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Post by mecano04 on Sept 12, 2017 13:03:38 GMT
Elisa Lam. On Jan. 26, 2013, 21-year-old Canadian tourist Elisa Lam checked into the Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles. On Feb. 1st she vanished without trace. When Elisa first checked into the hotel, she was in a hostel-style shared room. She was later moved to her own room due to complaints from her roommates of "odd behavior." The last time she was seen was on surveillance footage in the hotel elevator. In the footage, Elisa is behaving oddly: She is seen darting in and out of the elevator and hiding in the corner... she also seems to have some sort of conversation in the hallway, though it's unclear if it's with an imaginary or real person. Eighteen days after she was last seen, her body was found naked and floating in a 4-by-8-foot water tank on the roof of the hotel. She was only found after guests complained about the low water pressure in the hotel. One couple recalled that the water came out black and had a bad taste, but they didn't complain at the time because they thought it was "normal for L.A." The toxicology report showed there was nothing in Elisa's system that could have contributed to her death. Her autopsy showed no signs of trauma. To get up to the water tank, Elisa would have had to climb out of a window and onto the fire escape, or through a locked and alarmed rooftop door. Then climb up a 10-foot tank, and opened and then closed a 20-pound hatch. And that's not the only weird stuff that has happened in the Hotel Cecil. It was also home to serial killer Jack Unterweger, the site of an unsolved murder in 1964, and was supposedly one of the last places the Black Dahlia was seen. Numerous people have killed themselves by jumping from the building. Her death remains unexplained. I suppose I didn't think of Elisa Lam--whose death is one of the most intriguing (how ghoulish does that sound!) of modern-day real-life unsolved mysteries--because her body was discovered, as you noted, so she didn't just disappear, never to be found again. With that said, she did disappear for a while, and the case is one of the creepiest I know. A few points, mostly of the skeptical variety: I've seen it noted that the "locked and alarmed rooftop door" was not actually locked or alarmed, only that there were signs that said so. Also, Elisa's behavior in the elevator is consistent with her having overused drugs (perhaps for her bipolar disorder), which might have been absorbed into her body while she was in the tank and thus not shown up in the autopsy. On the other hand, I have no explanation for how she opened the tank, walked or fell in, and closed it up again (the why may be drugs again). Also, the video footage was heavily edited, as confirmed by several sources, which seems incredibly mysterious to me. If I remember correctly one of the alterations to the footage was slowing it down, probably so viewers have the time to see properly everything but it created an issue, which is making the whole scene look like it lasted an eternity. Maybe it's because I worked in an old hospital, that had elevators as old as Methuselah, but the elevator door not closing or closing partially then opening up is just a (in my experience, since I'm not an elevator mechanic) common bug. I know 2 things that creeped out people or made them poop their pants: 1st, some of the elevators were programed in a way that if they're weren't used/called for a while, they would always come back to Ground( RC), the door would open and stay open for 15-20 secs then close and wait there until it's called. That was one of the first things new employees would ask about after doing a night shift. You get the picture: Midnight, nobody in the offices or in the hall and you hear the elevator bell "ding", you turn towards it, the door opens, nobody is there and the door stays open for a while then it just closes... The other is not related to anything creepy but it happened a few times. The elevator is loaded (still under capacity) with maintenance(tools) and kitchens carts and once the door closes it goes down (like from 3rd to 2nd or whatever, but going down) and it moves about 5-6 inches then it bounces back (as if it hit springs or something) 5-6 inches to its exact starting position. You bounce off the floor, which is surprising but seeing the carts bounce up (hearing and seeing all the stuff they hold shake and move around) an inch or two isn't fun. When that happened it was time for a service call! Back to the main story, sometimes fire exits are locked from inside the emergency staircase, so you can leave your floor by the door but you can't get back in (unless you block the door with a stopper or something). So she might have been able to get in the emergency staircase but for some reason (if we exclude any foul play), instead of going down to the ground floor and exit from there, she went up. Now, why wasn't the service door locked, I got no idea but my guess would be negligence or simply nobody thought that people would go up, instead of going down in case of an emergency evacuation. As for the alarm(s), in my experience at work and at school (up to college), not all emergency doors are linked to an alarm. Well they might send a signal but they're not all or always linked to an audible alarm. Now, there is always the main fire alarm that is heard across and all around the building but some service access doors and some emergency ones can be opened with only a "local" alarm going on. That alarm can be heard in a 15-20' radius but it stops the moment the door is closed. So if you just open it and go out it may be heard less than 10 secs. If the roof door had one of those "local" (not sure what to call them) alarm, then chances are it wasn't heard by anybody but Lam. Now I don' t pretend to have answers or even snippets of explanations for the rest but I think the case can be explained without the need of foul play (there might have been but not much is known about that) or paranormal.
