Elisa Lam (WARNING: Stomach-turning news)

[FourthBase]

That's one hell of a coincidence.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I find it really unnerving how she curls her hands around and sort of sinks into herself at one point. I suppose it's been suggested, no doubt it will have been on Websleuths, but could her drink have been spiked without her knowledge, leaving her panicked and hallucinating? She seems normal at first, then sort of unravels throughout the video.

It does look at first like someone else must be there, outside the elevator, but... maybe not.

Agh, I don't know. How do you get inside a hotel water tank anyway?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Reading the Websleuths thread now. Interesting post there in the first few pages:

Look closely at the video.

At 12 seconds in, after she has pushed the buttons, the door starts to close a bit and then reopens.

Someone is in the hall and pushed and held the button to keep the elevator from closing.

And to prevent Elisa from leaving.

And that someone seems to know that people will be looking at the elevator video at a later date, because they push the hall button and open the elevator door several times after Elisa has exited to the left.

As if they are winking at the police.

Why else would the door open and close like that, when it didn't even close when Elisa was in and then out of the elevator.

It's not a mulfunction, and its not a haunting.

Its the actions of a person.

The door definitely starts to close, then re-opens, and it does suggest somebody else is controlling it from another button, causing Elisa to become confused that the door won't close and the elevator won't move. But then why those weird "dance" and hand movements in the hallway?

It kind of reminded me of the bath salt "zombies".

[Nordic]

Finally watched the video and I find it to be creepy as hell. It seems clear to me that there is sonebody just outside the door, to the right, and at first they're playing hide and go seek with her. But she knows they're there, gets creeped out and hurries back into the elevator, hiding in the corner. When it still doesn't work she steps outside and confeonts them, angrily using her hands while she talks. Finally she gives up and, having actually talked to whoever it is now, decides they're not that much of a threat after all and walks away. She was more than likely dead wrong, though, or one coild say her first instincts to be terrified were right on the money.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Finally watched the video and I find it to be creepy as hell. It seems clear to me that there is sonebody just outside the door, to the right, and at first they're playing hide and go seek with her. But she knows they're there, gets creeped out and hurries back into the elevator, hiding in the corner. When it still doesn't work she steps outside and confeonts them, angrily using her hands while she talks.

Yeah, the more I watch it the more I start to think she was in her right mind throughout the video, and just very, very scared (but trying not to admit to herself fully how scary the situation is). I don't think she's talking angrily at the other person, though - look at the way she bends her knees and dips down as she's "counting" on her fingers. I don't think she's angry, I think she's pleading for them to leave her alone.

Oddly though, I can also see what Barracuda means, and it is definitely possible to read her behaviour in the video as innocent and playful rather than drugged up or terrified. It's one of the oddest things I've ever seen, even though it can also be seen as completely mundane.

Finally she gives up and, having actually talked to whoever it is now, decides they're not that much of a threat after all and walks away.

If the person was on the right of the elevator, then they must have known about the camera inside it (the cameras are quit noticeable in the Cecil's lifts from the pictures I've seen), because they keep themselves out of view the whole time, and they wait quite a long time for the elevator door to close before following her. Assuming there is another person present.

And why didn't the elevator work in the first place, given that we see it start operating normally about a minute after Elisa leaves? Bizarre case.

I've now got a text file on my desktop about the whole thing that just says:

shabbat elevator
paris syndrome
sudden onset blindness
Delta P

Hope I don't get raided by the polis, they'll think it's a coded message or something. I'd probably get picked up as a suspect in the Taman Shud case.

[justdrew]

It's very possible the elevator was just slightly broken. I worked for many years in a building with a crappy elevator, sometimes the door wouldn't shut unless you got it started by pulling the doors together, sometimes it would just sit there with the doors open, eventually closing on it's own after a random interval. A minor mechanical maladjustment.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

You could be right Drew, it's just odd that it starts working again after she leaves. Some people on Websleuths reckon she was accidentally pressing the Hold Door button when she repeatedly goes down the middle row of buttons. Either that or she pressed the number of the floor she was already on, thus keeping the lift where it was, and the door open. She needed glasses, but didn't have them with her at the time, so that seems plausible. Could also explain why she puts her face so close to the buttons.

I would hate to think that she accidentally kept herself in a situation that she was desperately trying to escape.

I find it hard to imagine that a faulty elevator could've prompted her to go and commit suicide by climbing into a water tank on the roof, but if she was killed it also would've been extremely difficult for the killer to put her there. Unless he was very strong, or there were two of them. Or he forced her to climb in there herself while alive.

The Websleuths thread has had some weird stuff on it, videos posted by other strange guests at the hotel and by a convicted sex offender who lives only a block away. I'd post links but I didn't save them.

Elisa seemed like a cool person from her blog/Tumblr, if it's hers. RIP.

