#Elisa Lam

[poemswithouthomes]

Now and again, I’ll catch myself amid my paranoia, peering around a door or corner multiple times to ensure absence. And I think of Elisa Lam. And I think of women. I think- I cannot believe how easy it is to turn women into ghosts- and women’s experiences into ghost stories.

[prxdk]

Elisa Lam was on Tumblr and I’m not over this piece of information.

[eemoo1o]

You know when you open up a true crime documentary and they immediately start showing a tumblr user creating their blog journal that some real fucked up shit’s gunna go down

[iwanttobeastranger]

[tenshi-net]

the death of elisa lam is such an interesting case to me. of course i pay respect to the life lost, but... she had a tumblr blog like me. it updated after her death. i think about it a lot

[victoriapedroza]

Hotel Cecil, Most haunted hotel in Los Angeles.

2023

purgatorie

[pinkmoongrace]

[lesbianhouseplant]

Yalls if my blog looks like the ramblings of a crazy person for a few days it’s because I’m going down the cryptozoology and conspiracy theories rabbit hole again I promise I do not believe most of these and find them interesting I promise

[girlyapril1517-blog]

This is the link to Elisa Lam's Tumblr account. click on achieve. Don't forget to also click on the post type to all posts! you guys can look at her posts. I have no explanation for how her posts are after her death.

[stoners4207]

I just got done watching Elisa lam on Netflix and I felt bad and I saw her Tumblr posts and I will screenshot them what she said in her posts stay tuned

[canadaloveselenasblog]

I believe that they said that Elisa was a fan of roof top! and she saw the movie dark waters! but I am speculating here!, I must say though the video of her in the elevator is just simply creepy! the whole thing is creepy! but I don't believe in ghost demons or the shinning elevators. Rip Elisa!

[lunadramslesworld]

After watching the Netflix documentary 'Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,' I was inspired to create a Tumblr account to share my thoughts on the platform.

~ 03.05.2024 ~

[mothfrye]

Elisa Lam's story is just horrendous and so so sad. She was one of us, with our funny little Tumblr blogs and our unique senses of humour. I hope she rests in peace, fly high angel.

[m-o-z-a-i-k-a]

She was a feminist, a Potterhead, a Sherlock fan, she liked modern art and cute animated GIFs.

She was so much. And so... Us.

She was another one of us.

How did she end up in that water tank?

Why is her name in the test kits?

Did she even know something was so deadly wrong?

What does this all mean?

She didn't deserve to be such a fetishized piece of sensation, milked for content over and over for years after her death. She would have despised that.

Horror writers are already using some disgusting, sexualised interpretation of her story in their piece of shit works.

She did not deserve that.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The Weird Death of Elisa Lam

For her trip to California, Lam travelled alone on Amtrak and intercity buses. She visited the San Diego Zoo and posted photos taken there on social media. On January 26, she arrived in Los Angeles. After two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel, near downtown’s Skid Row. Lam was initially assigned a shared room on the hotel’s fifth floor; however, her roommates complained about what the hotel’s lawyer would later describe as “certain odd behavior” and Lam was moved to a room of her own after two days.

Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. She had been prescribed four medications – Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor – to treat her disorders. According to her family, who supposedly kept her history of mental illness a secret, Lam had no history of suicidal ideations or attempts, although one report claimed she had previously gone missing for a brief period.

Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia every day while traveling. On February 1, 2013, the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD); her family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search.

Hotel staff who saw Lam that day said she was alone. Outside the hotel, Katie Orphan, manager of a nearby bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing her that day. “She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly” while getting gifts to take home to her family.

Police searched the hotel to the extent that they legally could. They searched Lam’s room and had dogs go through the building, including the rooftop, but the dogs were unsuccessful in detecting her scent. “But we didn’t search every room,” Sgt. Rudy Lopez said later, “we could only do that if we had probable cause” to believe a crime had been committed. On February 6, a week after Lam had last been seen, the LAPD decided more help was needed. 

On February 15, after another week with no sign of Lam, the LAPD released a video of the last known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil’s elevators by a video surveillance camera on February 1. In approximately two and a half minutes of footage, Lam, alone, makes unusual moves and gestures, leaving the elevator at one point while its doors remain open, even after she appears to have pressed every button. When the doors fail to close after she returns, she leaves; the doors close later.

The video drew worldwide interest in the case due to Lam’s strange behavior, and has been extensively analyzed and discussed. It was reposted widely, including on the Chinese video-sharing site Youku, where it got 3 million views and 40,000 comments in its first 10 days. Many of the commentators found it unsettling to watch.