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Post by hi224 on Sept 12, 2017 16:41:56 GMT
I suppose I didn't think of Elisa Lam--whose death is one of the most intriguing (how ghoulish does that sound!) of modern-day real-life unsolved mysteries--because her body was discovered, as you noted, so she didn't just disappear, never to be found again. With that said, she did disappear for a while, and the case is one of the creepiest I know. A few points, mostly of the skeptical variety: I've seen it noted that the "locked and alarmed rooftop door" was not actually locked or alarmed, only that there were signs that said so. Also, Elisa's behavior in the elevator is consistent with her having overused drugs (perhaps for her bipolar disorder), which might have been absorbed into her body while she was in the tank and thus not shown up in the autopsy. On the other hand, I have no explanation for how she opened the tank, walked or fell in, and closed it up again (the why may be drugs again). Also, the video footage was heavily edited, as confirmed by several sources, which seems incredibly mysterious to me. If I remember correctly one of the alterations to the footage was slowing it down, probably so viewers have the time to see properly everything but it created an issue, which is making the whole scene look like it lasted an eternity. Maybe it's because I worked in an old hospital, that had elevators as old as Methuselah, but the elevator door not closing or closing partially then opening up is just a (in my experience, since I'm not an elevator mechanic) common bug. I know 2 things that creeped out people or made them poop their pants: 1st, some of the elevators were programed in a way that if they're weren't used/called for a while, they would always come back to Ground( RC), the door would open and stay open for 15-20 secs then close and wait there until it's called. That was one of the first things new employees would ask about after doing a night shift. You get the picture: Midnight, nobody in the offices or in the hall and you hear the elevator bell "ding", you turn towards it, the door opens, nobody is there and the door stays open for a while then it just closes... The other is not related to anything creepy but it happened a few times. The elevator is loaded (still under capacity) with maintenance(tools) and kitchens carts and once the door closes it goes down (like from 3rd to 2nd or whatever, but going down) and it moves about 5-6 inches then it bounces back (as if it hit springs or something) 5-6 inches to its exact starting position. You bounce off the floor, which is surprising but seeing the carts bounce up (hearing and seeing all the stuff they hold shake and move around) an inch or two isn't fun. When that happened it was time for a service call! Back to the main story, sometimes fire exits are locked from inside the emergency staircase, so you can leave your floor by the door but you can't get back in (unless you block the door with a stopper or something). So she might have been able to get in the emergency staircase but for some reason (if we exclude any foul play), instead of going down to the ground floor and exit from there, she went up. Now, why wasn't the service door locked, I got no idea but my guess would be negligence or simply nobody thought that people would go up, instead of going down in case of an emergency evacuation. As for the alarm(s), in my experience at work and at school (up to college), not all emergency doors are linked to an alarm. Well they might send a signal but they're not all or always linked to an audible alarm. Now, there is always the main fire alarm that is heard across and all around the building but some service access doors and some emergency ones can be opened with only a "local" alarm going on. That alarm can be heard in a 15-20' radius but it stops the moment the door is closed. So if you just open it and go out it may be heard less than 10 secs. If the roof door had one of those "local" (not sure what to call them) alarm, then chances are it wasn't heard by anybody but Lam. Now I don' t pretend to have answers or even snippets of explanations for the rest but I think the case can be explained without the need of foul play (there might have been but not much is known about that) or paranormal. So out of curiousity you lean more towards accidental.
