Cecil Hotel

The first time I moved to Los Angeles, I didn’t know much about the place. Heck, I’d never even been there before. Sounds crazy, I know. But this story is about to get a lot more crazy than that.

My now husband (boyfriend at the time) and I decided to move there after living in Asia for the better part of 5 years. We decided since I was a filmmaker it was the most logical place to go, but we didn’t have all that much money. So the first thing we did was book a cheap hotel, just for the first few days, until we could get a car and an apartment. We did some research, I guess not enough, and ended up staying at a place called “Stay on Main.” It was a hostel, of sorts. As in, it was a hostel in a hotel, the Cecil Hotel.

For those of you who know your horror history, you are already probably rolling your eyes, idiots. But keep in mind, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. So we went. For the most part our stay was uneventful. The surrounding area was a little rough and there was a shared bathroom for our hall. We stayed on the 4th floor. Yup. The death floor.

Shi, or 4, is unlucky in many Asian countries because the number sounds like the word for death. But again, we weren’t thinking about any of this at the time. Our room wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a little small with giant tacky flowers, and strangely pillowy blankets. Being jet-lagged, neither of us slept very much. A few days later we checked out and we were on our way, nothing strange about it.

Things didn’t start getting weird until we moved into our next apartment, which happened to be shared with a lovely couple and their friend, all of whom had studied at Oxford. I thought it was a bit strange when we arrived that the girl asked us if we wanted to “smudge” our room. She said the last girl who had lived there before us, well, she wasn’t exactly a kind spirit and there was a chance of some negative residual energy. We politely declined, at the time not believing in such things. Man were we wrong.

Some time passed and summer faded, Halloween was fast approaching. Everything was going pretty good, until one night when I noticed my boyfriend was unusually fidgety. Something was clearly bothering him so I asked him what was up. He said it was nothing, he didn’t want to talk about it. I told him he couldn’t say that then not tell me what was bothering him as it was clear something was. After fidgeting awhile more he finally confessed he had seen something. A woman. A ghost woman. Not once, but twice.

I laughed it off. He described her much like the stereotypical Asian ghost you would see in movies like The Ring. As a horror buff and lover of all things spooky and abandoned, I had seen my share of crazy, but still was not about to believe this was really happening. I gave him many explanations and said it wasn’t real, though it was a bit unnerving to see him so spooked, he’s not an easily frightened type.

About a week went by and then it happened. I walked into the kitchen and swung open the cabinet, looking for a snack. I saw my boyfriend walk into the room a little after me, out the corner of my eye, so I swung the cabinet door back and asked if he wanted anything to eat. Except, it wasn’t my boyfriend. It was her. She had walked up the hall behind me, into the kitchen and vanished before reaching the kitchen window. I must have looked like I had just seen a ghost when my boyfriend walked in the room because he asked me what was wrong when he saw my expression, because I had in fact just seen a ghost.

Now we were both officially freaked out. But what should we do? We talked about it, but didn’t come to much of a conclusion. Luckily being Southern California, just about every corner store carries Spanish prayer candles. On a whim I bought one of the Virgin Mary and put it in our window. It seemed to work. We also smudged the whole apartment, you know, just in case.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part came on the day before Halloween. My friend in Tokyo, being one day ahead it was Halloween for them there, had posted a strange video with the caption: “Here’s a good one for you guys, Happy Halloween.” When I watched the video my eyes began to water, as they are now as I write this, something I have come to learn happens whenever I hear a true ghost story. The video was none other than the video of Elisa Lam in the elevator of the Cecil Hotel, the last known footage of her before her mysterious death.

I, freaked, out. We didn’t know anything of the case or her mysterious death at the time when we book the “cheap” hotel. It turned out we had both stayed on the same floor. And there in our house, a year after she was found dead in the water tower, she was walking around our apartment. It was like she followed us. I had never even heard of this person or the Cecil Hotel before. Then it all came together, clear as the ghost my boyfriend and I had been seeing following us around. Luckily nothing else came of it. But my eyes water even now, and I hate to know all that I know of her death and that place. And the more that I learn about that terrible place and the horrible things that have happened to the people who stayed in the Cecil Hotel, the more I regret that we ever set foot in it.