Several theories evolved to explain her actions. One was that Lam was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape from someone who was pursuing her. Others suggested that she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug, but none was detected in her body. When her bipolar disorder became known, the theory that she was having a psychotic episode also emerged.

Other viewers argued that the video had been tampered with before being made public. Besides the obscuring of the timestamp, they claimed, parts had been slowed down and nearly a minute of footage had been removed. This could have been done to protect the identity of someone who otherwise would be in the video, either related or not to the disappearance.

During the search for Lam, guests at the hotel began complaining about low water pressure. Some later claimed their water was colored black and had an unusual taste. On the morning of February 19, Santiago Lopez, a hotel maintenance worker, found Lam’s body in one of four 1,000-gallon (3,785 L) tanks located on the roof providing water to guest rooms, a kitchen, and a coffee shop. Through the open hatch he saw Lam lying face-up in the water. The tank was drained and cut open since its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate equipment needed to remove Lam’s body.

On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner’s office issued a finding of accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full coroner’s report, released in June, stated that Lam’s body had been found naked;  clothing similar to what she was wearing in the elevator video was floating in the water, coated with a “sand-like particulate”. Her watch and room key were also found with her.

Lam’s body was moderately decomposed and bloated. It was mostly greenish, with some marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation evident. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide. Toxicology tests showed traces consistent with prescription medication found among her belongings, plus non-prescription drugs such as Sinutab and ibuprofen. A very small quantity of alcohol (about 0.02 g%) was present, but no other recreational drugs. Investigators and experts have however noted that the concentration of her prescription drugs in her system indicated that she was under-medicating or had stopped taking her medications recently.

The investigation had determined how Lam died, but did not initially offer an explanation as to how she got into the tank in the first place. Doors and stairs that access the hotel’s roof are locked, with only staff having the passcodes and keys, and any attempt to force them would supposedly have triggered an alarm. The hotel’s fire escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures; her scent trail was lost near a window that connected to it. A video posted to the Internet after Lam’s death showed that the hotel’s roof was easily accessible via the fire escape and that two of the lids of the water tanks were open.

Apart from the question of how she got on the roof, others asked if she could have gotten into the tank by herself. All four tanks were 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) cylinders propped up on concrete blocks;  there was no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the water. They were protected by heavy lids that would be difficult to replace from within. The hotel employee who found the body said that the lid was open at the time, removing the issue of how she could have closed the lid from inside. Police dogs that searched through the hotel for Lam, even on the roof, shortly after her disappearance was noted, did not find any trace of her.

Theories arose pertaining to the elevator video. Some argued that she was attempting to hide from a pursuer, perhaps someone ultimately responsible for her death, while others said she was merely frustrated with the elevator’s apparent malfunction. Some proponents of the theory that she was under the influence of illicit drugs are not dissuaded by their absence from the toxicology screen, suggesting that they might have broken down during the period of time her body decomposed in the tank or that she might have taken rare cocktails of such drugs that a normal screen would not detect. The very low level of her prescription drugs in her system, and the amount of pills left in her prescription bottle, suggested she was under-medicating or had recently stopped taking her medication for bipolar disorder, which might have led to a psychotic episode.

The autopsy report and its conclusions were also questioned based on the incomplete information. For instance, it does not say what the results of the rape kit and fingernail kit were or even if they were processed. It also records subcutaneous pooling of blood in Lam’s anal area, which some observers suggested was a sign of sexual abuse; one pathologist noted it could also have resulted from bloating in the course of the body’s decomposition, and her rectum was also prolapsed. Even the coroner’s pathologists appeared to be ambivalent about their conclusion that Lam’s death was accidental.

Since her death, her Tumblr blog was updated, presumably through Tumblr’s Queue option that allows posts to automatically publish themselves when the user is away. Her phone was not found either with her body or in her hotel room; it has been assumed to have been stolen at some time around her death. Whether the continued updates to her blog were facilitated by the theft of her phone, the work of a hacker, or through the Queue, is not known; nor is it known whether the updates are related to her death.

[chatibelieveinghosts]

I’ve spent the last few days watching video essays about The Hotel Cecil and scrolling through Elisa Lam’s tumblr. Let’s just say it’s a very odd case at that. I was especially curious about how much it reflected the movie Dark Water. And I wish I could figure out how she ended up in the water tank - or better yet, how the staff didn’t notice she was in there! The elevator video as well, that was so intriguing. I scrolled her tumblr and such, and I know she had some severe depression and other issues. However, to me, that doesn’t make sense as to the way she was acting in the video footage. I am going to watch the Netflix documentary later today, so I am very excited to see how they interpreted it there as well!