On January 29th 2013, 21 year old college student Elisa Lam vanished while on a solo trip to the West Coast during her stay at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles. During the investigation into Elisas disappearance, police publicly released a surveillance video from inside a hotel elevator showing Elisa acting strangely before she vanished. Then stories of the hotels dark past began to surface - stories of suicides, violence that happened inside its walls and serial killers who once lived there. Then, several weeks after she disappeared, hotel guests began complaining of a foul taste and smell in the hotel water. A maintenance man looking inside one of the rooftop water tanks found Elisas naked and decomposing body. After an autopsy the official cause of her death was ruled a drowning which did not answer the biggest questions of the case. How did she get to the hotel rooftop -which was inaccessible to guests? how did she end up naked inside of a water tank that was 8 feet tall, without a ladder, and then open the lid that was supposedly closed and weighed close to 80lbs? And what was with her bizarre behavior caught on the surveillance video? Was she playing what is known as the elevator game? This remains one of the most discussed cases on the World Wide Web with unlimited theories as to what events led to her demise. Links to research used in this episode: Civil case article: https://laist.com/2015/10/02/ elisa_lam_wrongful_death_suit.php. Please email theydisappearedpodcast@gmail.com for sponsorship and direct podcast episode inquiries.