Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / The Macabre History of the Cecil Hotel

Transcript

The Macabre History of the Cecil Hotel · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, it is a really strange thing to think
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: about the physical spaces we occupy like every single day.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Because you walk into a building, right? Whether it is,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know, your local coffee shop or the office
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you commute to or even like a hotel you were
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: staying at for the weekend. And you just expect it
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: to be, well, a building.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Right. Just a normal space.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Just brick, mortar, glass, steel buildings. We really tend
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to view architecture as this totally passive, inert thing. Like
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: it's just a container for human activity.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is how we are sort of conditioned to
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: look at it.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: But every now and then, you encounter a place that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: forces you to just completely rethink that entire assumption. A
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: place that it almost seems to actively absorb the history
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: that happens inside of it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to the point where... the building itself almost becomes
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: like a living, breathing participant in the events.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And today's deep dive is based on this massive,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: just totally harrowing investigative piece from Oxygen True Crime that
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we have been poring over. And it asks this really
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: terrifying question, actually.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It asks how a luxury hotel in downtown Los Angeles
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: becomes this like giant magnet for unsolved murders and serial killers,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and one of the most famous internet mysteries of all time.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: So for you listening right now, welcome.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome. We are going on a really intense journey today.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: It is a remarkably heavy one. So, okay, let's unpack this.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: We are looking at the Cecil Hotel, which is this
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: massive 700-room monolith that went from roaring 20s glamour to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: being literally dubbed the Death Hotel.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: And... We really, really need to set the ground rules
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: for how we are going to explore this today. Because,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: you know, when you have a location with a history
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: that is this dense and this dark and just so
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: saturated in tragedy, the immediate human reflex is to jump
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: straight to the paranormal. Right.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: People immediately want to say it is haunted.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Society just wants to label it cursed. But we
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: aren't just going to be sitting here recounting ghost stories
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: for you today. We are going to be examining the
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: actual tragedy. tangible mechanics of this building's descent.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Which is so much more fascinating, honestly.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: It really is. We are going to look at the
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: urban sociology, the psychology of the people who lived there,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: and the systemic societal failures that explain, you know, why
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: this specific building became a magnet for society's most vulnerable people.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: And then simultaneously, its most dangerous predators.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I love that approach. Because to really understand the whole
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: mythology of the Death Hotel, it actually doesn't make sense
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to start back in the 1920s. No, it doesn't. We
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: actually have to start near the end of the timeline
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: with the case that introduced this building to an entirely
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: new modern generation. We really have to talk about 2013. Yeah.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: The tragic mystery of Elisa Lam. Right.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: And for those who might not know the intricate details
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: of this, Elisa Lam, who was also known by her
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Cantonese name, Lam Ho Yee. She was a 21-year-old Canadian student.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Right. Just a young college student.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And she's traveling through California. She checks into a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: hotel in Los Angeles. And then she mysteriously vanishes. And tragically,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: weeks later, she is found dead inside one of the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: actual water towers on the very roof of the building.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Which is just a horrific discovery. Yeah. And this case,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, it became a massive, unprecedented global phenomenon on
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: the Internet. But what is absolutely crucial to understand here
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: is the physical and psychological context of her arrival.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Because it wasn't what it seemed.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: When Elisa Lam went online and booked her stay, she
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: didn't think she was checking into a place with this
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: infamous blood-soaked history. She thought she was checking into a
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: trendy boutique spot called Stay on Main.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Stay on Main.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Which the Oxygen True Crime piece points out was marketed
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: as this super vibrant, budget-friendly hostel.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was aimed directly at young backpackers, you know,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: budget travelers.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Like it had its own separate entrance and vibrant paint
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: colors and fresh modern branding. But here is the devastating reality.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Stay on Main was literally just a veneer.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: It was entirely a marketing rebrand.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a rebrand of the notorious Cecil Hotel. They essentially
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: just painted over nearly a century of accumulated trauma, slapped
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: a trendy new name on the door, and opened up
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: for business. And this building was physically located right in
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the heart of Los Angeles' notoriously dangerous Skid Row district.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate illusion of safety, really, provided by
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: gentrification and clever marketing. You have this naive, budget-conscious traveler
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: who is interacting with a space that she fundamentally misunderstands.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Because of the marketing.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Right. She believes the bright orange paint and the modern
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: font on the sign mean she is in this curated,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: safe environment. But the actual bones of the building are
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: the exact same. The surrounding streets are the exact same.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: It is this incredible, almost cinematic collision of worlds. And
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to really compound that tragic collision, we have to look
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: at the role of the Internet here. Because if the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: trendy rebranding set the stage, the Internet is what truly
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: poured gasoline on this entire case. Oh, absolutely. Because Elisa
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Lam had a very heavy online presence, specifically on the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: platform Tumblr.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Right. She was a very prolific writer on her blog. Yeah.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: She was documenting her travels, her daily musings. But she
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: was also incredibly candid about her severe struggles with mental health.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: She was leaving this massive, very vulnerable digital footprint in
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: real time.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Which gave people all over the world this false sense
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: of intimacy with her.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Yes. And then during the search for her, the Los
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Angeles Police Department actually releases the last known footage of her,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the infamous elevator video.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: And that footage is arguably one of the most widely
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: viewed pieces of digital evidence in Internet history.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: It is everywhere.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And for those who haven't seen it, it basically
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: shows Lam inside the hotel elevator. And she is pressing
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: multiple buttons. She is stepping out into the hallway and
