Week 9-10 essay: Paranormal Activity Related to Elisa Lam

    On February 14th, 2011, a video of the last known living moments of Elisa Lam was released to the public in order to aid the search of Lam’s missing person case. This video revealed odd behaviors of Elisa on an elevator in the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, including strange movements, elevator malfunctions and misuse, apparent fear, and confusion. With the camera positioned inside the elevator, pointing outwards towards the doors, Lam enters the elevator and moves towards the control panel, where she appears to select several floors. Next, steps back into the corner, appearing frightened. Seconds later, when one would expect the elevator doors to close, they instead remain open. Elisa steps out, looks both directions, then rushes back in against the far back wall. The door remains open. This pattern occurs one more time with more buttons being pressed, and the elevator never closing. The second time she exists, she waves her hands to her sides in strange motions, as if she is petting an invisible creature. She then completely leaves the elevator. As soon as she walks away, the elevator finally closes. Five days later, Elisa’s naked corpse was found naked on top of the hotel, in a restricted area, within a nearly impossible to reach water tank. According to the autopsy, she died of “accidental drowning”, with no signs of physical misconduct (Reporter, Daily Mail 1).

    As the Cecil Hotel is known for a very dark past, including murderers and unexplained cases, many believed the death of Elisa Lam was caused by some type of paranormal activity. The recording was often referenced, often times people claiming that Lam was possessed, perhaps by demons or spirits that remained at the hotel. Perhaps her hand movements signified that she was caressing a demonic creature. Some even suggest that she was being haunted, and the elevator itself was possessed, trapping Lam within the hotel (Wallace-King).

    Taking a closer look at the video, along with investigation of Lam’s own past, one can determine that there is a more logical reality to her disappearance. For example, the strange behavior of the elevator can be a result of Lam’s random presses of the buttons. From the video, it seems as though she pressed nearly all of the buttons on the elevator. As anyone who has ever been on an elevator before knows that elevators are fitted with a “hold” button, that will temporarily hold the elevator doors open. One can also attribute Lam’s behavior to her previous psychological problems, as she was known to have bipolar disorder (Merwe 1). It is possible that she was having a psychological episode.

    Her death can also be explained. Many attribute Lam’s death to paranormal activity because of her body’s discovery on the roof’s restricted area. However, it is known that the fire escape allows for an accessible pathway to the water tanks that she may have followed. Perhaps an employee of the hotel is responsible for her death, and perhaps that employee accessed the roof and disposed of her body.

    There is so much more evidence pointing to a logical reality that people tend to ignore in favor of a paranormal activity. Perhaps people choose to believe in a paranormal event because it is less harsh than the reality of another human being causing the death of Elisa Lam. Perhaps the paranormal is easier to believe than the true circumstances of her death. Yet, the best way to discover the truth about her disappearance, along with any other mystery, is to examine the physical evidence of reality without jumping to theories of the supernatural.



Duke, Alan. "Hotel with Corpse in Water Tank Has Notorious past." CNN. CNN, 23 Feb. 2013. Print
"losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/02/19/body-found-inside-water-tank-atop-downtown-la-hotel/."CB

     SLA (n.d.): n. pag. CBS Los Angeles. 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 02 Nov. 2015. Journal Article

Reporter, Daily Mail. "'We Thought the Water Tasted Funny': Los Angeles Hotel Guests Drank

     and Bathed in Water from Tank Where Dead Canadian Tourist Decomposed for Two Weeks." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 21      Feb. 2013. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.

Wallace-King, Donna. "True Tales of Terror to Keep You up at Night." True Stories That Sound

     like Urban Legends. KSLA News, 29 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.

Merwe, Merelise Van Der. "The Elisa Lam Mystery: Still No Answers." The Elisa Lam Mystery:

     Still No Answers. N.p., 12 Dec. 2014. Web. 08 Nov. 2015.