The Mysterious Death Of Elisa Lam at The Cecil Hotel.
The City of Angels, known for its glitz and glamour, harbors a dark secret within the walls of the Cecil Hotel.
Elisa Lam’s 2013 death in a notorious hotel sparked global intrigue, raising questions about the circumstances surrounding her demise.
Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old student from Burnaby, Vancouver, Canada, was discovered dead and naked in a water storage tank atop the Cecil Hotel on February 19th, 2013.
The Elisa Lam case is still widely touted as an internet mystery, a modern urban legend, and an unsolved story!
The L.A. County Department of Coroner ruled the death “accidental due to drowning.”
Elisa traveled to Los Angeles alone, stopping by San Diego before planning to go to Santa Cruz as her final destination.
The Puzzling Death Of Elisa Lam at The Cecil Hotel
(Disclaimer: I did my best to research the tragic death of Elisa Lam, but I am human and may have some errors. As I always tell my readers, do your investigations and come to your conclusions.)
This story was originally published on 10/10/14 and has been updated since 2024. I wrote about this tragedy after reading about it on another blog.
Every October, I write about paranormal topics. All Paranormal Topics all Month.
This post is meant for entertainment purposes only.
About The Cecil Hotel/ Stay On Main
The Cecil was built in 1924 by three hoteliers—William Banks Hanner, Charles L. Dix, and Robert H. Schops—as a destination for business and tourist travelers.
The three hoteliers invested about $2.5 million in the enterprise, knowing several similar hotels had been established elsewhere in downtown Los Angeles.
The owners thought they would strike it rich with their business venture; unfortunately, 1929 The Great Depression struck America.
The hotel flourished as a fashionable destination throughout the 1940s.
In the 1950s, it gained a reputation as a residence for transients near the Skid Row area.
Skid Row or Skid Road. Skid Row is an impoverished world, a city full of approximately 5- 10,000 homeless people. Skid Row is approximately 4 square miles or approximately 54 square blocks.
In the late 1800s, immigrants began pouring into the Skid Row area of L.A. for work. There were plenty of cheap rooms for rent, brothels, and booze.
The term “skid row” or “skid road” refers to an area of a city where people live who are “on the skids,” which derives from a logging term.
Loggers would transport their logs to a nearby river by sliding them down roads made from greased skids. Another word for skid is a slide.
By extension, the term began to be used for places where people with no money and nothing to do gathered, becoming the generic term in English-speaking North America for a depressing street in a city.
Modern-day Skid Row in L.A. is an area you don’t want to go near, especially at night, and has a reputation for drugs, prostitution, and crime. The Hotel is known for several suicides and its criminal activity, which includes three murders.
The hotel was the reported residence for serial killers Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez in 1985 and Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger in 1991.
It was also allegedly one of the last places butchered actress Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia, was seen before her horrible – and still unsolved – murder in 1947.
In 2011, part of the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as “Stay on Main,” with separate reception areas during the day and shared facilities.
Stay on Main as you stay on Main Street: 640 S Main St, Los Angeles, CA 90014. This is the Hotel’s address.
New ownership split the property in two to improve the hotel’s reputation. One-half remained at the Cecil Hotel, which served as a shelter for long-term residents. The other was rebranded as Stay On Main, a visitor boutique hotel.
Elisa would have checked into The Stay on Main section of the hotel.
The hotel has a checkered history, with many suicides and deaths. As of 2017, it was being renovated and redeveloped into a mix of hotel rooms and residential units.
The Cecil Hotel will reopen in October 2021. In 2017, It was granted landmark status.
Looking at the Cecil Hotel from an aerial view, it is shaped like the letter E. Supposedly, this allows light to enter all the rooms. It looks like three tall, slim buildings spaced apart, built in a row like dominoes connecting on one side only.
The Cecil Hotel has 15 floors. Technically, it is 14 because floor number 13 is omitted for superstitious reasons.
Elisa Lam’s Last Night At The Cecil Hotel
Elisa Lam contacted her parents in Burnaby, Vancouver, British Columbia, every day while traveling. Burnaby is just a few miles north of Washington State, U.S.A.
