In early 2013, America (and the whole world, perhaps, too) was shaken by the shocking and mystical story of Eliza Lam, a twenty-one-year-old Canadian of Chinese descent. On January 26, the girl arrived in the United States and stayed at the cheap Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The student never returned home, and none of her relatives expected such a quick and inexplicable end to her young life.
Eliza was the most exemplary daughter: she called her parents in Canada every day, telling her father and mother about her time in America. However, shortly after the girl moved into Cecil, her calls to her homeland suddenly stopped. Lam was last seen on 31 January. It was on this day that Eliza was supposed to check out of the hotel, but she never did this. The girl visited the nearest bookstore, where she bought gifts for relatives, returned to the hotel, took the elevator (she was recorded in the cab by a surveillance camera) and … disappeared without any trace.
The discovery of the corpse of Eliza Lam
Some time after the Canadian's mysterious disappearance, Cecil's guests began to complain to the administration about the quality of the hotel's water. The liquid in the taps became cloudy, and the water also had an unpleasant odor and a bitter taste. On February 19, the hotel staff climbed to the roof of the high-rise water supply system and found Eliza's naked body in one of the tightly closed tanks, which the police and parents who had arrived in Los Angeles had been looking for for two weeks. Lam's clothes and some personal belongings floated in the tank with her.
The green and bloated corpse of the girl, which had been poisoning the drinking water in the hotel with decomposition products for more than two weeks, was removed from the tank and handed over to forensic experts. The results of the examination with bated breath were awaited not only by the grieving relatives and friends of the girl, but also by millions of observers around the planet. The incident was actively covered by both American and foreign journalists.
It took the pathologists four months to complete the autopsy report. When the medics presented him to the police, the police were surprised to read that Eliza … drowned on her own. No traces of violence, including sexual violence, were found on her body. Experts did not find alcohol, drugs or medicines in the girl's blood. All the details indicated that the unfortunate woman drowned without anyone's help.
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However, who then section Lam? How did she manage to climb the closed roof and get into the sealed tank without a ladder or any tools? Who closed the tank behind her and sealed it again? The police could not ignore these inconsistencies, so they continued the investigation. However, detectives from the Murder Investigation Division, considered the most competent and prestigious unit in criminal investigation cases, did not achieve the results they expected from them, and the case was still closed under the heading "suicide".
Riddles surrounding the girl's death
First, Eliza was settled with another guest. However, he soon complained about the girl's “some strange behavior”, and the student was moved to a separate room. It is still unknown why the Canadian interfered with her neighbor.
When Eliza disappeared, the police searched the entire hotel (except occupied rooms) with dogs. Law enforcers and their four-legged assistants even climbed onto the roof a couple of times, but the bloodhounds for some reason could not smell the girl's tracks.
Unexplained Elevator Entry
The detectives' close attention was drawn to a recording made on the day the Canadian disappeared by an elevator surveillance camera. What is captured on a four-minute video looks truly surreal and frightening.
In the video below, you can contemplate how Eliza enters the elevator car on the last, fifteenth floor and begins to press various buttons on the control panel in turn. The girl lived in a room on the fourth floor, so she, in theory, needed to press only one key. The elevator door for some unknown reason does not close, although he was supposed to take Lam to the floor, the button of which she pressed last.
The student looks confused and scared. She quickly pokes her head out of the elevator and looks around, then suddenly hides in the corner of the booth, as if she does not want anyone to notice her. For some reason, the elevator is still open. A few seconds later, the girl again looks out of the elevator, then cautiously leaves it, takes a sharp step back and again steps into the hotel corridor. It is noticeable that she raises her hands above her head.
Then the girl returns to the elevator again, presses a lot of buttons again, and then goes out into the corridor again, bends a little and begins to make incomprehensible movements with her hands. Several times Eliza is out of sight of the camera. The elevator eventually closes, but Lam stays outside. A little time passes, and the door opens and closes by itself several times, while there is no one nearby, including the future deceased. After this inexplicable incident, the student was no longer seen by people or surveillance cameras.
