tenaflyviper:The above CCTV footage is of a 21-year-old Canadian woman named Elisa Lam. This
tenaflyviper: The above CCTV footage is of a 21-year-old Canadian woman named Elisa Lam. This footage was taken from the elevator of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles on January 31st, 2013, shortly before she is believed to have died. Her body was discovered two weeks later at the bottom of a water tank on the roof of the building. Hotel workers found the body while responding to complaints about the water in the hotel being discolored, as well as having a foul smell and taste. Her decomposing body was found completely naked, with her clothes floating beside her inside the tank. Luckily for those who may have accidentally ingested the contaminated water, the threat posed by a human cadaver in a water tank is much less significant than one might expect, and test results showed no presence of harmful bacteria. While her disappearance had already garnered significant media attention, it wasn’t until police released the above footage that interest in the case began to snowball, with many viewers questioning Lam’s seemingly odd behavior. There are…numerous uncanny coincidences and suspicious circumstances surrounding this case, but oddly enough, her behavior may not be one of them. According to the site, “Body Language Success”, Lam’s behavior bears signs of a tentatively playful nature–perhaps flirting with another guest, or maybe even trying to entertain a child. While it is not seen or known whom she was interacting with, it can reasonably be assumed that the person is simply standing slightly further down the hall, out of the CCTV camera’s view. Some have noted that the elevator door appears to stay open for an unnaturally long time, but it has since been confirmed by recent guests that tested the elevator for themselves–the only one in the building–that pressing the “door open” button (which Elisa can be seen pressing multiple times) will cause the door to remain open for approximately two minutes. Though most assume her to be in the lobby when the footage was captured, it is apparent from the video that she is actually on a much higher floor, possibly even the top floor. She was not in view of other guests, or workers, at this time. What is most odd about the footage, however, is that the time stamp in the corner is not only oddly placed, but highly corrupted. The speed of the video has also been slowed down substantially, stretching just under three minutes of footage out to just over four. There is a point in the video where the time clearly skips ahead, indicating the loss of an indeterminate amount of time. However, inexplicably, there is over a minute of footage where Lam is not visible in the frame whatsoever, leading viewers to wonder why it was edited and presented in this fashion. It has been emphasized that Lam suffered from depression, and possibly bi-polar disorder (some even perceive her behavior in the elevator prior to her death to be indicative of a mental breakdown). She also expressed feeling suicidal, which can be verified by posts on her tumblr. People frequently make note of the fact that the roof of the hotel is only accessible via a locked, alarmed door (I’ll get into this tidbit a little later), and that there is no way a single person could have climbed, opened, and shut one of those large water tanks on their own. Various sources have found it necessary to recount the macabre history of the Cecil hotel, particularly the fact that it once housed two notorious serial killers (one of whom being Richard Ramirez, the “Night Stalker”), and that the building has long been believed to be haunted. Things only get stranger from here: There was an outbreak of tuberculosis in the Skid Row area of L.A., which is located fairly close to the Cecil Hotel, around the time her body was discovered. The name of the test to determine the presence of the disease? It’s literally called the “LAM Elisa”. The circumstances surrounding Lam’s death share shocking similarities to the Japanese horror film, Dark Water (2002). In the film, the death of a young girl is discovered when boarders at an apartment complain of dark, foul water, and find her body in the building’s water tank. There is also a scene in the film where the protagonist encounters a specter of the girl in the building’s elevator (naturally, the girl has long black hair, though this is not uncommon in Japanese horror). All of this probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the incident, but the similarities are creepy nonetheless. The protagonist of the film, at one point, even wears an outfit very similar to Elisa’s.Elisa Lam’s personal tumblr blog, “Nouvelle Nouveau”, continued to update (though sporadically) up to December of 2013–close to a year after her death. While this is confirmed to be possible with tumblr’s queuing system, the question remains as to why she would choose to queue so few posts so far ahead of time, or why she didn’t also queue up other posts for the months between June and December. While this may not be relevant to the case whatsoever, it still strikes me–and others–as somewhat odd. Sarah Lam, Elisa’s sister, made a single plea over Twitter to The Young Turks to try to find her sister, but not to any other organization. On Facebook, meanwhile, she did not make a single post regarding her missing sister. This, too, struck many people as odd. Why would you not utilize more avenues to find a missing loved one? Things we do know for certain: The roof can be accessed without a key, and without setting off the alarm. There is a fire escape that