The Cecil Hotel
by Kelsey Blevins and Natalie Fleehearty
This is the Cecil hotel with 700 rooms. It was constructed in 1924. It is in Downtown Los Angeles on Skid row. The owner is Richard Born and the manager is Amy Price. The Cecil hotel is known for its notorious past. With its various unexplained deaths. Currently, the Cecil hotel is not open due to renovation complications.
At first, the Cecil hotel was known as a “safe place” for the homeless. The hotel was built to give people with low income a place to sleep at night and to clean up. It was built on a skid row and is known for housing many homeless men and women. It also housed 2 serial killers (that are known) and some murders along with suicides. Many people fear the Cecil hotel and some take an interest.
The Cecil hotel housed Elisa Lam, one of the many that went missing. The LAPD searched the hotel to find her but came up short. She was last seen alive in one of the hotel's elevators acting peculiar. She was found 19 days after her disappearance in the water tank on the roof of the hotel. The police counted it as accidental drowning and moved on to other cases. Elisa Lam was then buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
A murderer named Richard Ramirez is best known as the "Night Stalker". Terrorized Los Angeles from June 1984 to August 1985. While he did so he stayed in the Cecil Hotel on the 14th floor. The residents then surrounded him so the police could catch him. Another fact is that The Cecil hotel is not currently open at this moment. The owner plans to reopen the hotel in October of 2021. They are currently refurbishing the hotel so guests can stay there.
Back in 2007, they decided to open Stay On Main. Say On Main was a ‘’ fresh start’’ they hoped it would bring more customers in. It was taking off and business was booming. The Stay On Main was the first 5 floors. The Stay On Main and Cecil shared elevators but had different lobbies but no one complained. Elisa Lam was staying in Stay On Main up until her death.
The hotel has a 3.1-star rating. A lot of people are afraid of the hotel because they believe that it is haunted for various reasons. Some people don’t know the past of the hotel. Some people think that Cecil is haunted because there have been 80+ deaths. The Cecil Hotel mainly houses tourists and the homeless. The tourists stay there because they are not familiar with the hotels past.
