{"id":2073,"slug":"cecil-hotel-stay-on-main-los-angeles-california","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Cecil Hotel is the building the deaths made famous — the 1924 Beaux Arts hotel on Main Street that went from business travelers to Skid Row. Sixteen deaths in the records — the suicides that started in the Depression, the falls and the overdoses, the woman who fell onto a pedestrian. Richard Ramirez lived there while the Night Stalker hunted; Jack Unterweger stayed while he killed; the Black Dahlia drank there before she died.","Elisa Lam is the case that made it eternal — the Canadian student whose elevator footage went viral, whose body was in the rooftop tank when the water ran low and tasted wrong. The coroner called it accident; the internet called it mystery. The Stay on Main rebrand didn't shake it; the 2021 affordable housing conversion is the hotel's last identity — the building that housed killers and the killed, the landmark Los Angeles can't rename.","The file keeps the Cecil Hotel: the 1924 opening, the deaths ledger, the serial-killer residents, and the Elisa Lam case.","The Cecil Hotel is the archive's haunted-hotel file — the building where the deaths are documented."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Cecil Hotel is the archive's haunted-hotel file — the luxury hotel that became a ledger of deaths.","A hotel keeps its guests — the file's suggestion being that the Cecil's hold is the cumulative record: the sixteen documented deaths, the two serial killers, the elevator footage, and the tank on the roof."]}],"name":"Cecil Hotel (Stay on Main)","aliases":[],"type":"HOTEL","type_label":"Hotel","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","DISASTER_HISTORY","LOCAL_FOLKLORE"],"groups":["dark-history","legends","lodging"],"desc":"1924 hotel darkened by decades of deaths and the Elisa Lam case.","full_desc":"The 1924 Main Street hotel accumulated a grim record—suicides, the 1964 \"Pigeon Goldie\" murder, serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger staying as guests, and the 2013 death of Elisa Lam in a rooftop water tank, documented by the eerie elevator footage. Rebranded as Stay on Main, it now operates as affordable housing.","address":null,"city":"Los Angeles","county":null,"state":"California","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":34.0442,"lon":-118.2508,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"ACTIVE","access":"RESTRICTED","access_notes":"Now operated as affordable housing; not a tourist site.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1924,"year_opened":1924,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":70,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1308,"type":"HAUNTING_REPUTATION","description":"The hotel is routinely billed as cursed; the documented record is of tragedy, not paranormal events. The Los Angeles hotel's reports are the kind old lodgings accumulate — footsteps after hours, presences in rooms, the house working the night shift. The report stands unverified, which is itself the finding. Sources including 'Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)' keep the claim in circulation. It's the kind of claim that outlives debunkings — too many witnesses, too few explanations.","evidence":"UNVERIFIED","evidence_label":"Unverified","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":"The \"cursed\" framing is media amplification of real, non-paranormal horrors.","source":{"name":"Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Hotel_(Los_Angeles)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Opened in 1924; its dark record includes the 1964 Goldie Osgood murder, Ramirez and Unterweger stays, and Elisa Lam’s 2013 death. A hotel with this much documented history gives the dossier real substance underneath the lore. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)' carry the record. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1924","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Hotel_(Los_Angeles)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[{"title":"Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel","type":"DOCUMENTARY","creator":"Netflix","date":"2021","episode":null,"url":null}],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access is restricted; check with the managing agency or landowner before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Hotel_(Los_Angeles)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}