- Born
- Died2013 · Los Angeles, California, USA (accidental drowning)
- Elisa Lam, also known by her Cantonese name, Lam Ho Yi, a 21-year-old Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, was recovered from a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on February 19, 2013. She had been reported missing at the beginning of the month. Maintenance workers at the hotel discovered the body when investigating guest complaints of problems with the water supply.
Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to her body's discovery when the Los Angeles Police Department released video of the last time she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be malfunctioning. The video went viral on the Internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to the bipolar disorder from which Lam suffered; it has also been argued that tampering had occurred with the video.
The circumstances of Lam's death, when she was found, also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. It took the Los Angeles County Coroner's office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the cause of death was accidental. Guests at the Cecil, now re-branded as Stay on Main, sued the hotel over the incident, and Lam's parents filed a separate suit later that year; the latter was dismissed in 2015.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Movie Guy
- Her death shares an unsettling and creepy amount of coincidences with the film Dark Water (2005), which came out in theaters 8 years before her death.
- Was said to suffer from bipolar disorder which she took medication for, a factor most people believe to have played a part in her death as autopsy reports found no drugs in her system.
- In an eerie coincidence, Lam was a fan of Ryan Gosling's music with her favorite song of his being "Buried in Water" which is an apt description of her death.
- On her social media accounts she often claimed to believe that she felt she was being stalked, which resulted in theories surrounding her death which state that she was murdered, which would explain the odd circumstances of her death such as how she got to a rooftop which was locked behind a door and how she got into a securely shut water tank bolted shut which requires the strength of four grown men to open. Unfortunately, no evidence or suspects have surfaced to support the theories.
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