Los Angeles – A supernatural hotel in Los Angeles? American Horror Story chose this as its premise for the fifth season of the popular cable series. The shows creators were inspired by the many strange incidents and dark history of the Hotel Cecil.

On February 19, 2013 after receiving complaints from guests about low water pressure and water that tasted funny, a maintenance worker at the Cecil went on the rooftop to investigate the hotel’s water tanks. In one of the tanks he discovered the body of 21 year old Elisa Lam. The Chinese Canadian tourist was a guest of the hotel and had been missing for three weeks. Lam was last seen in a security video in the hotel’s elevator where she seemed to be acting erratically, pushing several buttons and speaking to someone that either wasn’t there or could not be seen.

Lam’s death was ruled an accidental drowning. Her family also confirmed that she was bi polar and taking medications for her condition. No one knows for sure how she ended up in the water tank. The hotel has always attracted ghost hunters and footage from the video caused many to believe that either Lam was a victim of paranormal activity or she was murdered. Her death was one of many that have occurred at the Cecil over the years.

Men and Vices

The Cecil opened in 1927. It was 14 stories tall and had 700 rooms. In the 1920’s hotels in downtown Los Angeles catered to businessmen visiting from out of town. Local businesses hired attractive young women to try and lure male clientele. Prohibition made liquor illegal, but alcohol still flowed into the city through Canada and Mexico. A visitor could buy a drink at one of downtown’s speakeasies and for ten cents a dance find companionship at places like the Roseland, one of LA’s taxi dance halls. Then came the Great Depression of 1929 and the Cecil and its surrounding area fell on hard times.

Suicide Hotel

During the depression years of 1930’s the Cecil gained a reputation as the “Suicide Hotel,” There were six suicides at the hotel during the decade. On September of 1944, 19 year old Dorothy Jean Purcell was sharing a room with her boyfriend Ben Levine. Unaware that she was pregnant, Purcell went into labor, giving birth to a baby boy. Purcell believed the baby was stillborn. Not wanting to wake Levine, she tossed the infant out of a window where it landed on the roof of an adjacent building. Purcell was later arrested and charged with the murder of her child. In January of 1945 she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Black Dahlia

Like many young women, Elizabeth Short came to Los Angeles in seeking stardom and a career in the movies. On January 15, 1947 Short was found dead in Leimert Park. Her body was badly mutilated. Her face had been cut from ear to ear and her torso cut in half. Although there have been many speculations about who killed Short, the case has never been solved. The press called Short, “The Black Dahlia,” because of her black dyed hair and the black attire she wore. There were unconfirmed reports that Short had been seen drinking at the Cecil’s bar shortly before her death.

Wrong Place Wrong Time

On October 12, 1962 after a heated argument with her husband, Pauline Otton chose to commit suicide by jumping out the window of her 9th floor room. Otton landed on pedestrian George Gianinni killing the both of them. Police initially thought this had been a double suicide, but changed their minds when they noticed Gianinni’s hands were still in his pockets and that he was still wearing his shoes which would have probably come off during impact. Gianinni just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pigeon Goldie

Goldie Osgood was a retired phone operator who lived at the Cecil. She was called “Pigeon Goldie ” because she liked to feed the pigeons in nearby Pershing Square. On June 4, 1964, Osgood was found raped, stabbed and beaten to death in her room. Jacques B. Ehlinger was arrested and later cleared of Osgood’s murder. He had been seen walking from the area in blood stained clothes. Osgood’s murder remains unsolved.

The Night Stalker

In the summer of 1985, the search for Richard Ramirez became one of California’s most intense manhunts. For more than a year, Ramirez had been on a spree in which he viciously raped, tortured, robbed and murdered his victims. Ramirez was suspected of at least 13 murders. A self described satanist, in one case Ramirez removed the eyes of his victim. In another case, he beat two women to death with a hammer. The media called Ramirez, “The Night Stalker, ” because most of his crimes took place at night after breaking into his victim’s homes. Ramirez was finally apprehended in August of 1985, after attempting to steal a car in the mostly Mexican American neighborhood of Boyle Heights. The residents had recognized Ramirez from newspapers and television. They chased him down and nearly beat him to death before police arrived.

Ramirez often stayed at the Cecil. In the 1980’s he could rent a room for $14 a night and his activities would go unnoticed among the junkies, runaways, prostitutes and homeless people in the area. It was reported that after killing someone, Ramirez would remove his blood stained clothes, throw them in the hotel’s trash bin and enter the lobby in his underwear or completely naked without anyone even raising an eyebrow. Ramirez was tried for his crimes and sentenced to death. He died in prison of B-cell lymphoma in 2017.

The Reporter

Jack Unterweger was an Austrian journalist. He came to Los Angeles in 1991 on assignment to write about crime. Unterweger stayed at the Cecil and met with LA police officers who took him for ride alongs in the city’s red light areas, but Unterweger had other plans too. During his stay at the Cecil, Unterweger killed three prostitutes, beating them with a tree branch and strangling them with their own bras. While in LA, Unterweger was also being investigated in Austria for a series of murders of prostitutes. All of them strangled to death by their own bras.

On February 27, 1992, Unterweger was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Miami and extradited back to Austria where he was tried and convicted for nine murders. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 1994 Unterweger hung himself with his shoelaces and the pants string from a track suit. He used the same knot to kill himself that was found on the strangled prostitutes.

“You can check out anytime you like. But you can never leave, ” From Hotel California, by The Eagles, 1976.

The most recent death at the Cecil was a suicide in 2015. The Los Angeles City Council designated the Cecil a city landmark in 2017. The hotel is now closed, but its current owner Simon Baron Company hopes to refurbish the hotel and reopen it to guests sometime in 2021.