On February 1, 2013, the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil Hotel and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD); her family flew to Los Angeles to help search.
Elisa initially shared a room with two other girls, like a hostel. The two girls complained about Elisa’s bizarre behavior.
Eventually, after numerous complaints from her temporary roommates to hotel staff, she was given her own private room on the fourth floor.
All of Elisa Lam’s personal belongings were accounted for after her body was discovered. Everything except her cell phone. Did her roommates in the hostel steal her phone? Were they the ones misbehaving and not Elisa?
Elisa Lam’s behavior was odd a few moments after she entered the hotel’s elevator on the 14th floor. (No one knows why she was on the 14th floor.) Two and a half minutes of recorded footage of Elisa in the elevator exist.
I’ll go into greater detail about the elevator video later in this article.
It has been stated that the hotel or LAPD purposely slowed the video down to make it seem even more bizarre.
What’s more disturbing is where her body turned up. It turned up in one of the hotel’s four 4’x 8′ 1000-gallon bathing and drinking water storage tanks on the roof.
It wasn’t until the hotel guests complained about the funny-tasting water and low water pressure that the hotel staff decided to investigate its cause.
It was then that they discovered the decomposing body of Elisa Lam. She was found naked and floating face up in the hotel’s water tank 19 days after being last seen alive on the hotel’s elevator security camera.
Her clothes—the same clothes in the elevator video—were floating near her, and her room keys were found at the bottom of the tank. I believe her watch was also in the tank.
It’s been speculated that she was unclothed because she took them off to make it easier for her to swim or float in the water. It is believed her body was just 12″ inches below the water tank’s lid.
The fire department had to drain the tank and remove a large square near the bottom to retrieve her body.
Some reports say the tank was only half or three-quarters full. If the tank were half full, it would have only four feet of water. Elisa is reported to have been 5’5″.
If the tank was half or three-quarters full, the fire department found it easier to remove her from the bottom of the tank instead of the top.
Allegedly, Elisa had two blogs where she wrote about her personal musings involving fashion and believed her legs were too big for her body. She uses the initials L.L. on her Blogspot and Instagram; which I think stands for Lisa Lam.
Even spookier is that Elisa Lam’s Tumblr Blog was updated with new posts up to December 2013, nine months after her death.
But the question remains: how could she access the hotel’s roof without anyone seeing her and setting off the security alarms?
Some say she took the fire escape to the roof because the search dogs lost her scent at a window where the fire escape is.
But without camera footage or witnesses, who really knows?
The last part of the fire escape to the top looks very scary. I wouldn’t climb up it.
How did a petite girl like Elisa Lam climb to the top of the 8′ water storage tank, lift the 20lb 18″x 18″ lid, and close it on herself? I imagine the water lids to a massive hotel like the Cecil would be heavy for security reasons.
A hotel maintenance worker, Santiago Lopez, discovered Elisa floating in the tank. He said the lid was open when he discovered Elisa’s body and closed it afterward.
Pedro Tovar, Cecil’s chief engineer, noted four ways to access the roof. From the 14th floor, you can access three fire escapes via interior doors and one staircase.
If the door to the roof is not deactivated first, an alarm will sound if someone attempts to open it; typically, only hotel employees can do this.
If the alarm sounds, it is audible to the front desk and the 14th and 15th floors.
Many mysteries surround Elisa Lam’s death, and until this day, no one knows what really happened that night. At least not officially.
Elisa Lam Timeline
Due to discrepancies, she was due to check out either on Jan 31st or Feb 1st. It was stated that her stay at the Cecil was three nights. Elisa used Amtrak trains and buses to get to each new location during her trip to southern California.
- Jan 26th, 2013: Arrives in Los Angeles from San Diego. (I’m unsure where she stayed for two days before checking into the Cecil.) Maybe while visiting Los Angeles, she met someone who lived at the Cecil, and they convinced her to stay there.
- Jan 28th, 2013: Checks into Stay on Main (Cecil Hotel) into a shared room on the fifth floor (Hostel).
