Elisa Lam: Death, Tumblr blog, Cecil Hotel, elevator video, Netflix Crime Scene documentary and more

Elisa Lam was a Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her parents are immigrants from Hong Kong who had moved to Canada before her birth. She became popular after her mysterious death at the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles made the news and attracted interest from all over the world.

In this article, we will provide all the details available about Lam right from her birth, family, death and the theories about it as well as police conclusions. First, we give a quick rundown of some of the top facts that you may want to know about her.

Top 10 facts about the Elisa Lam case

1. Elisa Lam was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to parents who emigrated from Hong Kong.
2. She was a student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, although she was not registered at the school at the time of her death in 2013.
3. She ran two blogs, one on BlogSpot and a latter one on Tumblr where she posted fashion photos and sometimes talked about issues she was having at school and mental illness.
4. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression and was under medication to treat them.
5. It took 19 days for the Los Angeles Police Department to find her after her parents reported that she was missing on 1 February 2013 during a trip.
6. An elevator video before she went missing displayed what seemed to be bizarre behaviour and has caused a lot of internet activities around her case including something called ‘The Elevator Game curse’.
7. There are several unresolved issues about the Elisa Lam case ranging from blood tests, to suspicion of foul play and many more (see details in the full article).
8. The Cecil Hotel, where Elisa Lam died, is connected to many other unfortunate events including the death of Goldie Osgood, known as the Pigeon Lady of Pershing Square. Also, two serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez had stayed there while they were active.
9. Her case has inspired many films, TV series, songs and video games; one notable mention is the first season of the award-winning TV series How to Get Away with Murder.
10. On 10 February 2021, Netflix aired a four-episode docuseries titled Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, which explores the death of Elisa Lam.

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Early life, background and family

Lam’s parents were from Hong Kong but have settled down in Canada. Lam herself was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on 30 April 1991. There is no mention of her having siblings, it appears Elisa Lam was an only child.

Education

After high school, she had gotten admission into the University of British Columbia. According to reports, at the time of her death, Elisa Lam had not been registered at the school. Her personal blogs revealed that she was struggling with her academics.

She had written that she had dropped several classes and was feeling disoriented. In her words, Elisa Lam wrote that she was “so utterly directionless and lost.” We will go into details about her online activities next to give some insight into her psyche.

Elisa Lam blogs

on BlogSpot

In 2010, at the age of 19, Miss Lam started a blog called Ether Fields or Etherfields on American publishing service BlogSpot. Her blog mostly contained photos of fashion models in captivating attire. However, she also wrote about her mental illness and personal struggles.

The epigraph or theme of her blog was “You’re always haunted by the idea you’re wasting your life”. Her Wikipedia page traced the quotation to novelist Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club. Her most memorable blog post was made in January 2012.

In that post, Elisa Lam revealed that she had suffered a relapse at the beginning of the school term, which led to her struggles with her academics. The quote mentioned above was used as the title of this particular post.

We surmise that the post is important because it may explain why she was not registered as a student at the University of British Columbia in 2013. She further wrote that she was worried about what her transcript would look like with her withdrawing from many classes.

Part of her blog post reads:

“I’m very disappointed in myself for breaking down during the term forcing me to withdraw from courses. I’ve been at university for 3 years and I’ve only managed to complete three courses. That means I’ve been a first year for three years and this September it will be for the fourth year because I require 30 credits in order for second year status.”

It hints that she was scared that she would not be able to continue and attend graduate school as well.

Tumblr blog

Later in 2012, she wrote that she was running another blog hosted on Tumblr called “Nouvelle-Nouveau”. Like the BlogSpot blog, it also contained fashion photos, which she said acted as distractions. Elisa Lam Tumblr blog used the same Palahniuk quote as its epigraph.

What happened to Elisa Lam?

Trip to California

In January 2013, Lam travelled alone to California. According to police findings, she used Amtrak – a passenger railroad service that provides intercity service in the United States and to nine Canadian cities. She also used intercity buses.

