Real-Life Horror Tales Mentioned in the Media ( Part - 3 )

The Death of Elisa Lam

Elisa Lam was last saw in the lobby of the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on January 31, 2013. She was taking a vacation down the West Coast, blogging about the experience and contacting her parents daily. January 31 marked the end of those calls. Lam had disappeared. Her parents also showed up to aid in the search shortly after the cops became engaged.

They were empty. In February of that year, the LAPD made available footage of Lam taken on an elevator just before she vanished. Lam is seen acting suspiciously in the video, appearing to converse with individuals who aren't there, peeping around the door's corner, hunching over, and opening and closing the door. But there are more questions than answers about what exactly is happening in this video. Claims range from manic episodes to demonic possession to unidentified attackers who are just out of shot:

At that time, visitors at the Cecil Hotel began to notice strange things happening with the water supply. CNN reported that

Sabina Baugh, who spent eight days there during the investigation, complained that the shower was terrible. When you turned on the faucet, the water initially became black for two seconds before returning to normal.

Baugh complained that the tap water "tasted awful". "It tasted really strange, sugary, and revolting. It has a pretty odd flavour. I hardly know where to begin."

But they didn't complain for a week. We never gave it much thought, she said. "We assumed it was just how things were here,"

In the morning of February 19, a hotel employee used a ladder to scale the roof and look into the building's water storage tanks. Authorities discovered Lam's naked, rotting body there, along with some of his belongings. Her death was ruled accidental after an autopsy. At the time, NBC Los Angeles reported on the peculiar circumstances surrounding the hotel:

Although the metal latch on the tank can be opened, authorities said that an alarm and lock prevent unauthorised entry to the roof.

The hotel with one room is unique in its past. Richard Ramirez, aka "Night Stalker," who was convicted of 14 murders in the 1980s, spent a number of months living on the 14th floor in 1985. Moreover, three prostitutes are allegedly murdered there in 1991 by international serial murderer Jack Unterweger. In jail in 1994, he committed suicide.

A female guest who leapt out of one of the hotel's windows in 1962 killed both herself and the pedestrian she hit when she landed.

Crime Scene: The Disappear at the Cecil Hotel, a Netflix documentary that examined Elisa's tragic case and the background of the "cursed" Cecil Hotel, was released in February 2021.

An Exorcism in Indianapolis

A detailed article about a family frightened by three kids who were purportedly demon-possessed appeared in the Indianapolis Star last year. Latoya Ammons and her family's narrative contains unsettling tales of kids scaling walls, being flung across rooms, and yelling threats at doctors in loud, strange voices. If not for the fact that all of these accounts were largely supported by "nearly 800 pages of official records obtained by the Indianapolis Star and recounted in more than a dozen interviews with police, DCS personnel, psychologists, family members, and a Catholic priest," it would seem like something straight out of a movie or a work of fiction.

The report's portion concerning the 9-year-old who was possessed is among its more terrifying passages:

The 9-year-old had a "strange grin" and walked backward up a wall to the ceiling, according to Washington's initial DCS report—a statement backed up by Walker, the nurse. Campbell was then knocked over and came to rest on his feet. He held his grandmother's hand tightly throughout.

Another section of the text states:

Later, the 12-year-old would disclose to mental health experts that she occasionally felt as though she was being suffocated and restrained, preventing her from speaking or moving. She reported hearing a voice tell her she wouldn't survive another 20 minutes and would never see her family again.