[justdrew]

I think it's a motion activated camera, "time stops" until something moves. You can see that a bit by looking at the shrunken semi-legible timecode. In the longer version I posted, you can see it's actually following the orders it was given, going down and stopping at various floors. The timecode is illegible but you can see change in it, looks like there's a time jump just before the doors close, guessing it looks like some 4 minutes of motionlessness intervened.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Nudge.

[8bitagent]

Um, not to be crass...but this is maybe a 1 or 2 on the "disturbing" scale as far as news stories. The Canadian Greyhound bus cannibal story I find to be quite above this. However as far as odd mysteries part and parcel to LA, yeah it's odd. Have people thought this to be foul play or she simply was fucked up on drugs and drowned in the rooftop?

I was in downtown LA when this story broke. I was on the metro when an elderly gentlemen besides me was on the phone telling his family member that he's been warning people not to stay there.
Had no idea about the whole thing til I got back home and was checking news I missed(I impose a no internet policy when Im on vacation)
LA is VERY twilight. There's a reason films like Mulholland Drive, The Informers, Less than Zero, etc take place there. I was staying in Hollywood, right down the street was a museum called "the Museum of Death" housing items and "memorabilia" from famous killings and serial murders. Ugh.

[FourthBase]

Um, not to be crass...but this is maybe a 1 or 2 on the "disturbing" scale as far as news stories.

Oh? So bathing in and drinking up the dark fetid juices of a decomposing body ain't nuthin', eh?

[justdrew]

most likely the water ran dark then normal was due to rusty pipes. The amount of dead body in any given gallon of water was most likely minimal, above baseline, but minimal. Still I don't drink sink water anymore (not really).

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Um, not to be crass...but this is maybe a 1 or 2 on the "disturbing" scale as far as news stories.

Oh? So bathing in and drinking up the dark fetid juices of a decomposing body ain't nuthin', eh?

For me the disturbing part is the hopeless sadness of it all. The grossness barely registers. I do not think of the corpse in the cistern, but of the poor soul being stuck in that elevator for eternity. And I am an atheist. I swear.

However as far as odd mysteries part and parcel to LA, yeah it's odd. Have people thought this to be foul play or she simply was fucked up on drugs and drowned in the rooftop?

That's the main reason I bumped it. To get that discussion going again. So far, there is nada that I can find other than worthless speculation and creepy sync videos with stupid music overlayed (why always the music?!?). Seemed like a perfect mystery for this forum to me.

most likely the water ran dark then normal was due to rusty pipes. The amount of dead body in any given gallon of water was most likely minimal, above baseline, but minimal. Still I don't drink sink water anymore (not really).

I cannot help but imagine this quote from the "building super" to the tenants as they flee the hotel, half-packed and hastily dressed.

[8bitagent]

For me the disturbing part is the hopeless sadness of it all. The grossness barely registers. I do not think of the corpse in the cistern, but of the poor soul being stuck in that elevator for eternity. And I am an atheist. I swear.

It's possible she managed to get in there and drowned. In my one week in LA I ran into so many pill popping/hard drug using club kids and weirdos(comes with the territory of deep underground parties/dark avant garde//pseudo illegal wherehouse parties/etc) that I can imagine someone trippin out of their mind. I've seen people high on hallucinagens and climbing up buildings then not remembering it.

The video tape is really creepy, if anyone has ever seen Nicholas Refn's Fear X(2003) or David Lynch's Lost Highway(1997) it kind of has that feel. Slow the tape down, add some droning dark ambient music and
that would definitely win creep out video of the year. I hope it's not foul play, and "the girl was just straight trippin y'all" as they say. Either way, very sad and goes along with the tapestry of the LA underbelly

Um, not to be crass...but this is maybe a 1 or 2 on the "disturbing" scale as far as news stories.

Oh? So bathing in and drinking up the dark fetid juices of a decomposing body ain't nuthin', eh?

Not nothing, but not on a Black Dhalia level. The German internet cannibal case, Canadian Greyhound cannibal case, Dahmer case, UFC cannibal case...pretty much any cannibal case is skyward bounds more f'd up.
However it is the very David Lynchian nature of this whole thing that is disturbing...creepy...out of a weird book.

[FourthBase]

Um, not to be crass...but this is maybe a 1 or 2 on the "disturbing" scale as far as news stories.

Oh? So bathing in and drinking up the dark fetid juices of a decomposing body ain't nuthin', eh?

Not nothing, but not on a Black Dhalia level. The German internet cannibal case, Canadian Greyhound cannibal case, Dahmer case, UFC cannibal case...pretty much any cannibal case is skyward bounds more f'd up.
However it is the very David Lynchian nature of this whole thing that is disturbing...creepy...out of a weird book.

Well, I cannot possibly agree with you more about setting the bar there, nothing can match that horror. (Except maybe every McDonald's or Outback Steakhouse commercial.) I just think the scale should be 1-to-10 or 1-to-20, and that showering in and drinking from water blackened by the rot of a dead body should rate a 9 or a 17. That wasn't rust, that was human corpse juice. One of the most sickening things ever. I stand by that assessment.