When she got to San Diego, she visited the San Diego Zoo and even posted photos she had taken there on social media. Then, on 26 January 2013, she arrived in Los Angeles and checked into the Cecil Hotel (now called Stay on Main) on 28 January.

At the Cecil Hotel

When she got to the Cecil Hotel, the management initially gave her a room on the hotel’s fifth floor, which she shared with other unnamed individuals. However, the hotel’s lawyer later claimed that her roommates complained that she was exhibiting some odd behaviour.

Thus, they moved her to her own room after two days. This will mean that by 30 January 2013, Elisa Lam was staying alone. Her parents claimed that during her entire trip, she talked to them every day. They became worried when by 1 February 2013, they did not hear from her.

She was supposed to check out of the hotel that day and continue to her next destination, Santa Cruz. Her family called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and reported the matter. Before we proceed with the other parts of this story, there are some details about the Cecil Hotel that we should share.

The Cecil Hotel

The Cecil Hotel was a 700-room complex that had been run initially as a business hotel in the 1920s. Sources claim that the Los Angeles hotel had faced hard times during the Great Depression of the 1930s and didn’t recover. It also has some bit of not-too-flattering history.

In 1964, Goldie Osgood, known as the Pigeon Lady of Pershing Square, was raped and murdered in her room at the Cecil Hotel. Lam’s death is another unsolved death that took place in the building.

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Also, while they were still active, two serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez stayed at the Cecil Hotel. Additionally, the hotel played host to several suicides in the past. Hinting at something paranormal or supernatural about the place, Steve Erickson, who spent a night there after the death of Elisa Lam (see next section), said: “The Cecil will reveal to you whatever it is you’re a fugitive from.”

In trying to outrun its negative reputation, the Cecil Hotel has since changed its name to Stay on Main and has undergone renovations. As of 2017, it has been redeveloped into a mix of hotel rooms and residential units.

Disappearance of Elisa Lam

After contacting the LAPD, Elisa Lam family also flew to Los Angeles to help find their daughter. Thus, began the search for Lam on 1 February 2013. One hotel staff who claimed to have seen her on the day of her disappearance said that she was alone that day.

A bookstore owner named Katie Orphan was the only person outside the hotel that could recall seeing her that day as well. Orphan said that Elisa had seemed like an outgoing and lively person. She had entered her shop to get book gifts for her family.

CNN quoted Katie Orphan as saying of Lam: “[She was] talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy for her to carry around as she travelled.”

The police searched the hotel building and Lam’s room but nothing turned up. However, they acknowledged that at the time, that they didn’t search every room. Police spokesperson Sgt. Rudy Lopez explained that they were not yet legally permitted to do so unless they had ‘probable cause’ to believe that a crime had been committed.

Instead, by 6 February 2013, the police opted to post flyers of her image around the town and online to get extra help from the public. By doing this, public interests in her whereabouts started growing. Yet, Elisa Lam had seemingly disappeared.

Elisa Lam elevator video

The LAPD decided to release yet another detail from the investigation to the public on 15 February 2013. This time, it was the last known sighting of late Miss Lam caught on 1 February 2013 on one of the Cecil Hotel’s surveillance cameras. Here is the Elisa Lam elevator video:

In the video above, one can clearly see her exhibiting strange behaviour. At first, she appears to be hiding from someone. Then, she steps out of the elevator after peeping around. She also seems to be speaking to herself with hand gestures.

Also, at one point, she seems to press a combination of the elevator buttons, one of which is the button to hold the elevator’s door. She eventually walked away from the elevator.

The video went viral online with CBS News’ upload of it getting 2.3 million views and a Dennis Romero upload of the same video getting 28 million views as of February 2021.

The Elisa Lam elevator video found its way to Chinese video-sharing site Youku, where it got 3 million views and 40,000 comments in its first 10 days. Many people found the video disturbing and several theories emerged.

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This elevator video has been categorised among the most popular cursed videos on the internet. Cursed videos are spooky footage with unresolved cases surrounding them and some are inexplicable.

