Harvey Specter
12-17-2015, 12:57 AM
This is one creepy ass hotel...
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Inside the Haunted Hotel that Inspired American Horror Story
Welcome to the Cecil Hotel, the infamous home of suicides and serial killers on L.A.'s Skid Row. Now, as American Horror Story shines a spotlight on the Cecil's grisly past, one of America's top developers is attempting to resurrect and rebrand it. Can the country's most cursed address really become the latest hipster hot spot?
Are you ready to sign your life away?"
That's what the receptionist asked the day I checked into the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. I would say I was taken aback—were this not among the most cursed addresses in America, the site of shocking murders and untold suicides, the erstwhile home of junkies, prostitutes, sex offenders, and serial killers.
Over the decades, the Cecil's history had grown so dark and sinister that by February 2013, it seemed to have infected the hotel's very infrastructure: The water ran a bilious shade of black before turning clear and even then had a pungent, tangy taste to it.
For days, guests said nothing; after all, this was a near-century-old structure in the heart of Skid Row. Then, on February 19, following a rash of complaints to the front desk, a maintenance worker named Santiago Lopez was sent to inspect the rooftop water tanks. There, in one of four eight-foot-tall cisterns, he discovered the naked, bloated body of a young woman, her skin marbled and visibly decomposing. "I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying faceup in the water," Lopez recalled in court documents.
The body belonged to 21-year-old Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who had checked into the Cecil on January 26 and was last seen alive in a grainy elevator video from January 31. In it, Lam, who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, steps into the elevator alone, appearing agitated. She shifts from foot to foot, dances a spastic two-step, and ultimately disappears off-camera before the doors silently slide shut behind her.
After Lam's parents reported her missing, cops and cadaver dogs searched all 15 floors of the hotel—including the rooftop—and found nothing: At the time, nobody thought to look in the cisterns. And so guests drank and bathed in the water contaminated by Lam's corpse for as long as 19 days.
It is still unclear how the young woman made it to the roof undetected, let alone into the tank; to do so would have required disabling the alarm system. Maybe she found her own way up, on a manic mission divorced from reality. Or perhaps she just chatted up the wrong drifter in a neighborhood full of them. Her cell phone was never recovered. The coroner would ultimately rule her death an accident.
Continue reading at...Inside the Haunted Hotel that Inspired American Horror Story | Details (http://www.details.com/story/cecil-hotel-american-horror-story?)
http://media.details.com/photos/56620f9d6532b62a14fe6565/master/w_1075,h_600,c_limit/haunted-hotel-cecil-american-horror-story-2.jpg
http://media.details.com/photos/56620fa06532b62a14fe6572/master/w_1075,h_600,c_limit/haunted-hotel-cecil-american-horror-story-7.jpg
Inside the Haunted Hotel that Inspired American Horror Story
Welcome to the Cecil Hotel, the infamous home of suicides and serial killers on L.A.'s Skid Row. Now, as American Horror Story shines a spotlight on the Cecil's grisly past, one of America's top developers is attempting to resurrect and rebrand it. Can the country's most cursed address really become the latest hipster hot spot?
Are you ready to sign your life away?"
That's what the receptionist asked the day I checked into the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. I would say I was taken aback—were this not among the most cursed addresses in America, the site of shocking murders and untold suicides, the erstwhile home of junkies, prostitutes, sex offenders, and serial killers.
Over the decades, the Cecil's history had grown so dark and sinister that by February 2013, it seemed to have infected the hotel's very infrastructure: The water ran a bilious shade of black before turning clear and even then had a pungent, tangy taste to it.
For days, guests said nothing; after all, this was a near-century-old structure in the heart of Skid Row. Then, on February 19, following a rash of complaints to the front desk, a maintenance worker named Santiago Lopez was sent to inspect the rooftop water tanks. There, in one of four eight-foot-tall cisterns, he discovered the naked, bloated body of a young woman, her skin marbled and visibly decomposing. "I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying faceup in the water," Lopez recalled in court documents.
The body belonged to 21-year-old Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who had checked into the Cecil on January 26 and was last seen alive in a grainy elevator video from January 31. In it, Lam, who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, steps into the elevator alone, appearing agitated. She shifts from foot to foot, dances a spastic two-step, and ultimately disappears off-camera before the doors silently slide shut behind her.
After Lam's parents reported her missing, cops and cadaver dogs searched all 15 floors of the hotel—including the rooftop—and found nothing: At the time, nobody thought to look in the cisterns. And so guests drank and bathed in the water contaminated by Lam's corpse for as long as 19 days.
It is still unclear how the young woman made it to the roof undetected, let alone into the tank; to do so would have required disabling the alarm system. Maybe she found her own way up, on a manic mission divorced from reality. Or perhaps she just chatted up the wrong drifter in a neighborhood full of them. Her cell phone was never recovered. The coroner would ultimately rule her death an accident.
Continue reading at...Inside the Haunted Hotel that Inspired American Horror Story | Details (http://www.details.com/story/cecil-hotel-american-horror-story?)