COVER STORY THE GHOSTS OF THE CECIL HOTEL
ALAN MURDIE investigates a haunted hotel on the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles
ALAN MURDIE investigates a haunted hotel on the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles
Hotels and inns worldwide reflect a microcosm of humanity. They may be renowned as places of relaxation, celebration, fellowship and romance. Or they can be known for the darker aspects of human life. Crimes and conspiracies may be hatched or executed beneath their roofs, blood from fights and killings may stain their walls and floors, and some are tragically selected as venues by lonely suicides choosing to end their lives inside them.
In its 95-year history, the former Cecil Hotel, situated at 640 South Main Street, Los Angeles, has been the scene of a far larger share of tragic and traumatic deaths than most hotels ever suffer. Though only involving a fraction of the guests to have ever set foot in this veritable warren of 700 budget rooms over the years, they have remained infamous in collective memory. A belated and partial re-branding of the hotel as ‘Stay on Main’ in 2015 and a conversion of portions into private residences have come too late to dispel its embedded reputation as the most haunted place in the city. Finding myself in Los Angeles at the beginning of October, I decided to investigate.
I had been tipped off about the Cecil by a Guatemalan lady who told me, “I never dared even walking past the door,” confessing her discouragement stemmed from an incident related to her by a friend who witnessed the stabbing of a paramedic called to attend a guest.
Though travelling to the Cecil in relentless Californian sunshine, I soon realised, before reaching it, that sections of the locality in which it is situated exude a profound sense of threat and unease. Were one in the company of Byron, Shelley or Dickens, perhaps adorned in the clothing of an earlier era or visiting some pirate’s 17th century cove, an air of historical romance might surround such a venture. But there were no travellers or retainers resplendent in period costumes to divert attention from the symptoms of inner-city deprivation visible in the 21st century in the district – notorious for decades as one of the ‘skid rows’ of Los Angeles, with plenty having skidded off it – reflecting the failures of a wealthy society to care for vulnerable human beings.
The block that forms the Cecil is gaunt and imposing, rising up like a primitive monument, amid the detritus of surrounding streets, an impression relieved only by the presence of a few strategically planted saplings.
The block that forms the Cecil is gaunt and imposing, rising up like a primitive monument
Re-named as ‘Stay on Main’, the building retains some large original signage announcing it still as ‘the Cecil’. From appearances, a much-vaunted renovation announced in 2017 has a long way to go. Ravaged victims of crack cocaine and crystal-meth have replaced the drunkards and hobos of yesteryear. Close by, on its perimeter, an unconscious homeless man lay sprawled like a starfish, partially covered by a synthetic blanket.
No attempt has been made to remove graffiti and cartoons of satanic faces scrawled by a crude hand on external pillars facing the street. As I regarded its frontage, on cue, a dishevelled man, who appeared to have just left his bed, loped past me and declared; “This is the Cecil – the most haunted place in LA – it’s… crazy!”
“Haunted by what exactly?” I asked but he did not tarry and disdained to supply any answer.
On the afternoon I called, it transpired the Cecil had even surrendered its budget hotel status. The outer doors were solidly locked, displaying a notice that it was currently closed, having been taken over by filmmakers attracted by the once-glorious art-deco lobby. The director and producer wanted no talk of ghosts at this moment, concentrating on exploiting the still impressive, if faded, interior as an authentic set for their work. I could only hope they would treat the place more favourably than
did the fifth season of American Horror Story, which exploited the dark legacy of the Cecil as a ‘true-life’ inspiration for its fictional ‘Hotel Cortez’, supposedly notorious for hauntings and murders (featuring Lady Gaga as a 111-year-old vampire countess).
So, my many questions were destined not to be answered, but with a list of violent deaths stretching back to the Great Depression of the 1930s there is no shortage of potential candidates who may be haunting the premises.
Suicides have recurred periodically since a guest named Norton killed himself in 1931, mostly by persons leaping from the higher floors. A Helen Gurnee jumped to her death from the seventh in 1954; in 1962 Pauline Otton leapt from the ninth, killing herself and an unsuspecting passer-by, George Gianinni, 65, walking in the street below. The same year Julia Moore took her own life jumping from the eighth floor. These led to bars being added to some of the windows on the highest levels.
There are connections with many murders, solved and unsolved. The hotel was frequented by two serial killers, ‘Night Stalker’ Richard Ramirez, a Satanist apprehended in 1985, and Austrian murderer Jack Unterweger, who arrived in 1991 and started a killing spree before his capture in Miami in 1992. Never solved was the murder of Goldie Osgood, 79, in 1964 strangled and stabbed to death in a sexual attack, in a room on the seventh floor. Sixteen years earlier, Elizabeth Short ‘the Black Dahlia’, was rumoured to have consumed her last drink at the hotel bar before she turned up dead at Leimert Park, a few miles away in 1948 [FT334:48-54].
