Leaked Video Opens Strange Possibilities in Elisa Lam Case

The LAPD has released a video of what is believed to be the last known sighting of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who went missing during her stay at The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. The footage was taken from a surveillance camera inside an elevator in the hotel. What it shows is both intriguing and disturbing…

Elisa’s actions, and the video itself, raise several questions:

• Why is the timestamp blurred out?
• At 37 seconds into the video Elisa’s mouth also blurs out. Is this an attempt to prevent viewers from reading her lips? If so, what could she have said than needs to be hid?
• Elisa presses buttons in the elevator in a sequence. Could her disappearance be the result of a botched attempt at The Elevator Game?
• Elisa peek out of the elevator to look up and down the hallway several times. What was she looking for? Who, or what, is she hiding from?
• Is the unsettling way Elisa moves her arms, starting at 1:58, a sign that she may have been possessed?

Out of curiosity I did some digging into the history of the Cecil Hotel. What I found can hardly be called surprising at this point.

The Cecil Hotel was constructed in 1924 by William Banks Hanner, a hotelier who confidently invested over 1 million dollars into the building. Little did Hanner know, the country was five years away from sinking into the Great Depression and the degradation of Main Street into what became known as Skid Row. The Cecil Hotel, once an opulent destination for businessmen and wealthy tourists, became a house for transients in a neighborhood choked with the homeless. In the years since the hotel has become known for suicides and criminal activity, including three murders. It was also the reported residence of serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger in 1985 and 1991, respectively.

Elisa Lam’s fate is still unclear, but something tells me more strange things are to come.