The chilling details of this story might shake you to your core—read at your own risk. To this day, no one knows for sure how she died. She was last seen at the hotel, and a creepy surveillance video showing her strange behavior before she disappeared has only raised more questions.
On January 26, 2013, Elisa Lam arrived in Los Angeles. She had taken an Amtrak train from San Diego and was on her way to Santa Cruz as part of a solo trip along the West Coast. The trip was meant to be a break from her studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she lived.
Her family was worried about her traveling alone, but Elisa insisted on traveling solo. To ease their concerns, she promised to call them every day to let them know she was okay.
That’s why it seemed strange when her parents didn’t hear from her on January 31, the day she was supposed to check out of the Cecil Hotel (now renamed Stay on Main) in Los Angeles. Worried, they contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. The police searched the hotel but couldn’t find her.
Police soon released surveillance footage from the Cecil Hotel’s cameras on their website, marking a turn into the truly bizarre. The video showed Elisa Lam inside one of the hotel’s elevators on the day she disappeared, exhibiting peculiar behavior.
In the grainy footage, Lam can be seen entering the elevator and pressing all the floor buttons. She steps in and out of the elevator, occasionally leaning her head out sideways toward the hallways. After peering out a few more times, she exits the elevator entirely.
In the last part of the video, Lam is seen standing by the left side of the door, making random hand movements. No one else appears in the video, only Lam.
Even in Canada and China, where Lam’s family is from, the mysterious video got attention. Millions of people have watched the four-minute clip of her strange elevator behavior.
Police soon released surveillance footage from the Cecil Hotel’s cameras on their website, marking a turn into the truly bizarre.
The video showed Elisa Lam inside one of the hotel’s elevators on the day she disappeared, exhibiting peculiar behavior.
In the grainy footage, Lam… pic.twitter.com/zYR5pUYlwZ
— Vicky Verma (@Unexplained2020) November 15, 2024
On February 19, two weeks after authorities released the video, maintenance worker Santiago Lopez found Elisa Lam’s body floating in a hotel water tank. He discovered it while checking complaints from guests about low water pressure and strange-tasting tap water.
The Los Angeles Fire Department chief said the tank had to be completely drained and cut open from the side to remove Elisa’s body, as she was 5 feet 4 inches tall.
No one knows how Elisa’s body, along with the clothes she wore in the video, ended up in the tank or if anyone else was involved. Hotel staff said they only ever saw her alone on the premises.
However, one person saw her before she died. At a nearby shop called The Last Bookstore, owner Katie Orphan remembered Elisa buying books and music for her family in Vancouver.
When Elisa Lam’s autopsy results were released, they raised even more questions. The toxicology report showed she had taken some prescription medications, probably for her bipolar disorder. However, there was no sign of alcohol or illegal drugs in her system.
After an autopsy report revealed no trace of drugs or alcohol in her system, Lam’s depression was blamed for her death, and her demise was ruled an “accident.”
The below entry from her blog, while obviously not happy, doesn’t sound like someone who has lost her mind to the point she’d think imaginary people were following her. And it doesn’t answer these questions.
After the toxicology report was released, the internet was flooded with many theories. People on the internet started looking for clues to explain Elisa Lam’s death. One Reddit user shared a summary of the report.
The summary pointed out three things:
- Lam had taken at least one antidepressant that day;
- She had taken her second antidepressant and mood stabilizer recently, but not that day;
- She hadn’t taken her anti-psychotic recently. These points suggested that Lam, who had bipolar disorder and depression, might not have been taking her medication correctly.
This is important because using antidepressants to treat bipolar disorder can cause manic symptoms if not done carefully. Some people have focused on this and suggested it might explain Lam’s unusual behavior in the elevator.
When Ms. Lam initially enters the elevator she is not in fear, according to ‘Body Language & Emotional Intelligence‘
“Ms. Elisa Lam is playing a game of hide and seek (or something similar) in this video. And although at times she displays some anxiety, there is no indication of fear. There is definitely an element of play present here. It is of course also possible that narcotics are influencing her behavior. Of particular importance is she is putting herself on s***al display. While what is seen here may have no connection with her demise – if the events in this video occurred just before her disappearance, it strongly suggests that the person to whom she is attracted may have knowledge of, contributed to, or be responsible for her death.”
Hotel manager Amy Price’s statements in court support this idea. She said that when Elisa Lam stayed at the Cecil Hotel, she was first booked into a shared room. However, her roommates complained about her “odd behavior,” so Lam was moved to a private room.
But even if Elisa Lam had mental health problems, how did she end up dead? And how did she end up in the hotel’s water tank?
The autopsy didn’t find any signs of foul play. However, the coroner’s office said they couldn’t do a complete examination because they couldn’t test the blood from Lam’s decaying body.
Price stressed there’s no mystery. “I couldn’t have been more involved with the case from the beginning,” Price explained. “I can say 100 percent in confidence that there is no conspiracy to Elisa Lam’s death. I know exactly in my mind what happened because I was there every step of the way. I worked with the police. … I wish there was a little bit more focus on mental illness than the conspiracy theories.” (Source)
David and Yinna Lam filed a lawsuit against the Cecil Hotel months after their daughter’s death was discovered. Their lawyer said the hotel should have checked for dangers that could hurt their daughter or other guests.
The hotel fought the lawsuit and asked for it to be dismissed. The hotel’s lawyer argued that they never expected anyone could get into their water tanks. The hotel’s argument isn’t completely unreasonable. Santiago Lopez, the maintenance worker who found the body, explained how hard it was to find her.
Lopez said he took the elevator to the 15th floor, then walked up the stairs to the roof. He turned off the roof alarm, climbed a platform with four water tanks, and then climbed another ladder to reach the main tank. It was only after all this that he saw something strange.
The hotel’s Chief Engineer, Pedro Tovar, explained that it would be hard for anyone to get to the rooftop, where the water tanks were, without setting off the alarms. Only hotel staff could turn off the alarm correctly. If the alarm went off, it would be heard at the front desk and on the top two floors of the hotel.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Howard Halm decided that Elisa Lam’s death was “unforeseeable” because it happened in a restricted area, so the lawsuit was thrown out.
Horrifying backstory of The Cecil Hotel
Elisa Lam’s mysterious death wasn’t the first at the Cecil Hotel. The hotel has a dark history and is known as one of the most haunted places in Los Angeles. Since it opened in 1927, the Cecil Hotel has been the site of 16 unnatural deaths and strange paranormal events.
Besides Lam’s death, the most famous tragedy there was the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short, known as the “Black Dahlia.” She was seen drinking at the hotel bar days before her brutal death. According to reports, Short allegedly visited the bar at the Cecil shortly before she was killed in 1947 at age 22.
The hotel has also hosted some of the country’s most infamous killers. In 1985, Richard Ramirez, the “Night Stalker,” stayed on the top floor during his killing spree. After murdering someone, he would throw his bloody clothes outside the hotel and return half-naked. The hotel was so rundown that no one seemed to notice. Six years later, Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger, the “Vienna Strangler,” also stayed there.
Meanwhile, the tragic death of Elisa Lam at the hotel has inspired pop culture adaptations like Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Hotel.