- Jan 31st, 2013: Several girls in Elisa’s shared room complain to staff about her odd behavior. Elisa is moved to her room on the fourth floor. Room 412.
- Jan 31st, 2013: She is last seen. She was due to check out on Feb 1st.
- Feb 6th, 2013: LAPD holds a press conference regarding her disappearance.
- Feb 13th, 2013: LAPD releases elevator footage to the public.
- Feb 19th, 2013: Elisa Lam’s body is found in one of the hotel’s four water tanks on the roof.
Elisa Lam/ Cecil Hotel Movies
A movie based on Elisa Lam’s puzzling death was in the works. It is titled The Bringing and stars Michael Pena, but development has stopped.
Netflix is now producing a series on the Elisa Lam Case called The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.
Another movie, Dark Water, was made in 2002. It is a remake of the 2002 Japanese film of the same name, and it is eerily similar to Elisa Lam’s situation.
The strange coincidence with the Movie Dark Water is that it is eventually discovered that the “Dark Water” is leaking from a cistern on top of the apartment complex’s roof.
Not only that but the mother in the movie, played by Jennifer Connelly, is named Dahlia. The same as Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia, who was last seen at the Cecil Hotel Bar
Dahlia’s daughter’s name is Cecilia, as in the Cecil Hotel.
American Horror Story: Hotel. The plot centers around the mysterious Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles, California, which catches the eye of an intrepid homicide detective (Bentley).
The Cortez hosts many disturbing scenarios and paranormal events and is overseen by its enigmatic matron, The Countess (Gaga), a bloodsucking fashionista. The hotel is loosely based on the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, home to various deaths and tragedies. – Wiki
Elisa Lam Elevator YouTube Video
I believe the video of Elisa Lam on the elevator on January 31st at 8:30 a.m. on the 14th floor happened. Did she spend the night with someone on the 14th floor? And doesn’t the hotel have more videos of Elisa besides the bizarre elevator one?
Elisa entered the elevator cab wearing a red zippered hooded sweatshirt over a green T-shirt, with black men’s medium-sized shorts and black polka dot sandals.
Elisa casually walks into the elevator and presses all the buttons in the center column: floors 14, 10, 7, 4, M (Mezzanine), B (Basement), and the Hold Door Open buttons.
She steps back to the corner and waits for the doors to close. About 12 seconds into the video, the elevator doors close and open back up.
This alarms Elisa, so she slowly walks towards the door, sticks her head out, and quickly looks to the right and left.
She slowly goes back into the elevator, holding one hand with the other. Then she goes to the side of the elevator and sidesteps into the corner where the control panel is. She appears somewhat frightened or apprehensive.
She is hiding herself the best she can. Because the camera footage is garbage, I can’t make out her facial expressions or talk with anyone outside the elevator.
She slowly creeps back outside the elevator and jumps into the hallway. She looks around for someone or something. She is now standing to the left of the elevator doors, almost entirely out of view.
While in the hallway, she appears to lift her arms and rubs her head.
After a few seconds, she walks back into the elevator cab with her hands still on her head on both sides above the ears. She seems to steady herself with both hands, grabs the elevator doors, and reenters the elevator cab.
Once again, Elisa Lam presses the same column of floor numbers, especially the last bottom button. Afterward, she tucks her hair behind her ears, walks back into the hallway, and stands to the left of the elevator doors.
Now it appears she bends her right arm up and back, almost touching her right shoulder; then, she makes swimming-like motions with her hands and arms. At one point, it looks like she is trying to activate the motion sensor on the elevator doors to get them to move.
Once again, the footage is so blurry, and her face is pixelated; I can’t tell what is happening here. Some YouTubers claim her face is pixelated to hide the fact that she is smiling.
Eventually, it seems Elisa gives up on the elevator and heads to her left down the hall.
Some viewers of Elisa Lam’s YouTube elevator video believe that she is playing hide-and-seek with someone outside the elevator.
Others proclaim she may have been playing the elevator game. Originating in Korea, the Elevator Game is a ritual game that gives the player access to another world.
