BY: M.TOMOSKI
I should never have drank the water after checking into that unholy mess, but how was I to know? The nightly rate was low, the doorman was friendly enough, and the lobby a glorious homage to a time before Main Street gave way to a river of heroin, alcohol and the stench of piss stewing in the Los Angeles sun. In the roaring twenties, the Cecil Hotel opened its doors to the white collar class for two bucks a night, and that same crowd – during the stock market crash – paid the fee just to throw themselves from the windows. It’s got a new name now and is expecting $100-million in renovations, but after nearly a hundred years of murder, suicide and questionable tenants, there is very little that can silence the rumor that all 600 rooms are haunted.
“Would you like something on a higher floor?” the night manager asked, and I nodded as I fled the hostel dorms after discovering that my roommate was an amateur thief. Someone had likely asked that same question of Pauline Otton who jumped from her ninth floor window in 1962, killing herself and the passerby she landed on. I might even have thought to question the strange sounds in my room if someone had told me the story of the Pigeon Woman. Goldie Osgood, a former resident, who spent the better part of her time feeding the pigeons in Pershing Square and was found strangled and stabbed with a bag of birdseed next to her body in June of 1964.
The Cecil set out to be a tourist attraction when it first opened in 1924, and the slow rot of downtown Los Angeles made it just that, though perhaps not in the way its original owners intended. It was meant to host high class individuals and instead became a grimy den of prostitution, drug abuse and murder.
Though the current owners are trying their best to rebrand the building, the Cecil inspired the latest season of American Horror Story and is rumored to be the last place anyone ever saw Elizabeth Short – the Black Dahlia murder victim, who was found near the hotel with her body drained of blood and severed in half. So with a limited understanding of pop culture, I stumbled into that place tired, thirsty and clueless, pouring myself four glasses of water I should never have had.
The night manager handed me an old fashioned key, and I rode the elevator to the eleventh of thirteen floors, where a cracked window let the sound of sirens and traffic into the room. There were four locks on the door: a turnkey, a deadbolt and two latches at the top and bottom. I thought nothing of it because my bags had just been assaulted by a graceless crook, yet I knew the upper floors of the hotel had once been home to some of LA’s most infamous serial killers.
From 1984 to 1985 Richard ‘the Nightstalker’ Ramirez would spend his days on the top floor of the Cecil and set into town at night, claiming 14 victims before he was finally caught. When he had finished for the night, Ramirez would return to the hotel and discard his bloody clothes in a nearby dumpster. Somehow the sight of a blood-soaked man in his underwear was a common enough occurrence in that part of town for him to make it back to his room without raising any eyebrows for a year.
Six years later, an Austrian man named Johann Unterweger felt so moved by the Nightstalker’s story that he came to Los Angeles to take up residence at the Cecil. Unterweger posed as a writer who was investigating the murder of prostitutes. Having already murdered seven working girls before coming to the United States, he even managed to convince the LAPD to take him on ride-alongs of the city’s red light district where he marked his victims.
As I lay in bed I could hear the laughter of guests in the hall, and every so often, the door rattled as though someone were trying to open it. Paranormal activity is frequently reported at the hotel, but for the time being, I was preoccupied with petty theft and a ceiling fan that rocked back and forth above the bed as though it was going to break free.
The next morning, a Times article sent a shiver up my spine when it made mention of the hotel’s most recent victim. In 2013, Canadian tourist Elisa Lam’s body was found in one of the water tanks on the roof. She had been there for two weeks before guests began to complain about the taste and colour of the water. Her death was explained away as an unfortunate accident and the story of her final day in that hotel is truly chilling. Surveillance footage released from the day she went missing shows her anxiously trying to access the elevator, pushing several of the buttons before speaking with someone who doesn’t appear to be there.
As I read her story I finally realized where I’d spent the night and began to reflect on the rattling of the door, the shaking of the fan, and whether I ever really heard any laughter. After a blissfully ignorant rest, the Cecil Hotel has followed me home with all too vivid dreams of being trapped in that room giving a whole new meaning to the words, ‘It’s all in your head’. So if you’re going to spend the night in a haunted hotel, it’s best to stay totally oblivious, but perhaps I never should have drunk the water.
Image sources: popsugar.com, booked.net, jezebel.com, messynessychic.com