Earlier, in September 1944, Dorothy Jean Purcell, 19, gave birth at the Cecil and threw her newborn infant out the window. She was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity (curiously, stories of a similar incident were circulating in London the same month, concerning what became known as the ‘House of Suicides’ in Montpelier Road, Ealing [FT342:30-35]. Other people known to be staying at the premises have vanished; disturbingly an ‘Adamelis Ortiz’ posted a claim online in summer 2019, that her cousin Mary, aged 17, had disappeared whilst staying in the hotel, describing it as a ‘hotel of horror’.
One fatality of recent years continues to resonate beyond all others, proving impossible to shake off. This was the mysterious death in 2013 of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian student, reported missing after checking in on 31 January. Two weeks after her disappearance, police released disturbing footage from a lift camera showing her behaving erratically, randomly pressing bells and talking with someone unseen. Meanwhile guests at the Cecil were complaining of discoloured water flowing from taps, and of the water having a peculiar taste. On 19 February 2013, the cause was revealed. An employee dispatched to investigate the plumbing problems discovered a naked and decomposing female corpse in the main water tank. It was the body of the missing Elisa Lam. Investigating officials ultimately recorded the verdict “accidental death due to drowning”. Complaints about water quality have persisted ever since, mixed in with widely separated claims of ghostly manifestations. The grim facts of the Elisa Lam case and other tragedies continue to generate sensational coverage, the stuff from which morbid urban legends are born. (Sources: Guardian, 21 Feb 2013; Los Angeles Times, 4 Mar 2014; D.Telegraph, 3 Mar 2017, Sun, 9 Sep 2019).
Facing such a list, it is important to retain a sense of proportion. Since it opened, many thousands of people have stayed in the Cecil without trouble or incident. Surrounded by crime-ridden streets in a deprived neighbourhood, instances of social deviancy, particularly homicide and suicide, might be anticipated.
Regarding accounts of ghosts, the briefest analysis reveals a strong hearsay component to many reports, most of which amount to little more than complaints of a disturbing atmosphere within certain rooms and ‘weird’ and ‘creepy’ noises at night. Multiple ordinary causes may be postulated for unusual sounds, caused by aging fixtures and fittings along with echoes through the rambling structure arising from a continual through-put of guests. Ghostly ‘screaming’ and ‘screeching’ sounds may be attributable to noise of purely human origin in a busy hotel with communal bathrooms, or extraneous cries penetrating from outside. Auto-suggestion and bad dreams might be only expected for sensitive and unduly nervous persons staying under the roof of the Cecil (if any venture to spend a night), stimulated by other guests telling stories and conducting impromptu séances to contact troubled spirits. It is likely a percentage of reports simply originate with hoaxers exhibiting a perverse or macabre sense of humour.
Reflecting on the sad litany of fatalities at the Cecil, one is reminded of the words of historian GM Trevelyan: “On this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passion, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another – gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow.”
THE HAUNTING OF CASH’S WELL
Deprived of the chance of staying, there was a certain measure of relief in leaving behind the Cecil with its tales of a body in a cistern and strange-tasting water, and returning to the UK to learn of a haunted well reposing in the autumnal tranquillity of an Essex woodland. Many extraordinary claims currently circulate concerning ‘Cash’s Well’, a ruin to be found among trees in Langdon Hills Country Park, Thurrock.
Once renowned for its allegedly curative waters, Cash’s Well is achieving fame again, thanks to the efforts of the Essex Ghost Hunters, the group promoting claims of the site being actively haunted by the man who constructed it. Amid these confident assertions (which identify the group as Spiritualists rather than ghost hunters) they report undefined paranormal energies swirling all over the site and strange lights and smells. Without
deciding the matter, I wonder if the same psychological processes suspected at the Cecil in California are at work here, profoundly affecting the perceptions of visitors engaging in nocturnal tours.
Reportedly, participants may experience emotional outbursts, floods of tears and dramatic personality changes. Some complain of being pushed around or scratched by unseen forces. Others experience strange physical reactions, suffering twitching limbs and hands.
The Essex Ghost Hunters attribute these to the spirit of Mr Edwin Cash, the man who established Cash’s Well a century ago. Recorded as the licensee of the Angel in Islington, he spotted a money-making opportunity in the supposed medicinal qualities of water with a high mineral content extracted from a well sunk by a Mr King at the rear of Hovell’s Farm, Vange, Essex. Involved from 1902, it was not until retiring from his pub in 1919
that Cash embarked in developing his commercial interests, founding the Vange Water Company. The company bottled and sold the water for public consumption via local chemists and stores. The business thrived and by 1920 the press eagerly reported claims of these alleged medicinal properties. This success led Cash to sink a further three wells, the last being the one surviving today. Then, in 1924, the enterprise collapsed, forced to cease operations after a pollution scare over leakage from nearby drains serving a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Edwin Cash died in 1931, and now it is averred his spirit returns to haunt the site of his last well, and is proving contactable in séances arranged by the Essex Ghost Hunters.