Some insist she looks playful instead of someone who fears for their life. The question remains: who is the person outside the elevator? Body language experts claim that Elisa’s body language is one of being flirty instead of frightened.
Did Elisa Lam have a love interest at the Cecil Hotel?
Was someone down the hallway to her right taunting her? And what was Elisa doing on the 14th floor? Did she know someone up there, or was she exploring the hotel?
Elisa Lam stayed on the 4th floor the last night, so she was up on the 14th floor for another reason. None of the buttons pressed was to return to her floor.
The 14th floor (technically the 13th, as there is no ’13th floor’) is an apartment floor, not a hotel floor, meaning people on that floor are long-term residents.
It is also one floor down from the roof, which was easily accessible to anyone by the fire escape and not behind locked and alarmed security doors like in news reports.
Weirdness: Lam Elisa Tuberculosis Test Kit
To make this story even more interesting, there was a deadly tuberculosis outbreak just a few blocks from the site of Lam’s death, where, coincidentally, the test kit used was called LAM-ELISA.
This case was not resolved until this day, and in 2015, Elisa’s parents filed a wrongful death suit against the owners of the Cecil Hotel but were later dismissed by a judge.
Los Angeles has many unsolved deaths, but I believe this one will not go away until there is closure for her family.
The challenge with cases like this is that there is not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoings. We will never know what happened to Elisa unless someone confesses or we get video footage from other hotel parts.
When I look at photos of the Cecil Hotel, I see 14 floors. If Elisa Lam’s elevator video takes place on the 14th floor, it would be probable that she could have walked up another flight of stairs to get onto the roof.
It looks like the hotel has 14 levels, but I believe they omit level 13 for superstitious reasons (Triskaidekaphobia). Elisa was near the roof access.
In the elevator video, near the end, Elisa walks out of the elevator and heads left, which is the direction of the stairs to the roof.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the roof access alarm door inside the hotel wasn’t turned on or working correctly. There were pizza boxes, cigarette butts, beer bottles, and graffiti on the atrium glass window on the roof. So, getting onto the roof was possible.
There is graffiti in two places on the roof. One is on the Skylight Atrium Window, and the other is on the pump housing near the tank where Elisa was found.
The graffiti was written as ‘Fecto C*NT Her Suma.’
In modern times, this would be known as tagging. A tag is a stylized personal signature and contains the graffiti writer’s name, also known as a moniker.
Perhaps Elisa wandered onto the roof to explore or take pictures?
There is a small building on the roof with doors. I believe this is for the elevator or the elevator shaft top extension. Next to it are the water storage tanks. A ladder mounted on the elevator shaft building goes to the top of it.
Perhaps Elisa climbed the ladder onto the roof and lowered herself onto the water storage tanks below.
On the Autopsy report, Elisa Lam had a scrape on her left knee. Maybe she scraped it when she lowered herself onto the water tanks below. Also noted in the coroner’s report was the ‘pooling of blood’ under the skin around her anus.
Was she assaulted, or is this normal for body decomposition?
The coroner’s report claimed that Elisa’s clothes had ‘sand-like particulate’ attached to the fabric and in the folds of her clothes.
Some reports state there weren’t any ladders near or on the water tanks; others claim a wooden ladder was attached to one of them.
Maybe once she was on top of the tanks, she had no way to get down. Perhaps she thought she could get out by going through the tank. Maybe she couldn’t see that the tanks were full of water.
(Intelligent people have gotten themselves stuck in life-threatening situations before. See John Jones’ story of how he got stuck in the Nutty Putty cave tunnel and ultimately died there.)
Elisa may have been having problems being far from home in a foreign place. Maybe she hadn’t slept well in a while, and perhaps her judgment was off as a result.
One final note, according to my research, is that Elisa’s cell phone was never recovered. One has to wonder what happened to it.
Who Is Elisa Lam?
I hadn’t mentioned it yet in this article, but allegedly, Elisa had mental health issues like Bipolar Disorder and Depression. The autopsy report did show her prescription medication for Bipolar Disorder in her system and a small amount of alcohol.