It is important to note also that at the time that the elevator video emerged, her bipolar disorder was not known publicly. We will get into that shortly. First, let us detail some of the reactions to her video.

What really happened to Elisa Lam?

After the Elise Lam elevator video was released to the public, some postulated that she had likely been a victim of drug abuse or under the influence of ecstasy. The police report when they found her showed that none of such drugs was found in her system at the time of her death.

Another theory is that there might have been someone chasing her and that she got into the elevator to escape the assailant. The proponents of this theory further claimed that the released footage was likely edited to remove the assailant from it and slowed down to make it seem like her movements were odd rather than frantic.

When it became known that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, some argued that the elevator video might have captured one of her psychotic episodes. There are even wilder claims from the Elisa Lam case; here is one below.

The Elevator Game

The Elisa Lam case is regarded by many as the foundation of The Elevator Game, which became popular in 2014. Other claims that the game has its origin in Korea, despite this case happening in California.

The Elevator Game is hinged on the theory that you get to enter another dimension if you press an elevator’s buttons in a specific order. To play, you need to be in a building with at least 10 floors and an elevator.

Some believed that this was the game that Elisa Liam had been playing before her disappearance. Here is how a blog explained the elevator game:

On entering the first floor, the player must press the floor buttons in the following order: 4-2-6-2-10-5. When the player reaches the fifth floor, it claims they might meet a mysterious woman. To remain safe, the player must not look at her or speak to her.

This woman is said to be the enforcer of ‘the elevator game curse’ and not human. After this, the player is to press the button for the first floor. If the elevator goes up to the tenth floor instead, it means the ritual worked.

Also, there is a claim that when a player enters the other dimension, it’ll look like the normal building except that they’ll be completely alone. All electronics and lights may also stop working.

To return to the normal world, a player needs to press the same buttons that took them to the other dimension. A caveat is that if the player gets off at the wrong time, they may be lost forever. Some were convinced that the Elisa Lam elevator video showed that she was playing the elevator game and that the curse was activated.

Discovery of Elisa Lam’s body

While the search for Elise Lam was going on, guests staying at the Cecil Hotel started lodging complaints about the water. First, it was that the water pressure was too low. Then, there were other reports that the water was oddly coloured black and had a weird taste.

On 19 February 2013, 19 days after she was reported missing, a search team found Elisa Lam’s body in one of the four 1,000-gallon tanks located on the roof of the hotel. The tank provided water to guest rooms, the kitchen and a coffee shop. To extract her corpse, they had to drain out the tank and then cut it open.

How did Elisa Lam die?

Two days after her corpse was found, the Los Angeles coroner’s office said that she had accidentally drowned in the water tank. Her body was found naked and the clothes she had worn in the eerie elevator video was floating in the water. They also found her watch and room key with her corpse.

The full report came in June 2013 and the coroner mentioned that bipolar disorder might have played a significant part in her death. In addition, there was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault or suicide. This ruled out the theories that Elisa Lam was murdered and the elevator video was edited.

Also, the toxicology tests turned up traces of the prescription medication found among her belongings, plus nonprescription drugs such as sinutab and ibuprofen. There was also a small amount of alcohol in her system but no other recreational drug, thus, ruling out the theory that she was under the influence of ecstasy.

The toxicology tests report is said to be incomplete because not much of her blood was left when her corpse was found.

Bipolar disorder background

Likely because of the stigma associated with mental illness, Elisa Lam’s family had hidden her bipolar disorder history until the investigations turned it up. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression.

At the time of her death, she had been prescribed four medications —Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor— to treat her illness. Her family mentioned that despite the illness, she had never exhibited suicidal tendencies. Research into her life, however, revealed that she had once gone missing for a brief period in the past.

As already mentioned, Elisa Lam Tumblr blog and the older one revealed that she was taking conscious steps to get better and lead a somewhat happy life. Despite the discovery of her body and published findings, some still ask the question, “Who killed Elisa Lam?”

Who killed Elisa Lam?