Experts first of all considered that the girl was in a state of drug intoxication. However, toxicological analysis, as mentioned above, showed that the Canadian did not take any substances affecting consciousness. What caused this strange behavior?
Someone thinks that Eliza tried unsuccessfully to hide from the pursuer, and then began to explain something to him with gestures. Paranormal researchers have advanced the theory that the persecutor may have been invisible to others, including the recording device in the elevator.
Creepy hotel
By the way, the Cecil Hotel, built in the twenties of the last century, is considered a very unkind place.
Previously, rape, murder and suicide took place here. Notable serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger have stayed at this hotel multiple times. In 1947, Elizabeth Short was mysteriously killed and dismembered at the hotel, and this crime also remained unsolved. In 1962, a woman jumped out of the hotel window and landed on a pedestrian, thereby taking him with her to the next world. And two years later, in one of the rooms, two elderly sisters were raped and beheaded.
And there are dozens of such terrible incidents here. Cecil's management has re-branded and changed the name of the hotel several times, but such things, as you might imagine, are hard to forget. For example, in 2014, the hotel was renamed "Stay on Main" in order to smooth over its gloomy reputation, but most people did not stop bypassing it.
The suicide of Eliza Lam?
Many paparazzi who have conducted their investigations claim that the Los Angeles police decided to "brush off" the strange case and quickly called Eliza Lam suicide, although there was no reason for this.
Why would a girl, in order to lay hands on herself, have to climb onto the roof, open a relatively shallow reservoir of water, besides well sealed, strip herself, throw her things down, then jump there herself? Any heart expert will tell you that the psychology of female suicide differs significantly from the psychology of male suicide. It is always important for the fairer sex that their found body looks good, and a green naked corpse with a swollen belly clearly does not fit into this picture. In addition, the girl took certain medications, an overdose of which could send her to her forefathers incomparably easier. Why didn't she just get poisoned? And finally, who closed the water tank behind her and sealed it again?..
The murder of Eliza Lam?
One American journalist, who accessed the complete footage from an elevator, claims that the video was edited by law enforcement before being released to media and internet users. This is indicated by the "torn" video sequence and the smeared timecode below. According to the reporter, the police cut out several fragments from the recording, in which another person is glimpsed - a certain man who was with Eliza, but whose face did not get into the lens of the elevator camera. And the student's strange behavior here is supposedly flirting with a gentleman.
In addition, the pathologists determined that Lam could have died before she got into the tank on the roof. For example, her lungs were not filled with water. That is, the alleged killer could first kill his victim in some other way, and then simply throw (hide) the body in the tank.
To be honest, the details that indicate a possible murder include a wagon and a small cart. Nevertheless, the American police, apparently, did not manage to identify the killer, but did not want to admit their incompetence and blamed the victim for everything - they say, she killed herself.
The mystical death of Eliza Lam
However, there are many people who see an obvious mystical background in this story. Enthusiasts repeatedly walked around all the entrances and exits to the hotel, visited every main and fire escape and eventually came to the conclusion that the young Canadian … simply teleported to the tank.
Located in the corridor on the fifteenth floor, Lam could not get to the roof without being noticed by the hotel staff. To do this, she needed to go down and climb up the building along a side staircase. However, officers and other guests of Cecil, repeatedly questioned by the police, claimed that they had not seen the girl at that time of day. And the entrance to the roof was closed with an electronic lock, which Eliza could not bypass in any way.
Even more interesting is this. Shortly before her disappearance, the girl took a selfie near the mirror in the hotel toilet. The detectives who found the deceased's smartphone in the hotel, studied the memory of the gadget and unexpectedly stumbled upon this "crossbow". It is unknown how the image leaked onto the World Wide Web, but it instantly caught the attention of supernatural researchers.
Despite the fact that in this picture Eliza Lam's face is partially obscured by the phone, it is clearly visible that it has some kind of inhuman gray color, and its features are very distorted. As if it was no longer a girl standing near the mirror, but something completely different …