Though her death was initially labeled as “unable to be determined” on her autopsy report, the form was later edited to the final ruling of “accidental drowning,” with her bipolar listed as a “possible contributing factor.”
I have seen about ten different photos of Elisa Lam on Google search. There is one picture of her in a blue graduation cap and gown and some photos of her wearing glasses.
It looks like there are two or three versions of Elisa Lam.
The only photos I know of Elisa are the ones where she is with her Mom and Sister.
⇒Picture of Elisa with her Mom & Sister – Google link.
⇒Elisa and Sarah Lam – Google Link
I noticed that the girl in the elevator video does not look like Elisa’s pictures. I have read comments on several Elisa Lam YouTube videos, and many commenters have stated the same.
Granted, the video is highly pixelated, her face is conveniently blurred, and I can’t get an accurate view of her face. In one of her blog posts, I noticed that Elisa mentioned she believed her legs were too big for her body.
In the video, the legs of the women appear very thin.
The woman in the elevator in the video looks ethnically/nationally Chinese or Korean. Elisa’s family is from China, but she was raised in Canada. Elisa grew up culturally Canadian.
I’m not trying to be insensitive here.
Growing up, I had friends whose parents were immigrants, and they still acted, spoke, and dressed like the country they came from, but their children, my friends, were culturally American.
The woman in the video looks in her thirties, a little over five feet tall, and about 100 pounds. Elisa is twenty-one years old, 5’5″, and 121 pounds.
Plus, there aren’t any photos of Elisa on her social media sites, so no one knows what she looks like. From the pictures I’ve seen online, Elisa had a little meat on her. The woman in the elevator video is super thin.
Was there a switch-a-roo here, a conspiracy? I don’t know.
Also, the elevator video’s time and date are blurred. How do we know when this was recorded?
My conclusion: Not Elisa Lam in the elevator video.
Was Elisa Lam Murdered?
There is speculation that Elisa was murdered in one of the hotel rooms, and later, her body was placed in the water tank on top of the Cecil Hotel.
Perhaps she was suffocated since the L.A. Coroner didn’t notice any signs of foul play.
I bring this up because search dogs looking for Elisa’s body allegedly did not detect her scent while they were on the roof. And I find it hard to believe that no LAPD detective thought of peering into the water tanks on the roof while they were up there.
The LAPD stated that they would not check every room unless they had probable cause.
If Elisa was murdered and her body stored somewhere in the hotel, then perhaps her assailants could have carried her body at night up to the roof and disposed of it there so they wouldn’t get caught.
Especially if her assailants were staying on the top floor, it is noted that the first five floors are for guests staying for a short time, and the upper floors are for long-term guests. There are separate reception areas during the day but shared facilities.
Getting her body to the roof wouldn’t be hard without anyone noticing. Where else could they put the body without anyone knowing? They couldn’t risk getting caught taking her body out of the hotel lobby.
The water storage tanks were the only place she wouldn’t be immediately found. That is until guests started complaining about low water pressure and dark-looking water.
If she were killed, the assailants would have tossed all her belongings in the tank with her so that no evidence would be found in the hotel.
Elisa was a small girl, 5′ 5″, 121 LBS, and could have been transported to the top of the water storage tanks.
On a forum, someone suggested she was possibly lured to the roof and raped; that is why her clothes were off—perhaps being thrown into the tank alive or dead. She would have no way of getting out if she was alive.
Also, helicopters flew over the Cecil Hotel, looking for her body. Don’t you think they would have noticed the hatch was open on one of the water tanks?
In the autopsy report, the coroner noted that there was not any water in Elisa’s lungs. Did she die from hypothermia, or was she suffocated before being placed in the water tank?
Elisa could easily stand up in there if the tank were half full.
I believe the temperature in Los Angeles around January 31st was 50 degrees Fahrenheit. If true, Elisa could only survive in the water for a few hours. When hypothermia occurs, the body reacts by feeling extremely hot.
As a result, many hypothermia deaths are found with their clothes off.