Why does this question and inquisition into the death of Elisa Lam still continue? The answer is because there are still many unresolved issues concerning the Elisa Lam case.

For example, while the police and the coroner have explained how Elisa Lam died by drowning, there is no explanation of how she got into the water tank nor how she came to naked.

CBS News reported that the doors and stairs that lead to the Cecil Hotel roof were locked and only staff could access them. Additionally, attempts at forcing the doors open would trigger an alarm and alert security. Yet, it also conceded that if she used the fire escape, she could have gotten to the roof.

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Also, this video below proved that it was easy to get to the Cecil Hotel roof with the fire escape and two of the water tank lids were left open.

Another unresolved issue around the Elisa Lam case is that it would have been difficult for her to get into the water tank unaided because of its height. The hotel staff used a ladder to look into the tank. The LAPD police search dogs had also sniffed around the roof and had not caught any scent of her. There is also the question of how the lid of the water tank was replaced by someone already inside.

Elisa Lam Tumblr blog after her death

After her death, her Tumblr blog was updated for about a year. There are theories that this was likely done by the Tumblr Queue option, which allows posts to publish by themselves when the user is not online. There has been no link between the updated blog and her death as they have all been photos and reblogs.

Since her phone was also missing, some think that whoever ‘killed’ Elisa Lam must have taken the phone. Others think that her phone had been stolen before her death, as that would explain why she had failed to contact her parents that day before she died.

Elisa Lam Family sues Cecil Hotel

In September 2013, her family sued Cecil Hotel over ‘wrongful death’. They claimed that the hotel had failed to “inspect and seek out hazards in the hotel that presented an unreasonable risk of danger to (Lam) and other hotel guests”. They demanded payment for damages and burial costs, the amounts are not publicly available.

The Cecil Hotel argued that since it is not known how Elisa Lam found her way into the water tank, they cannot be held responsible for not preventing it. In 2015, the lawsuit brought by the family against the hotel was dismissed.

Films about Elisa Lam case

The death of Elisa Lam eerily resembles the plot of a 2005 horror film Dark Water. Dark Water is a remake of an earlier Japanese film of the same name based on a 1996 short story by Koji Suzuki. In the film, a mother and daughter are trapped in a malfunctioning elevator in their apartment and discoloured water from the apartment’s faucet leads them to the rooftop water tank where they find the body of a girl who had been reported missing in the apartment a year earlier.

The Elisa Lam case inspired several films, TV series, songs and even games. Some of the notable ones include:

1. May 2013 “Watershed” episode of ABC series Castle.
2. 2014 season 1 of How to Get Away with Murder TV series.
3. 2014 Hungry Ghost Ritual (an Hong Kong film).
4. 2014 “Ancient Mars” music video by The Zolas.
5. 2014 “Disappearing Syndrome” song by Hail the Sun.
6. 2015 American Horror Story.
7. March 2016 BuzzFeed Unsolved episode.
8. 2017 “Window Sash Weights” and “Stranger Than Paradise” songs by Sun Kil Moon.
9. 2019 video game YIIK: A Postmodern RPG by ACKK.
10. January 2021 Ghost Adventures episode by Discovery+.

Netflix Elisa Lam documentary

On 13 January 2021, Netflix announced that it will be airing a four-episode docuseries titled Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. This Netflix series explores the death of Elisa Lam and it premiered on 10 February 2021.

Variety criticised Netflix for drawing out the Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel series until the final episode before it “finally gets to its point.”

The first three episodes of the Netflix Elisa Lam docuseries explores the theories and speculations about the case. Here is a clip of the Cecil Hotel manager speaking on the Netflix Elisa Lam documentary:

 

Women’s health concerning the Elisa Lam case

Since her mysterious death, there has been more interest in the mental health of people and especially concerning women’s health. Women’s Health magazine shed some light on the mental struggles Lam went through after the Netflix Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel series renewed interest in her case.

Thus, there you have the entire story about the Elisa Lam case and unfortunate death. There has been no way to prove several of the theories but a few of them can also be discredited to a reasonable level.