Intriguingly, the group claims it has discovered “all sorts of information” about “Mr Cash”, even “his class number at school and the house he was in”. Russell
Old, a spokesman for the group, was quoted regarding his own troubled personal communications with the spirit, stating of “Mr Cash”: “He doesn’t like me and I don’t particularly like him,” and that “There’s no love lost between us because of what I call his water”. So, to placate “Mr Cash”, the group makes offerings of two pence pieces, depositing them in the well. Russell Old explained: “He was money-orientated, everything was money with him and he was a businessman.”
Readers of this extensively covered story may realise that independent corroboration has yet to emerge and demonstrate that any spirit is actually communicating, or that it is even the original “Mr Cash”, despite Mr Old assuring visiting journalist Elliot Hawkins, “He’s here now”. (D.Mirror, 7 Sept; Essex Live, 1 Oct 2019 and many others).
Facing such claims, the independent investigator can only stand back like the conjuror’s assistant and assess proceedings as they unfold. Either Mr Old is a genuine medium, in which case verifiable information unknown to all present might be sought, or explanations are to be found elsewhere. At present nothing yet establishes “Mr Cash” as anything more than a subjective hallucination or, alternatively (presuming any entity is present) that it corresponds with the onceliving personality of Edwin Cash. Nor is there evidence that this is causally linked with other anomalies being experienced by visitors to the area guided by the group.
The group cites one man adversely affected, “a guy who was seven feet tall, stocky, broad… the nicest guy you’d ever spoken to,” who, on ascending a hill, “got so aggressive… cursing and throwing his arms around, so we had to turn him around. He wasn’t under attack; he was just feeling the energy.” Unfortunately, as operators of cinemas and carnival attractions can confirm, physical size and prowess guarantees no protection against mental suggestion. I recall the late Sir John Mortimer describing his public school boxing master collapsing in a screening of the film The Mummy (1932). One group member admits, “A lot of it is psychological, but you’ll get a lot of people who don’t want to stand with their backs to the window or by the door,” and people “who just burst out in tears”.
In the circumstances, several things caution against accepting visitor reactions as prima facie evidence of a haunting. Psychological priming is already in place by the group declaring the place haunted. As with the infamous MacKenzie tomb of Greyfriars Cemetery, Edinburgh, nothing much was apparently reported around Cash’s Well until ghost hunters commenced tours. The power of suggestion should
not be underestimated, since lonely or unfamiliar locations, especially isolated and eerie woodlands at night, can affect people in many ways.
Wells are a great inspiration to the imagination and for those who dream up supernatural stories. WB Yeats wrote At the Hawk’s Well, a play mixing elements of Irish mythology concerning curative waters and Spiritualist belief. Ghosts dwelt in the depths of wells imagined by MR James, classics being ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas’, ‘A School Story’ and his jokey ‘The Wailing Well’. Even postulated as a psychological condition is ‘Bathophobia’ – fear of lakes, pools, wells and tunnels – perhaps one with more substance than many anxiety conditions bandied around (see www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art. asp?articlekey=12212).
More widely, pools and wells attract legends and lore, being perceived as dangerous and liminal spots and contact points for supernatural beings and other worlds. A few entities are benign, (e.g. the angel periodically disturbing the healing waters of the pool of Bethesda, John, 5:24) and others are neutral, such as White Ladies (e.g. Lady’s Well, Whittingham, Northumberland, possibly a relic of Marian veneration before the Reformation), or the ghostly dismembered smuggler whose body was dumped down a well at Happisburgh, Norfolk.
Many more entities are implacably hostile, dragging victims to their deaths, overlapping with monsters and sirens in mythology. (Coleman O Parsons (1933) Folklore vol. 44, no.3; Our Haunted
Kingdom (1973) by Andrew Green; The Folklore of East Anglia (1974) by Enid Porter).
Although no records of haunted wells were obtained in Essex from a questionnaire survey by folklorist LF Newman in 1952 (see ‘Folklore Survivals in the Southern ‘Lake Counties’ and in Essex: A Comparison and Contrast’ by LF Newman and EM Wilson, Folklore (1952), vol.63, pp91-104) there are traces of haunted well legends at St Osyth. The disputed wall writings of Borley Rectory, Essex, also included an enigmatic message ‘Well-tank bottom me’ suggesting human remains in a cistern (though this interpretation has been vigorously challenged).
Altogether, probably no similar-sized patch of woodland in Britain would not boast a high proportion of odd experiences if the percipients came in the same numbers and in the same psychological state of expectant excitement. Yet the inability to currently verify such experiences as paranormal does not necessarily mean such investigations are in vain or lack significance. Fundamentally, many everyday subjective experiences remain incapable of strict scientific proof, no methodology being in existence to confirm them.
Perhaps someday technology will be developed to make this possible; if ever so, we will achieve a major step in settling the reality or otherwise of many alleged paranormal phenomena. If nothing else, the controversy as to their nature indicates the importance of respecting subjective experience both from a research standpoint and personally.