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Post by mecano04 on Sept 12, 2017 20:40:23 GMT
If I remember correctly one of the alterations to the footage was slowing it down, probably so viewers have the time to see properly everything but it created an issue, which is making the whole scene look like it lasted an eternity. Maybe it's because I worked in an old hospital, that had elevators as old as Methuselah, but the elevator door not closing or closing partially then opening up is just a (in my experience, since I'm not an elevator mechanic) common bug. I know 2 things that creeped out people or made them poop their pants: 1st, some of the elevators were programed in a way that if they're weren't used/called for a while, they would always come back to Ground( RC), the door would open and stay open for 15-20 secs then close and wait there until it's called. That was one of the first things new employees would ask about after doing a night shift. You get the picture: Midnight, nobody in the offices or in the hall and you hear the elevator bell "ding", you turn towards it, the door opens, nobody is there and the door stays open for a while then it just closes... The other is not related to anything creepy but it happened a few times. The elevator is loaded (still under capacity) with maintenance(tools) and kitchens carts and once the door closes it goes down (like from 3rd to 2nd or whatever, but going down) and it moves about 5-6 inches then it bounces back (as if it hit springs or something) 5-6 inches to its exact starting position. You bounce off the floor, which is surprising but seeing the carts bounce up (hearing and seeing all the stuff they hold shake and move around) an inch or two isn't fun. When that happened it was time for a service call! Back to the main story, sometimes fire exits are locked from inside the emergency staircase, so you can leave your floor by the door but you can't get back in (unless you block the door with a stopper or something). So she might have been able to get in the emergency staircase but for some reason (if we exclude any foul play), instead of going down to the ground floor and exit from there, she went up. Now, why wasn't the service door locked, I got no idea but my guess would be negligence or simply nobody thought that people would go up, instead of going down in case of an emergency evacuation. As for the alarm(s), in my experience at work and at school (up to college), not all emergency doors are linked to an alarm. Well they might send a signal but they're not all or always linked to an audible alarm. Now, there is always the main fire alarm that is heard across and all around the building but some service access doors and some emergency ones can be opened with only a "local" alarm going on. That alarm can be heard in a 15-20' radius but it stops the moment the door is closed. So if you just open it and go out it may be heard less than 10 secs. If the roof door had one of those "local" (not sure what to call them) alarm, then chances are it wasn't heard by anybody but Lam. Now I don' t pretend to have answers or even snippets of explanations for the rest but I think the case can be explained without the need of foul play (there might have been but not much is known about that) or paranormal. So out of curiousity, you lean more towards accidental? In short, yes. (I took the liberty of editing your message to make it sound the way I understood it. Don't hesitate to correct me. ) Her psychological condition (bipolar) put her in a state where she made a series of unfortunate (to put it this way) decisions. Her decisions, combined with possible negligence or simply the way the building is made (as stated in my previous post) You may already know this, but you got both a "high" (manic) and "low" (depression) with bipolar disorder. According to the DSM ( dsm.psychiatryonline.org/ , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders ) , there can be a comorbidity with psychosis during a manic episode. " Full mania causes a noticeable social or occupational impairment, with poor judgement, and in some people a psychosis that causes them to be a danger to themselves and others.6" ( www.mentalhealth.