If Elisa was tossed into the tank dead, wouldn’t it be more probable that she would be found floating face down instead of face up? I think hypothermia is a slow process, and she was probably so tired that she floated on her back to breathe and rest her body.
It is noted that Elisa was seen at The Last Bookstore, located just a few blocks away from Cecil, on January 31st. While there, she was very outgoing with the staff and bought books to return to her family when she returned to Canada.
One more thing. There are four water storage tanks on the roof. If she decided to place herself in the water storage tank, what are the odds she would choose the hardest one to get to?
She ended up in the furthest-most water tank on the hotel’s roof.
The most important question is – Was the water storage tank lid open or closed when maintenance worker Santiago Lopez discovered Elisa’s body? There have been some discrepancies here, but eventually, Santiago Lopez stated the lid was open when he found her body.
It has been reported that Santiago Lopez has since fled to Mexico. I can’t find any proof of when he left Los Angeles for Mexico or whether this is true. But was he forced to give this narrative? Why did he do this?
To avoid being questioned about the validity of his claim that the lid was open or closed?
However, if this was a cover-up and I didn’t want anyone to find the truth, I would want Santiago Lopez out of the country.
Is it possible that the elevator footage is not Elisa Lam?
Could a decoy or actor be used? Could Elisa’s assailants have taken the clothes from the elevator actor and tossed them into the tank with Elisa’s alive or dead body to make us think the person in the elevator and the person in the tank are indeed the same?
Or another analysis. Was this whole scenario made up? Was everyone involved playing a part in a larger cover-up? Was this a PsyOp? My answer once again – who knows?
A couple more thoughts I am pondering. Was Elisa completely naked when they found her? Were her underwear off as well? If so, then I believe she was raped and then forced into the water tank.
As I mentioned before, The body found in the water tank did not have any injuries except a scrape on the knee. I guess she scraped it on the lid frame while going into the tank or being forced or placed into the tank by someone else.
The coroner did find trace amounts of alcohol in her system. She was found nineteen days later, so she must have had a good amount of alcohol in her body. Did she purposely drink alcohol, or was her drink spiked without her knowing it?
The elevator footage time was believed to be in the morning, but more likely, it was at night. Elisa seemed a little tipsy in the footage at times. She seemed more drunk acting in the video than drug-induced or mentally induced.
My Synopsis
My belief is that she met some regular hotel guests. On her last night there, she ‘partied’ with them, perhaps going to the rooftop to have some fun. Maybe she rejected one of the young men with her.
Perhaps he assaulted her and then, in a panic, realized he couldn’t let her leave the rooftop because she would tell the authorities.
What to do?
The young man or men forced her into the furthest water tank and threw her clothes in with her, including whatever belongings she had with her, like her room keys. But they kept her cell phone. Why?
One of her blog entries stated that she lost her cell phone in San Diego. So the numbers she dialed, probably his room phone number, wouldn’t be found. I’m sure she was able to buy a cheap Trac-Phone somewhere.
The other big question I asked before was, of all the hotels to stay in Los Angeles, why the Cecil/Stay on Main? It isn’t one I would choose.
How Can We Find The Truth?
How can we find out exactly what happened here? Unless someone comes forward, we won’t know. How about using a psychic medium or a channeler? I’m open to psychic phenomena as being real.
I’ve had my share of paranormal experiences, and I believe certain trained or naturally gifted people, perhaps even Elisa Lam, could communicate with spirits.
But with all things that we can’t measure, be smart and use your best discernment when absorbing information, regardless of the source.
Elisa Lam Story Conclusion
The Cecil Hotel is a grim testament to the darker side of Los Angeles’ history.
Elisa Lam’s tragic end continues to captivate the public’s imagination, leaving a legacy of mystery and unanswered questions.
As the world grapples with the haunting tale of Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel, one can’t help but wonder if the secrets hidden within those walls will ever be fully revealed.
Until then, the enigma persists, shrouded in the shadows of a place that has witnessed more than its fair share of darkness.
⇒Read Next: Wes Penre’s Death Trap Article