#cecil hotel
The Cecil Hotel
One of the most notorious hotels in the world is the Cecil Hotel. It is not famous for its glitz and glamour; Instead it is known for its many mysterious deaths, abnormally high record of suicides, infamous guests, for being a popular spot to deal and use drugs, and for being the perfect place to lie low for those who have committed crimes. It is was also the inspiration to the American Horror Story season five, Hotel.
The Cecil Hotel was built in 1924 in Downtown Los Angeles. It cost 1.5 million dollars to build, with a total of 2.5 million being invested into it. The hotel boasted 19 floors and 700 guest rooms. However, despite intentions for the hotel to be a fancy and popular destination for the wealthy and famous, it started to gradually decline once the Great Depression hit. Despite this, it managed to remain a popular destination throughout the 1940s. After this decade it began to rapidly decline as the area, now known as Skid Row, became populated with homeless people, drug addicts and dealers, and others who have committed serious crimes.
Unlike other hotels, the Cecil Hotel boasts a high number of suicides, murders, and mysterious deaths. The first suicide to take place was that of Percy Ormond Cook in 1927. He shot himself in the head while inside of his hotel room after failing to make up with his wife and child. After him was W.K. Norton. Norton killed himself in 1931 in his room after taking poison capsules. Other deaths were from jumping from high rooms, poison capsules, gunshots to the head, and slitting their own throat. A more disturbing death was that of Dorthy Purcells newborn son. Purcell shared a room with her boyfriend, Ben Levine, who was unaware that she was pregnant. While there she went into labor. Not wanting to wake her boyfriend, she went into the bathroom where she gave birth to a boy. She thought he was dead and threw him out of the window. Purcell was charged with murder, but was not found guilty due to being declared insane. Another tragic suicide was that of Pauline Otton. She jumped from her 9th story window and landed on a pedestrian. The pedestrian, George Gianinni, was killed instantly.
Other than suicides, there have been other tragic and mysterious deaths. “Pidgon Goldie” Osgood was found raped, stabbed and beaten in her room. Hours later, Jaques Ehlinger was seen walking around in bloodstained clothing. Although, he was arrested for her murder, he was later release. It is still an unsolved crime. Finally, one of the most recent and famous deaths to occur at the Cecil Hotel was that of Elisa Lam. Lam went missing for several weeks. The only clue they had to her whereabouts was a surveillance video of her getting on to an elevator and acting strange. She seemed paranoid, hiding in the corner of the elevator, and peeking nervously around its edges. Despite Lam having pushed several buttons to multiple floors, the elevator remained stationary with the doors open. At one point Lam was seen getting out of the elevator and gesturing wildly, as if having a confrontation with someone. Almost three weeks from the date she had gone missing, guests began to complain of the water in their rooms tasting funny. It was then that they found Lams decomposing body in one of the water supply tanks. Although she was inexplicably naked, there were no signs of foul play. Authorities believe that the fact that Elisa was Bipolar could have played a large part in her death. In some cases, those with Bipolar, who are not taking their meds, can have hallucinations and experience other disturbing symptoms. Her death was ruled and accidental drowning.
The Cecil Hotel had also played home to two well known serial killers. The first, was Richard Ramirez. Most commonly known as the “Night Stalker,” Ramirez was rumored to have stayed at the Cecil for a few weeks. It is believed that during his stay he may have continued with his killing spree. The second serial killer to stay there was an Austrian man known as Jack Unterweger. Unterweger stayed at the Cecil in 1991. He may have sought to copy Ramirez’s crimes. While staying at the Cecil he strangled and killed at least three sex workers
Surprisingly there seems to be very little claims online that there are ghosts at the Cecil Hotel. However, when Ghost Adventures went to investigate they claim they were physically scratched. They also found compelling audio and video evidence.
If you or someone you know has ever stayed at the Cecil Hotel and have had any spooky experiences, please let us know! We would love to hear about any creepy happenings at the hotel.
Sources:
(http//en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Hotel(Los_Angeles)
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Am I the only one that find one of the cyber sleuth SUPER odd ? Like the man went a dozen of times at the hotel and asked one of his friends to go, film and touch elisa’s grave for him cause he feels connected to her ?? He’s just a perverted creep if you ask me…
Mental Health and Los Angeles’ Homelessness Crisis: Why “Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” Is One of the Most Important Documentaries on Netflix
The series observes the devastating impact of mental illness and the stigma surrounding it and teaches us that the dire problem of homelessness in the city of Los Angeles is only getting worse
SPOILER ALERT: It may be best to only read on if you have already watched the documentary series.
“Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” is not about a cursed hotel. This documentary series is so much more than that and I personally believe that it is one of the most important documentaries to air on Netflix. So many current issues are covered that are generally brushed under the carpet and left to rot and this is one of the reasons why it must be watched.
Elisa Lam believed that experiencing Los Angeles would change her life for the better. She wanted to discover “La La Land”. Instead, what she discovered was not the glamorous city she had in mind - staying only a few streets away from Skid Row in a hotel infamous for its tragic history, riddled with stories of death, drug abuse and serial killer lodgings, Elisa was faced with a gruesome reality - that reality is Los Angeles’s gaping wealth divide which is only widening as time goes on.
Elisa’s dreamy expectations of LA being heavily dampened by the poverty she found herself in would have no doubt contributed to her worsening mental state during her stay at the Cecil Hotel. Los Angeles is often depicted as the city where people go to find themselves - after all, it’s Hollywood’s home - but the reality is that the city has many more dimensions that are not represented on holiday websites or tourist leaflets.
I have seen for myself only a fraction of the poverty which adorns the streets of LA when I visited in 2019 and what I saw was shocking enough. People are living in tents only streets away from where millionaires sleep comfortably in their high-rise apartments and mansions. A taxi driver told me “The council are building more apartments in downtown LA but it’s only for the wealthy. They won’t do anything about the problem of homelessness.”
This is brought to light in the documentary also and it is clearly highlighted how much the homeless have been forgotten about in the city - for 100 years they have been shoved aside to make space for rich newcomers. Last year it was estimated that there are about 66,433 people living on the streets in Los Angeles and this increased by 12.7% between 2019 and 2020. The main cause of homelessness in the city is too many underpaid jobs and lack of affordable housing.
The fact that Elisa ended up losing her life in a place where she was looking to escape from her troubles is truly heartbreaking. She was incredibly bright, but severely mentally ill, and I believe that parallels can be drawn between Elisa’s condition and the way in which the impoverished are treated in LA. Elisa was the victim of bipolar disorder, a mental illness which is heavily stigmatised like many other mental health conditions. Some people might speculate that Elisa should have been more responsible and taken her medication as it had been prescribed to her - and whilst I agree that we all have a responsibility for our own self care, there can be many reasons why people don’t take their medication. These can include the stigma behind being prescribed medication for a mental illness and not wanting to become dependent on medication. In Elisa’s case, the fact she strongly believed going to Los Angeles would help her find herself may have made her feel as if she wouldn’t need her medication once she got to the City of Angels - she’d be okay without it.
But as the documentary demonstrated, the symptoms of bipolar disorder can become so severe that they cause people to do things that are completely out of character and even lead to a person’s death. This is why mental illness needs to be better understood and why Elisa could have had more help - her sister mentioned she had had severe psychotic episodes at home previously, so why didn’t her family make sure she was 100% safe and well before she travelled alone? It would be wrong lay the blame on her family though - Elisa was an adult after all and they had to let her travel if she wanted to.
The problem of homelessness in LA suffers the same stigma as Elisa’s illness in a society where the elite are catered to and the poor are simply pushed aside. A Los Angeles Times analysis conducted in 2019 discovered that 67% of people living on the streets suffer from a mental illness or substance abuse disorder - a direct result of the city’s lack of social care for its poorer residents. Just like those living on Skid Row, Elisa felt rejected by society, misunderstood. Her worsening mental health was a product of the same system which has left millions of Americans deprived - a system which belongs to the billionaire class, a system which wants to maintain a spectacular image at all costs, a system which doesn’t want to talk about mental health issues.
The Cecil Hotel, too, is a product of its environment. It is not a cursed place in the paranormal sense - it is cursed in the fact that lives have been needlessly lost there through the lack of resources and funding that are contributed to Skid Row. Although the Cecil Hotel has provided many with shelter, tragedies are bound to happen when people are not given the help they need to battle drug addiction, mental illness and crime involvement. The lack of security at the hotel was also shocking to begin with.
These are the reasons why “Crime Scene: Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” is so desperately relevant in today’s society. With the pandemic taking hold of the world, more people than ever before are grappling with mental health issues and the wealth gap continues to increase worldwide. There will be more deaths like Elisa’s if we don’t start to talk about mental health and more people will resort to living on the streets if we continue to value wealth over human lives.
The Death of Elisa Lam
Elisa’s personal Tumblr:
https://nouvelle-nouveau.tumblr.com/
Elisa’s Blog:
Just watched Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. Both her tumblr and her blog are a deeper look into her psyche. Very fascinating, bizarre, and heartbreaking story. Rest in Peace Elisa Lam.
