The Elevator Game
How a South Korean Ritual Became Tokyo's Corporate Nightmare. On December 12, 2013, at approximately 2:43 AM, security cameras in the Akasaka View Hotel captured footage of 19-year-old exchange student Elisa Tam entering an elevator alone. The cameras show her pressing multiple buttons in a specific sequence before the elevator doors closed. She was never seen alive again. Three weeks later, on January 4, 2014, her body was discovered in the rooftop water tank of the building. The official cause of death was ruled accidental drowning, but investigators couldn't explain how she accessed the locked roof area or why she would climb into a water tank. More disturbingly, they couldn't explain the elevator footage that showed her appearing to converse with someone invisible before exiting on the 10th floor. The incident might have remained just another tragic unexplained death if not for what happened next. When the elevator footage leaked online in February 2014, several internet users immediately recognized the button sequence: 1-4-2-6-2-10-5. It matched exactly the instructions for "Elevator to Another World" (エレベーターゲーム), a ritual game that had been circulating on Japanese and Korean forums since around 2008.
