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Well, I got this off of the internet so who knows if it is true, but...

http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/mysterious-case-elisa-lam/

Cecil Hotel’s Dark History

Built in the 1920s to cater to “businessmen to come into town and spend a night or two”, Cecil Hotel was quickly upstaged by more glamorous hotels. Located near the infamous Skid Row area, the hotel began renting rooms on a long-term basis for cheap prices, a policy that attracted a shiftier crowd. The hotel’s reputation quickly went from “shifty” to “morbid” when it became notorious for numerous suicides and murders, as well as lodging famous serial killers.

“Part of its sordid history, involves two serial killers, Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

Now on death row, Ramirez, labeled “the Nightstalker”, was living at the Cecil Hotel in 1985, in a top floor room. He was charged 14 dollars a night. In a building filled with transients, he remained unnoticed as he stalked and killed his 13 female victims. Richard Schave, said “He was dumping his bloody clothes in the Dumpster, at the end of his evening and returned via the back entrance.”

Jack Unterweger, was a journalist covering crime in Los Angeles for an Austrian magazine in 1991. “We believe he was living at the Cecil Hotel in homage to Ramirez,” Schave said.

He is blamed with killing three prostitutes in Los Angeles, while being a guest at the Cecil.

In the 50’s and 60’s the Cecil was known as a place that people would go to jump out of one of the hotel’s windows to commit suicide.

Helen Gurnee, in her 50s, leaped from a seventh floor window, landing on the Cecil Hotel marquee, on October 22, 1954.

Julia Moore jumped from her eighth floor room window, on February 11, 1962.

Pauline Otton, 27, jumped from a ninth floor window after an argument with her estranged husband, on October 12, 1962. Otton landed on George Gianinni, 65, who was walking on the side walk, 90 feet below. Both were killed instantly.

There was also a murder of one of the residents. “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, a retired telephone operator, known for protecting and feeding pigeons in a nearby park, was found dead in his ransacked room on June 4, 1964. He had been stabbed, strangled, and raped. The crime still remains unsolved.”

- Las Vegas Guardian Express, Elisa Lam, Morbid History Of Two Serial Killers Unfolds At “Cecil Hotel”


Read more at http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantrepo ... TW6Gz5A.99
 
Bumping this thread, as I recently started reading about this case. The video clips of her in the elevator are quite disturbing. Personally, I don't think it is supernatural, but someone with a mental illness becoming a victim of it. What I find difficult to explain, however, is how she ended up in the water tank. Anybody with further thoughts on this?
 
The Elisa Lam unsolved death story gets even weirder ....

A few days after her body was discovered, the skid row area where the hotel is located saw an outbreak of TB ... nothing too weird about that but the meds used to treat the mostly homeless people were/are named ... drum roll ... Lam Elisa. Probably just a weird coincidence. Or if you're into conspiracy theories, she booked into the hotel and would almost certainly have given her surname first, recorded as Lam Elisa. Some shadowy government agency/CIA/Illumanati (take your pick) were planning to experiment on the homeless by releasing TB, became paranoid when they discovered someone had booked into the hotel with the same name, thought it too much of a coincidence and bumped her off, wrongly because the name was just a coincidence. Phew! ... crazy and takes a few leaps of imagination but it works .. if she was killed by "the people in charge", the toxicology report on her body that showed she had no drugs or alcohol in her system could have been falsified as well .. she definitely looked spaced out on something in that elevator footage.

A link explaining Lam Elisa:

http://www.mmrp.org/projects/clinical-trials/diagnostics-medical-devices/rapid-antigen-detection.html
 
The body of Elisa Lam (simplified Chinese: 蓝可儿; traditional Chinese: 藍可兒; April 30, 1991[1] – 2013), a 21-year-old Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, was recovered from a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on February 19, 2013.[2] She had been reported missing at the beginning of the month. Maintenance workers at the hotel discovered the body when investigating guest complaints of low water pressure.

Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to her body's discovery when the Los Angeles Police Departmentreleased video of the last time she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be malfunctioning. The video went viral on the Internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to the bipolar disorder Lam suffered from; one viewer has argued that the video has itself been tampered with.[3]

The circumstances of Lam's death, when she was found, also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked[4] with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her.[4] It took the Los Angeles County Coroner's office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma but shows possible ambivalence about its ultimate finding that the cause of death was accidental.[5] Guests at the Cecil, now rebranded as Stay on Main, sued the hotel over the incident, and Lam's parents filed a separate suit later that year.

Continued at considerable length:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elisa_Lam

Or watch this:

The odd video of her last minutes is included. I make no claim as to the veracity of the claims made in the video - some of the speculation is silly, but the core is odd.

Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/elisalam.asp

Edit: there are so many possible leads that it's hard to know where to begin!
 
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I still say that a member of staff at the hotel did this.
 
I've been following this cheery tale for a while now and have found an interesting theory. The same time Elisa Lam was booked into the Cecil Hotel, there was also a small outbreak of TB amongst the downtown homeless in that area. The medication used to treat these people is called Lam Elisa. She would have probably been booked into the hotel at reception as Lam, Elisa so did some government type get nervous and assume her name was too much of a coincidence and that 'Elisa Lam' was someone who knew TB was being tested on the homeless?. Was she silenced?.

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/the-mysterious-case-of-elisa-lam.54943/#post-1375702

http://www.mmrp.org/projects/clinic...-medical-devices/rapid-antigen-detection.html
 
I came across this new long form article on the Elisa Lam case. I think it's worth a read as it examines not only the details of the case (including the bizarre coincidences involved) but also the way people reacted to it and how mysterious events like this capture people's imagination in both good and bad ways. Also has some slightly mundane but eerie pictures of the hotel itself.

https://medium.com/matter/haunted-947d642a6d59#.z3und64wm
 
Thanks for posting this link! It made for a really interesting read.
 
I read an interesting comment about something in the classic elevator video.

Look for the toes/foot appearing just after 2:27. It moves into view in the corridor. It moves left to right as she moves to the right to left. Is it someone leading her away or the heel of her left foot?

 
Well if you read the article that was posted, the most likely explanation of this is that it is the shadow of her own foot.
 
Well if you read the article that was posted, the most likely explanation of this is that it is the shadow of her own foot.
There are a couple of reasons I can't see it as a shadow. The first is the ambient light you get in hotel corridors doesn't tend to give you such a solid sharp shadow. I can't see any other shadows on the floor either, from her or anything else.
The second reason is that I am convinced I can see the object in question actually lift off the floor as it moves out of shot.

I can see it being her left foot. Just. It would have to have been one hell of an awkward step she took, weaving the left foot across the right.
 
All I see is the back of her sandal flip flopping up and then down as she pivots and steps away.
 
This is a very interesting case, and a very sad one. Good to remember that a young woman dying is at the heart of it.

I guess, my own selfishness means I would love it all to be part of a really cool and awesome series of paranormal events.

However, I'm more inclined to believe it was a very sad sequence of deeply odd, but possible, events leading to the death of someone alone and vulnerable. Poor girl
 
Terribly sad, but it's completely consistent with a paranoid/schizophrenic panicking, running up the stairs to the roof (we run up instinctively if the face of danger) and hiding in the first thing she saw, a water tank. Poor girl.
 
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