularly seedy part of town. There circulate drug addicts, fences, prostitutes, thieves, homeless people, in short, all the unwanted offspring of the megalopolis. In the middle stands the Cecil Hotel whose entrance hall does not allow you to perceive, at first glance, the macabre side of the establishment.
If, today, everyone knows this hotel, it is for two reasons. The first is the death in this establishment of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student and the second is her appearance in American Horror Story.
Elisa Lam is a student on a walk in the United States. She stays at the Cecil Hotel and suddenly disappears one night. She is found some time later in the water tank on the roof of the hotel. The Los Angeles police are overwhelmed by this death and decide to release a video, where Elisa Lam is filmed, a few minutes before her death.
From there, the canvas ignites and hundreds of amateur detectives will seize this case, to try to solve it. Disturbing point, which feeds the black legend of the Cecil Hotel: Elisa Lam died in the same way as in a horror film – Dark Water – and discovered for the same reasons as in the film. For weeks, conspiracy theories will flourish on the Web to explain the death of the young Canadian.
As for American Horror Story, the creators of the series did not hide that they were greatly inspired by the establishment for the chapter “Hotel”, pushing the vice so far as to include Richard Ramirez, who actually stayed in the hotel. hotel, but also by integrating certain elements of the establishment’s history. It was enough for the legend of the Cecil Hotel to go beyond the sole framework of Los Angeles.
Explainable deaths
The author indicates that the establishment experiences a large number of deaths, both by overdose and by suicide. For overdoses, it is located in Skid Row and its prices allow drug addicts to find a base. But what about suicides? Would the rooms of the Cecil Hotel suffer from the same curse as room 1408 that we were talking about in a previous column?
The explanation is much more rational. According to a study published in 2006, many more people commit suicide in hotels than at home. She even concludes by saying that when the customers are locals, the risk of suicide is increased.
Another much more recent study, carried out in 2019, comes to the same conclusion. People commit suicide a lot in hotels and it is almost a privileged place to kill oneself, compared to one’s home. In the meantime, a similar study was conducted on the Las Vegas area and if the results point in the same direction as the 2006 and 2019 study, the reasons are different.
The reason suicides prefer hotels is simple: not to be interrupted, not to be rescued, and not to impose on their loved ones a sight that they will not be able to forget, while having the certainty that their body will be discovered. But, this does not spare hotel staff and there is even a Reddit thread dedicated to this subject. Studies also show that the majority of suicides are men, who opt for firearms. This creates a kind of discrimination between hotels in the United States. Indeed, if hotels belonging to chains have specific procedures and the means to call upon crime scene cleaners, this is not the case for motels and local hotels. Either way, the Cecil Hotel deaths are pretty rational.
The offspring of this world
Elisa Lam aside, what made the Cecil Hotel become synonymous with a doom establishment? In three names: Elizabeth Short, Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.
The first returned to popular culture, following his rather brutal assassination. She is better known as the Black Dahlia and for some obscure reason remains tied to the Cecil Hotel, despite having stayed in several different places. Sonya Lwu looks back on her story in a very interesting way and puts into perspective the different theories as to the author of her assassination. Note in passing that the investigative techniques of journalists of the time would have enough to make all current newsrooms jump. Some did not hesitate to present themselves as police officers to obtain information from the relatives of Elizabeth Short.
If the presence of Elizabeth Short at the Cecil Hotel is not proven, this is not at all the case of one of the most famous American serial killers, Richard Ramirez, also present in American Horror Story. The Cecil Hotel was a base for this hallucinated killer, who nearly got lynched by an angry mob.
As for Jack Unterweger, the Cecil Hotel had his favor because of its proximity to prostitutes. Arrested in Austria at the age of 25, he made amends in prison, to the point of arousing popular fervor to demand an early release. She will be refused, but he will be released after 15 years of detention. Having acquired notoriety, respectability and financial means, he flew to Los Angeles and began to kill prostitutes again. Finally arrested, he is extradited and commits suicide in prison.
Sonya Lwu’s book has the merit of disentangling the true from the legend, of coming back with precision to certain striking facts and of adding some information little known to the general public. This is a book that is very readable and enjoyable. “The curse of the Cecil Hotel” is available in ebook and in paper format.