Watch to Watch After AHS: Hotel

American Horror Story is in its 9th season now and is still drawing a lot of attention. The show first aired on FX, in 2011 with ‘Murder House,’ and has since brought us many captivating seasons. 'AHS' is known for being an anthology series, often casting the same actors and actresses to play different roles each season.

Since they first aired, we have traveled to a haunted house, an insane asylum, a carnival freak show and many other places to watch these storylines play out. The show has cultivated a large fan following and even had many celebrity fans on the show. Some honorable cameos are Neil Patrick Harris (season 4), Naomi Campbell (season 5), Darren Criss (season 5), and Jenna Dewan & Adam Levine(season 2). Fans often argue over which season is the best (Murder House is my pick), but the one I’d like to talk about is season 5, ‘Hotel’.

This season takes place in current day Los Angeles, at the Hotel Cortez. The Cortez is a stunning, ritzy, old money style hotel littered with a nasty history. The storyline of the season follows a homicide detective, who is trying to solve a serial killer case. The case brings him to the hotel where he then experiences many strange anomalies. Regardless, he doesn’t pay any mind to it and continues to work towards solving his case.

Lady Gaga also plays a vampire in this season, but that isn’t relevant at the moment.

The hotel was built in 1925 by the owner James March. March built this hotel with the sole purpose of hiding the bodies of the victims he murders. They show March energetically murdering many people and having employees of the hotel clean up his mess. Prostitutes, drug addicts and homeless people make up a large portion of his victim pool. Eventually, March is caught and commits suicide, leaving him to haunt the hotel.

The first episode of the season brings in as many twists and turns as it can in forty five minutes, and tastefully ends with ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles, playing in the background. I could go on and on about this season but what I’m here to do is recommend a different show to watch once you’ve finished.

If you watched ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’, then you need to watch ‘Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.’

‘Crime Scene’ is one of Netflix’s newest original series and it is four episodes of amazing. The docuseries tells the story of Elisa Lam, a 21 year old Canadian tourist, who decided to travel to California back in 2013. Elisa went missing for weeks and was found dead at the Cecil Hotel. Her story blew up after the LAPD released a strange video of Elisa just before she went missing.

The Cecil, is the hotel for which AHS based the ‘Hotel’ season off of. Many of the key plotlines in that season are directly related to incidents that happened at the Cecil. For example, many people have been found dead in the hotel, and it has had many cases where people fell or jumped out of windows. Also, Richard Ramiez, an American serial killer known also as the ‘Night Stalker’, frequently stayed at the Cecil Hotel.

The docuseries was very well done and complete with interviews from the hotel’s past manager, the detective on the Lam case, and historians who know a lot about the hotel's history.

The series caps at 3 hours and 40 something minutes, but it is jam packed with twists and turns and exciting side plots. If you are a fan of unsolved mysteries and loved ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’, then you absolutely have to watch ‘Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.’