“October is about trees revealing colors they’ve hidden all year. People have an October as well.” ~ JM Storm
My colleague and I went out for dinner last night. We stopped to wait for the light to change so we could cross the street. I looked up, and staring me in the face was the top photo of the Hotel Cecil. If you follow the paranormal in the U.S., you’re familiar with the Hotel Cecil in LA. I had forgotten it was in LA, and I’m not sure I knew it was downtown. I became excited and animated, talking about the Cecil as if everybody knew its significance. My colleague thought I was pulling her leg until we got back to our hotel, and I showed her a few accounts of what has happened there. In short, there have been at least 13 known murders and suicides since it was built in 1924. Not all of them have been solved. The last, and probably the most horrific, death to take place there was in 2013. A young woman was seen acting erratic in the hotel’s elevator. She’s seen getting in and out and in and out numerous times. She even looked as if she was being followed at one point. Then she disappeared. Sometime later, residents began complaining that their water tasted foul with a bad odour. That’s when investigators checked the water cistern on the roof only to discover what was left of the young woman. Because she was known to have Bipolar Disorder, they ruled her death an accidental drowning, claiming she climbed into the cistern to hide from whomever she thought was after her. Residents used the water until the level was too low to allow the woman to reach the ladder or edge to climb back out. The Hotel Cecil was also home to at least two serial killers, the most famous of whom was Richard Ramirez known as the Night Stalker. He would undress in an ally and climb the stairs to his room in his bloody underwear. Today, the city of Los Angeles is on the cusp of turning the hotel into housing for the homeless. I’ve seen a lot of homelessness, but not on the scale I saw last night. There were so many tents on the sidewalk that, at one point, we had to walk in the street. The homeless need a place to live, and the Hotel Cecil needs occupants. It should be an interesting combination.
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