Sorry for the lazy copy and paste post but I've never seen this before and the footage is giving me goosebumps and I'm not even cold.
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Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old student from Canada who was visiting Los Angeles, California, in early 2013. Unfortunately, the hotel Elisa chose to stay at—Hotel Cecil—was a notorious place for sinister happenings such as thefts, suicides, and murders. The Cecil Hotel, as most reports hasten to mention, was at one time home to serial killer Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. The Nightstalker, and at another to fellow serial killer Jack Unterweger. It was also allegedly the last place butchered actress Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia, was seen before her grisly—and still unsolved—murder in 1947.
The last sign of Elisa before her death was in an elevator caught on security footage where she is seen to exhibit strange behavior. The footage begins with Elisa stepping into the elevator and pressing all of the buttons for unknown reasons. The elevator doors, however, refused to close. Elisa is then seen cautiously moving forward and darting her head out of the elevator doors as if she were expecting to find someone out there, possibly even looking for her. She just as quickly retracts as if not wanting to be caught. Afterward, Elisa presses herself into the corner of the elevator as if trying to hide from an unseen presence. The elevator doors are still malfunctioning at this point. Elisa steps out of the elevator and returns back inside and, once again, presses all of the buttons. The doors still refuse to shut and Elisa steps out of the elevator and begins making strange gestures, as if she were pretending to be swimming. Elisa then wanders off and is not seen again. Only thirty seconds after she leaves do the elevator doors finally close.
Two weeks after Elisa’s disappearance, residents of the hotel complained that the water was discoloured and tasted bitter. When the water tanks on the roof were inspected to discover the cause, Elisa Lam’s nude body was found dead and bloated inside. It was determined that she ended up inside of the tank only moments after she left the elevator. The most confusing part of it all was how Elisa Lam even managed to access the roof undetected when it was blocked behind two locked alarmed doors. Even if she had done that alone, climbing up the water tank, opening one, and closing it behind her would have been extremely difficult for her. Despite this, investigators ruled her death an accident.
Seeing the surveillance footage, most people would conclude that she was under the influence of drugs. However, Elisa did not have a history of drug use and her autopsy concluded that no drugs were involved. When one looks at the context and the circumstances of this death, things become even more mysterious. Minutes have been erased from the security footage of Elisa Lam in the elevator which only an employee would have access to. To this day, Elisa Lam’s death remains unsolved.
Some kind of episode, perhaps? I don't know enough about the workings of the human mind to know how credible that might be. She wasn't possessed, I can tell you that much.
It all seems very mysterious, until you consider that she could have been inside the water take already before she was filmed in the elevator... After that it was only a matter of the killer using his hidden panel in the back wall to take off the costume and, seemingly, disappear...
>>4010 Yeah, we know already. The Netflix episode summary says "Jonathan and Maddie tackle the case of a woman who was filmed in an elevator after being in a water tank."
>I stayed in this hotel in the summer of 2005 for about 5 days even though I’d planned on staying longer. Yes there were many shady people staying and the staff seemed desensitized with blank expressions. It came to head the last night when I Iwas getting ready to sleep. I knew no one in the building and no one really knew I was staying there but I here a knock on my door. This gets creepy. I ask who it is by yelling ‘Yes!’ to which I get no response a few seconds pass and I hear the knock again three times, but this time it gets louder. Now I’m 5’10” 225 lbs of painting contractor muscle so I’m not scared to aproach the eye hole to see if some one, a kid or something, was playing a joke but I couldn’t see anyone. The knocking shortly turned from laud knocking to banging all the while I didn’t know what to think. I thought if I open the door I could possible get over taken by who knows how many people were on the other side or if they were armed, which could have been true. I stay in my room and turn the cable on (yes they have cable) and after ignoring it for a while it ends. Let me tell you I’ve to this day ever had such a feeling of helplessness such as that since or before that incident. You couldn’t pay me to stay there today. Beware that place is not safe!! The only thing that I think was on my side that night was the fact that the seemed to be an original door and pretty thick and heavy otherwise what ever it was could have opened the door. I’ve always wondered if anyone else stayed and had any similar experiences at that place.