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Bipolar-disorder-Identifying-and-supporting-patients-in-primary-care-BPJ-2014.pdf , page 2/12 and number 6 refers to the DSM in the bibliography) Now, psychosis can be defined in short by an alteration of perception and loss of contact with reality. In long, some of the symptoms are changes in thinking patterns, unusual or false beliefs, changes in perception, changes in feeling and mood and changes in behaviour ( www.camh.ca/en/hospital/health_information/a_z_mental_health_and_addiction_information/psychosis/first_episode_psychosis_information_guide/Pages/fep_symptoms.aspx ). Both the manic episode and psychosis could explain some of the behaviour she exhibited in the elevator footage and her actions leading to her fate. Now, let's not forget something about psychological disorders, people who suffer from them still (usually) follow a logic. A twisted, irrational and abnormal logic but still one. I know one example doesn't make a tendency or a statistic but a resident (at work) who passed recently used to call employees to her room during meal times because she wanted to switch her plate or have it checked. The reason was she didn't like seafood (there is none on the menu). Her impression was either based on texture or color but she would claim she had it tested in a lab and even ran her own set of tests and she knew there was some, even in her oatmeal in the morning. I would agree this case was less severe than what Elisa Lam exhibited though. Again, I don't pretend to have a clear explanation to everything that happened, since some of the details seems either fragmentary or vague, but since there is not much available to us that leads anywhere else, I go with the accident. Note that I'm still open to being proven wrong, whether it's a criminal act or a paranormal one. Or maybe I should change my user name to Saint-Thomas.
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Post by hi224 on Sept 12, 2017 22:28:50 GMT
So out of curiousity, you lean more towards accidental? In short, yes. (I took the liberty of editing your message to make it sound the way I understood it. Don't hesitate to correct me. ) Her psychological condition (bipolar) put her in a state where she made a series of unfortunate (to put it this way) decisions. Her decisions, combined with possible negligence or simply the way the building is made (as stated in my previous post) You may already know this, but you got both a "high" (manic) and "low" (depression) with bipolar disorder. According to the DSM ( dsm.psychiatryonline.org/ , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders ) , there can be a comorbidity with psychosis during a manic episode. " Full mania causes a noticeable social or occupational impairment, with poor judgement, and in some people a psychosis that causes them to be a danger to themselves and others.6" ( www.mentalhealth.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Bipolar-disorder-Identifying-and-supporting-patients-in-primary-care-BPJ-2014.pdf , page 2/12 and number 6 refers to the DSM in the bibliography) Now, psychosis can be defined in short by an alteration of perception and loss of contact with reality. In long, some of the symptoms are changes in thinking patterns, unusual or false beliefs, changes in perception, changes in feeling and mood and changes in behaviour ( www.camh.ca/en/hospital/health_information/a_z_mental_health_and_addiction_information/psychosis/first_episode_psychosis_information_guide/Pages/fep_symptoms.aspx ). Both the manic episode and psychosis could explain some of the behaviour she exhibited in the elevator footage and her actions leading to her fate. Now, let's not forget something about psychological disorders, people who suffer from them still (usually) follow a logic. A twisted, irrational and abnormal logic but still one. I know one example doesn't make a tendency or a statistic but a resident (at work) who passed recently used to call employees to her room during meal times because she wanted to switch her plate or have it checked. The reason was she didn't like seafood (there is none on the menu). Her impression was either based on texture or color but she would claim she had it tested in a lab and even ran her own set of tests and she knew there was some, even in her oatmeal in the morning. I would agree this case was less severe than what Elisa Lam exhibited though. Again, I don't pretend to have a clear explanation to everything that happened, since some of the details seems either fragmentary or vague, but since there is not much available to us that leads anywhere else, I go with the accident. Note that I'm still open to being proven wrong, whether it's a criminal act or a paranormal one. Or maybe I should change my user name to Saint-Thomas. No that actually sounds logical. The theory of which I had been speculating was perhaps she met the wrong man(men) and the situation possibly escalated past that point.
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Post by deembastille on Sept 12, 2017 22:54:30 GMT
Regarding Elisa Lam...
idk how people with that amount of mania/mental disabilities/problems function in real life without a nursemaid or an assistance animal. anything can happen at any time.
