Real Ghost Stories: Los Angeles’ Infamous “Suicide Hotel”
Getty ImagesThe original sign on the side of Los Angeles’ Cecil Hotel.
Los Angeles might not be the first place to come to mind as far as ghost stories go. Nonetheless, Hollywood has had a long history of tragedy. The Cecil Hotel, for one, has seen a litany of disturbing incidents, most recently the mysterious disappearance and subsequent discovery of young Elisa Lam in the Hotel’s rooftop water tank.
Elisa Lam was only the most recent case at the hotel. The alleged hauntings date all the way back to the hotel’s opening in 1927 and it boasts 16 murders, suicides, and countless other events stretching credulity. It’s even housed some of the most famous American serial killers of the 20th century.
In 1934, Army Sergeant Louis D. Borden slit his own throat with a razor. Less than four years later, Roy Thompson of the Marine Corps jumped off the roof. His body was found beside a neighboring building. In September 1944, 19-year-old Dorothy Purcell woke up with stomach pain — entirely unaware she was about to give birth.
She threw her baby out of the window and was subsequently institutionalized.
In 1962, 65-year-old George Giannini was taking a walk past the Cecil when the falling body of a 27-year-old woman who’d lept off the hotel’s ninth floor killed him. According to the nonprofit Public Media Group of Southern California, locals began calling the hotel “The Suicide” shortly after.
Getty ImagesRichard Ramirez, also known as the “Night Stalker,” terrorized California in 1984 and 1985.
Serial killer Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the “Night Stalker,” used the hotel as his temporary home in the 1980s. He rented a room on the top floor. Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger briefly lived in the Cecil, as well.
Few incidences at the hotel, however, compare to what happened to 21-year-old Elisa Lam. Her discovery and the disturbing behavior she displayed in the hotel’s elevator, are inexplicably disturbing.
Guests suddenly experienced such low water pressure in early 2013 that the hotel’s management promptly checked their infrastructure. That’s when they found Canadian tourist Elisa Lam who’d been decomposing for nearly a month in the hotel’s rooftop water system.
The coroner could simply not assess a clear cause of death. The security footage is even eerier than that. With a seeming combination of fatigue, disorientation, and fear, Lam’s last moments alive only yield more questions than answers. Her story could perhaps be scarier than many other ghost stories on this list.