I did some more reading about this and people are saying she didn't have her glasses and she pressed a "hold button" which made the lift stay still for two minutes. I don't know what happens when you press a hold button but with my lift, when something's in-between the door sensors, it goes beeeeeeep.
If the lift was going beeeeeee-there's-something-blocking-the-door-so-move-eeeeeeeeep, that could give the impression the door sensor was covering a much wider area than it was so she looked outside and tried to stand out of range of it.
During her strange gesticulations, I think she was clearly trying to interact with the sensor with her right hand. With her left, she might have been doing that gesture where you move each hand up and down in opposite directions to say "I don't know". She was either talking to someone, or didn't know she was observed, so was having a big conversation with herself including gesticulations. I don't think you'd let your hand gestures get quite so wacky if you were talking to someone.
After she left, and the hold period expired, the lift visited the different floors of the numbers she pressed.
Her clothing was, in fact, found in the tank but it was different clothing than in the video and she was wearing a man's T-shirt which she may have used to sleep in. They found a three week old bloated corpse so I don't know how they could say with certainly she died just after the lift incident.
Her parents said she wasn't bipolar like the police said. I don't know if a bipolar "episode" would make someone act as unhinged as she looks at first glance.
The roof security really wasn't as tight as they say and people often go up there to sight-see and there's litter up there to attest to the fact. The water tank had no ladder but an adjacent one did. It would probably be quite tricky to carry a corpse up a ladder but if she was on the roof and contemplating suicide, um, she's already on a high roof.
>Minutes have been erased from the security footage
I think this happens when she's outside the lift, and the camera responds to motion detection.
I wonder if the footage would look as creepy if you didn't read the backstory first.
Yes but that's a test used for much more than the TB outbreak which was happening nearby at the time. I don't think that coincidence is too compelling. Weren't there similarly named characters in the film Dark Water too, or something?
I don't know how I was so oblivious to this news story at the time.
After watching the video I went to the bathroom and had to check behind the shower curtain in case a Japanese Grudge ghost was hiding in there. If I'd found a white kid instead I'd have just said "What are you doing here? Shoo."
Perhaps this is just me being unimaginative, but to me it looks like a girl getting frustrated with a lift.
I just typed out a long, tedious post about how it's become more about spectacle and the image of the event (as the above posters suggest) than about any curiosity about the event itself, but then I realised that was probably bleeding obvious to anyone posting in /boo/.
She pressed a bunch of buttons, in a vertical line, as soon as she got in. I think she did all the ones in the middle ending with hold so of course it wasn't going to work. That's pretty odd behaviour immediately. Maybe she was just messing around.
but I don't think it's unusual for people to have big conversations with themselves, or dance to no music or something, when alone. I'd definitely tone it down in a hotel corridor though in case there was CCTV.
People speculated she did the button thing because if she was being followed it would make it harder for a stalker to see which floor she went to or call the lift straight back.
It's still sort of internal if there are no observers. I don't know what's the difference between vocalising it or not.
If someone sub-vocalises when they read, and obviously reads silently in public, it still engages the muscles used for speech and you can still see their lips moving a little. What would be different if they vocalised whilst alone?
>>4033 There is evidence to suggest that vocalising thoughts is a most effective way of processing them, hence the thing where you can sit down and explain a problem to a colleague only to then work out a solution without their help.
The autopsy report says she was wearing the same clothing as in the video. I don't know where I read she had different ones.
She was biplolar. Her sister told the police and said what medication she was on.
The door to the roof is locked and alarmed however there's also a route up there through a fire escape with no security at all. The media were very keen on pushing the mystery of the door. I saw a news video, which I can't find again, where the presenter said
>The only way to the roof was through a door which was locked and had an alarm *rushed and downbeat voice* or there was a fire escape.
Then at the end of his report he said again how it was so mysterious about the door being so secure.
It's very easy to get to the bit where these firemen are standing on this higher level. Also, the hold button doesn't beep.
I'm really curious how obvious the CCTV is in the lift, because if it was obvious, it's less likely she was messing about because she thought no one could see her.
and google only finds 668 instances of that word pairing and 8/10 on its first page pertain to Elisa Lam. I think we have some meta-synchronicity going on.