The Creeps! || Book of Spooky Stories (COMPLETED ✔️)

38 ~ Elisa Lam

The Death of Elisa Lam.

Elisa Lam was last seen on January 13, 2013, in the lobby at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. She was vacationing through the West Coast, documenting the trip on her blog, and calling her parents every day so they wouldn't worry. On January 31st those calls stopped. Elisa Lam had vanished. Soon the police were involved and her parents came to help with the search.

They had turn up with nothing. Then, in February, the LAPD released elevator surveillance footage of Elisa Lam before her disappearance. The video reveals Elisa Lam acting strangely in an elevator, appearing to talk to invisible people, peering around the corner of the door, crouching in the corner, and closing and opening the door.

What is exactly happening in this video raises more questions than answers. Theories range from psychotic episodes, to demonic possession, to unknown assistance just out of the camera's view. Some other people theorize that Elisa Lam was playing the Elevator Game and possibly got stuck in another dimension.

Around the time, guests at the Cecil Hotel were complaint about the water. Here is what CNN reported:

"The shower was awful," said Sabina Baugh, who spent eight days there during the investigation. "When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was back to normal."

The tap water "tasted horrible," as Baugh said. "It had a very funny, sweety, disgusting taste. It's a very strange taste. I can barely describe it."

But for a week, they never complained. "We never thought anything of it," she said. "We just thought it was the way things were here."

On the morning of February 19, a hotel employee used a ladder to climb onto the water tanks on top of the roof so they could be checked. That's where investigators found the body of, naked, Elisa Lam. Her personal items were found nearby. After an autopsy, the death was labeled an accident. NBC Los Angeles reported at the time about the strange past of the hotel:

The tank has a metal latch that can be opened, but authorities said access to the roof is secured with an alarm and lock.

The single-room-occupancy hotel has an unusual history. The "Night Stalker," Richard Rimirez, who was found guilty of 14 slayings in the 1980s, lived on  the 14th floor for several months in 1985.

And international serial killer Jack Unterweger is suspected of killing 3 prostitutes during the time he lived there in 1991. He killed himself in jail in 1994. In 1962, a female occupant jumped out of one of the hotel's windows, killing herself and a pedestrian of whom she landed on.