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Post by mecano04 on Sept 13, 2017 0:50:08 GMT
In short, yes. (I took the liberty of editing your message to make it sound the way I understood it. Don't hesitate to correct me. ) Her psychological condition (bipolar) put her in a state where she made a series of unfortunate (to put it this way) decisions. Her decisions, combined with possible negligence or simply the way the building is made (as stated in my previous post) You may already know this, but you got both a "high" (manic) and "low" (depression) with bipolar disorder. According to the DSM ( dsm.psychiatryonline.org/ , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders ) , there can be a comorbidity with psychosis during a manic episode. " Full mania causes a noticeable social or occupational impairment, with poor judgement, and in some people a psychosis that causes them to be a danger to themselves and others.6" ( www.mentalhealth.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Bipolar-disorder-Identifying-and-supporting-patients-in-primary-care-BPJ-2014.pdf , page 2/12 and number 6 refers to the DSM in the bibliography) Now, psychosis can be defined in short by an alteration of perception and loss of contact with reality. In long, some of the symptoms are changes in thinking patterns, unusual or false beliefs, changes in perception, changes in feeling and mood and changes in behaviour ( www.camh.ca/en/hospital/health_information/a_z_mental_health_and_addiction_information/psychosis/first_episode_psychosis_information_guide/Pages/fep_symptoms.aspx ). Both the manic episode and psychosis could explain some of the behaviour she exhibited in the elevator footage and her actions leading to her fate. Now, let's not forget something about psychological disorders, people who suffer from them still (usually) follow a logic. A twisted, irrational and abnormal logic but still one. I know one example doesn't make a tendency or a statistic but a resident (at work) who passed recently used to call employees to her room during meal times because she wanted to switch her plate or have it checked. The reason was she didn't like seafood (there is none on the menu). Her impression was either based on texture or color but she would claim she had it tested in a lab and even ran her own set of tests and she knew there was some, even in her oatmeal in the morning. I would agree this case was less severe than what Elisa Lam exhibited though. Again, I don't pretend to have a clear explanation to everything that happened, since some of the details seems either fragmentary or vague, but since there is not much available to us that leads anywhere else, I go with the accident. Note that I'm still open to being proven wrong, whether it's a criminal act or a paranormal one. Or maybe I should change my user name to Saint-Thomas. No that actually sounds logical. The theory of which I had been speculating was perhaps she met the wrong man(men) and the situation possibly escalated past that point. I might be dead wrong and there might have been people with her. That would more easily explain how she got in the tank and why she seemed distressed or in a hurry in the elevator. The bottom line is the mystery probably doesn't reside in the paranormal or inexplicable as much as in the fact that many aspects of the case haven't been answered or have seen a fragment of an answer.
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Post by mecano04 on Sept 13, 2017 0:51:28 GMT
Regarding Elisa Lam... idk how people with that amount of mania/mental disabilities/problems function in real life without a nursemaid or an assistance animal. anything can happen at any time. It's a lifelong battle but there are medical treatments and therapies available to help people with that disorder: www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml#part_145406
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Post by deembastille on Sept 13, 2017 1:14:31 GMT
Regarding Elisa Lam... idk how people with that amount of mania/mental disabilities/problems function in real life without a nursemaid or an assistance animal. anything can happen at any time. It's a lifelong battle but there are medical treatments and therapies available to help people with that disorder: www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml#part_145406I completely understand. I am a teacher and I had a student one year who was medically required to have her own Paraprofessional with her at all times, she was diabetic. I am just saying, treatments can malfunction, you can get a bad batch, therapies can backfire, many times it is trial and error. I am just wondering how these people can mask their diagnosis enough for the outside world not to notice to the point that they don't require a nurse or an assistance animal.
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Post by hi224 on Sept 16, 2017 22:48:22 GMT
Australia has probably had plenty.
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Post by hi224 on Sept 26, 2017 8:53:24 GMT
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