By Evi Tsakali,
It was February 19th, 2013, 9 years after the events took place in Los Angeles, California, at the famous Hotel Cecil. A room guest made a complaint at the reception about the water pressure and the fact that the water appeared to have an irregular, dark color, and weird smell and taste. The staff went to check the water tank, only to find something that would shock them forever — the naked and a bit deformed body of a young woman, Elisa Lam, floating dead.
She was a Canadian hotel guest, gone missing since February 1st, 2013. The police would take it as an accident, basically due to Elisa’s chronic struggle with bipolar disorder and depression. Despite the fact that this case has been closed years ago, many have been disappointed by the LAPD’s stance and are not satisfied with their conclusion; some refer to Elisa Lam’s death as the “most mysterious death of the century”.
Who was Elisa Lam?
Elisa Lam was born in Canada on April 30th, 1991. She was described by everyone as a cheerful, friendly, lovely child, who was always willing to contribute to the community by volunteering. When she got into college, she started experiencing severe headaches and intense mood swings. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression and started being on medication.
Her social media posts indicate that — in the beginning — she was coping with her condition with a great dose of humor. It did not take long though for her posts to become very self-destructive and dark. At some point, she quit social media, except Tumblr, on which she dedicated to art and fashion that she loved. Until January 2013, one month before her death, she seemed to be much more optimistic and determined to overcome depression. She suddenly announced to her friends and loved ones that she had booked a flight to start a solo journey through the West Coast.
During her journey through the State of California, she contacted her anxious parents on a daily basis; she told them how happy she was, and her social media posts seemed to confirm that statement. But on February 1st, Elisa was nowhere to be found for her check-out from Hotel Cecil; the police were informed, and her parents flew to Los Angeles to help in the investigations.
The peculiar video from the elevator
One of the main factors instigating controversy on the nature of Elisa Lam’s death was a rather disturbing surveillance camera video from one of the elevators, provided by the hotel. The hotel video showed Elisa Lam being on one of the hotel’s elevators on the date of her disappearance, acting rather strangely. In the pixelated footage, Lam can be seen stepping into the elevator and pushing all the floor buttons. She steps in and out of the elevator, poking her head out sideways toward the hotel’s hallways in between. She steps in and out of the elevator a few times, before stepping out of the elevator entirely. The last minutes of the video show Lam standing by the left side of the door, moving her hands in random gestures. Nobody else was captured on the video, except Lam.
When the video was released to the public, some viewers commented that Elisa may have been playing the “Elevator Game”, a pretty creepy ritual that sees the player visit a number of different floors in an elevator, in a bid to get to a “new dimension”. The person playing must first enter the elevator alone, before pressing the button for the fourth floor. They must then descend to the second floor, up to the sixth, down to the second again, up to the tenth, and finally down to the fifth. They must not get out on any floor. After reaching the fifth level, the legend says a mysterious woman will enter the lift, but the person playing must not look or interact with her. Players must then push the button to the first floor. Two things are supposedly said to happen here. If the lift goes down, the player must leave the building and not look back. If it goes to the tenth floor, once the player leaves the elevator, it is believed they will be entering a new dimension. After Elisa’s odd behavior in the elevator — specifically pressing a number of different buttons as she entered —, some conspiracists are convinced she was playing the game.
How did her body end up in the water tank?
Nobody knows how Lam’s corpse —floating lifelessly next to the same clothes she wore in the surveillance video— ended up in the hotel’s water tank or who else might have been involved. The hotel staff told the authorities that Lam was always seen by herself around the hotel premises.
Santiago Lopez, who was the first to find Lam’s body, described in detail how much effort he had to exert just to find her body. Lopez said that he took the elevator to the 15th floor of the hotel before walking up the staircase to the roof. Then, he had to first turn off the rooftop alarm and climb up on the platform where the hotel’s four water tanks were located. Finally, he had to climb another ladder to get to the top of the main tank. Only after all that did he notice something unusual. The hotel’s Chief Engineer, Pedro Tovar, also made it clear that it would be difficult for anyone to access the rooftop, where the hotel water tanks were located, without triggering the alarms. Only hotel employees would be able to deactivate the alarm properly. If it were triggered, the sound of the alarm would reach the front desk as well as the entire top two floors of the hotel.
The solution to this mystery is still unclear and, thus, Elisa Lam’s death has remained what we call a “cold case”. However, the obsession surrounding her mysterious death still looms over public conscience, especially true crime enthusiasts.
References
- The Unsolved Ones Pt 2 — Υπόθεση Elisa Lam, podtail.com, Available for listening here
- Surveillance video of Elisa Lam shows bizarre behavior, youtube.com, Available for watching here