can be taken up to the roof of the building that is accessible via windows at the far end of a hallway.There actually are ladders on the outside of at least one of the tanks.Firefighters dispatched to the scene cut into the side of the water tank to remove the body. The image below shows that there is no ladder, nor any other method, present inside the tank that would allow a person to escape, or to even close the tank from the inside. Regardless of what psychological state she may have been in, there is no plausible way that Elisa could have gotten into the tank, and then closed it from the inside on her own.Her death was first ruled as “could not be determined”, then later crossed out, and ruled as “accidental”. Foul play was somehow ruled out, but it’s never explained how or why they came to this conclusion. Interestingly enough, the coroner that performed the autopsy, Dr. Yulai Wang, had a complaint filed against him from a previous botched autopsy.The third page of the official autopsy report mentions the presence of sand on her clothing that coincides with the type of particulate one might find on the roof of a building. The amount found would indicate that, at some point, either Lam herself, or her clothing, had unnecessary contact with the roof of the building. The second page of the report mentions an abrasion on her left knee, implying a possible fall. The Cecil Hotel has since changed its name to the Stay on Main. Not only is it located in an extremely sketchy area and has a dark history, but it’s also notorious for poor service, minimal security, and appalling conditions. There was at least one registered sex offender living at the Cecil Hotel at the same time as Elisa Lam. While I feel this case to be closer to a real incident that was simply handled poorly, there is part of me that remains suspicious of the circumstances surrounding it. At this time, I would like to note a few important things: There is already a film in the works about this case. Lam’s death being kept ambiguous stands to be highly profitable both to the Cecil Hotel, and to Sony, who purchased the film rights. It is widely known that Sony has been suffering from financial losses in recent years, particularly in mainstream cinema. The company also suffered a cyber attack in 2014, with the handling of the incident highly criticized in the media. For Sony, there is a lot riding on this case remaining unsolved. With an impending lawsuit from Lam’s family, the Cecil Hotel will need to recoup its losses–what better way than to bank on its prior infamy by reinforcing the idea that the morbid history of the building itself may be to blame? It’s not exactly the first time a defendant has cried that “The devil made me do it!” to shed blame and lessen personal accountability for a crime, especially if there’s a profit to be made, and a creepy story to tell. Just look at what happened in Amityville. It is not the least bit far-fetched, nor implausible, that this kind of scenario could be faked. First of all, there was a college class that fooled the world into believing in a historical figure that never actually existed. Secondly, there are numerous precedents in this form of marketing: The Blair Witch Project (1999) may have floated on the idea that it was composed of footage from three missing college students, but both Snuff (1976) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980) were advertised the same way decades prior. Snuff was formerly a piece of Manson-sploitation called Slaughter that had a hasty “ending” tacked onto it to years later to fool audiences into believing that the actors in the film were killed afterwards (even though the additional footage featured none of the original actors, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the film). The taglines proudly proclaimed, “The film that could only be made in South America, where life is cheap!”. Cannibal Holocaust claimed that the filmmakers were later eaten by the tribe they had been filming, even going so far as to include a clause in the actors’ contracts that disallowed them from appearing in any other piece of media for a year following the film’s release. When the film was met with controversy, the director was even forced to nullify these contracts, so that the actors could appear in court, as proof that they were, in fact, alive. Most recently, the phenomenon of “This Man” allegedly appearing in the dreams of thousands of people was proven to be a piece of guerrilla marketing for an upcoming horror film. Even in light of all this information, however, let’s view this overall as a legitimate (though bungled) case. Also, for our intents and purposes, we shall stick to the facts, and avoid anything to do with the paranormal. So, what do we make of all of this? Well, foul play should not have been ruled out by the coroner, nor the authorities. Lam was in a prime location, at a prime time, to be taken advantage of. We know for a fact that there was at least one known sexual predator staying in the hotel at that time. There is also the possibility that she was not in complete control of her mental faculties, which could have made her especially vulnerable. While she had the means of accessing the roof without needing a key or tripping the alarm, it is highly implausible that she placed herself in that tank. She would have had no way of closing it on herself from the inside. The sand on Lam’s clothing means that either she, or her clothing, spent some amount of time lying on the roof of the building. The death of Elisa Lam should never have been ruled “accidental”. This was no accident. -- source link