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: looking around as if she's hiding from someone.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: It's very erratic.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Very erratic. She makes these bizarre, fluid, almost unnatural gestures
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: with her hands. And she just acts incredibly strange before
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: finally stepping out of the frame and vanishing forever.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It is deeply, deeply unsettling to watch. I remember seeing
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: it when it first circulated online. And even though, as
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the official reports ultimately concluded, her death was ruled an
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: accidental drowning, likely a tragic result of a severe manic
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: or psychotic episode where she gained access to the roof
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately entered the tank.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Right. That was the official factual conclusion.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Right. But that video, it birthed literally a thousand conspiracy theories.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of like a modern day Rorschach test
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: for the entire Internet.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, that is a great way to put it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Right. Because millions of people watched the exact same low
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: resolution video, but they saw exactly what their pre-existing biases
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: told them to see.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: That is a really sharp way to frame it, because
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: what is fascinating here is is that if you were
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: someone who had read her Tumblr posts, who actually understood
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: the reality of bipolar disorder and severe mental health crises,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: you looked at that video and saw a young woman
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: suffering a profound medical emergency.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You saw someone in crisis.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Right. You saw someone who desperately needed medical intervention right
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: then and there.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But what happens when the Internet sleuths dig a little deeper?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Because they didn't just stop at her Tumblr page. They
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: dug into the actual physical address.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: And they realized Stay on Main was the Cecil Hotel.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yes. And once the internet dug up the history of
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the building and found out about its death hotel moniker,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: they saw something else entirely in that elevator. They saw
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: her hiding from a killer just out of frame.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Or they saw her being physically possessed.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they literally saw ghosts.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: What is fascinating here is how the internet totally democratizes
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: an investigation, but in doing so, it just completely strips
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: away all the context. The Death Hotel nickname provided this
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: incredibly powerful, deeply biased backdrop.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It completely hijacked the narrative.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: It really hijacked how the public interpreted that video. Because
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: imagine if you see that exact same video, frame for frame, right?
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: But you are told she is in a normal, everyday
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Marriott in Ohio.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: You would instantly think, oh, this person is having a
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: medical emergency. Someone call an ambulance.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But when you are told she is in the
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: infamous death hotel, suddenly an accidental tragedy is visually translated
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: by the public into a supernatural thriller.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: The history of the building hijacked the reality of her crisis.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: But it really begs the question, you know, why was
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the internet so incredibly quick to believe that this specific
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: building was genuinely cursed?
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: That is the core question.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Right. How did it earn that kind of immediate visceral
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: reaction from millions of people who had never even set
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: foot in Los Angeles. To understand the supernatural rumors that
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: exploded around Elisa Lam in 2013, we really have to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: peel back that trendy stay on Maine wallpaper.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the foundation.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Strip away the modern hostile branding and look at the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: foundation that was poured nearly a century earlier. Because you
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that we need to look at the mechanics
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: of this descent. How does a building fall this far?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: To answer that, we really have to rewind all the
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: way to 1927.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, 1927.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: The Cecil Hotel officially opens its doors. It is a
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: massive 700-room landmark building. The historical records from Oxygen explicitly
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: note it was originally designed as a hospital. for the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: rich and the famous.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Which is so hard to picture now.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I want you to just try to picture this for
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: a second. It was built with opulent marble lobbies, massive
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: stained glass windows, polished brass fixtures, literal palm trees inside
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the lobby.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: It was stunning.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It was designed to be this jewel in the crown
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: of downtown Los Angeles during the absolute peak of the
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Roaring Twenties.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: But the timeline of its descent is what is so
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: staggering here. It wasn't a slow, century-long, graceful decline, you know.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: The tarnish appeared almost immediately.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Almost overnight.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because just two years after this grand, opulent opening,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: in 1929, we have our first recorded tragedy.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Just two years. I mean, think about that. The paint
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: is literally barely dry on the walls. The brass is
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: still sparkling new.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And we have the case of a 33-year-old woman named
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Dorothy Roberson. The historical reporting details how she wandered around
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: the hotel for three whole days, completely distraught after an
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: unsuccessful attempt to poison herself with prescribed barbiturates.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I really want to pause and just live in that
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: fact for a second. Because I think it gets glossed
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: over as just like a bullet point on a true
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: crime timeline.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: It gets lost in the numbers, yeah.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: It really does. So, I want to visualize this. It
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: is 1929. This place is brand new. There are bellhops
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: in crisp uniforms. There's jazz music playing. Wealthy patrons are
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: walking around in furs and tailored suits. And through this opulent,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: gorgeous lobby wanders Dorothy Roberson.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: In absolute crisis. Right.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: She has just tried to end her own life. She failed.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: And now she is wandering this monument to excess. completely
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: distraught for three solid days. It is this incredibly chilling
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: image of extreme internal human suffering just drifting through a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: physical space that was built for pure surface-level pleasure.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: The juxtaposition is totally jarring.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: It is so jarring.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's a profound juxtaposition, and unfortunately, it wasn't an isolated
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: incident at all. The records show that before 1940, so
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: basically within roughly the first decade of the hotel's existence...
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Newspapers were already reporting a relentless string of suicides.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Including fatal leaps from the structure, right?
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, people jumping from the higher floors.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: It happened with such alarming frequency that long-term residents of
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the hotel actually gave the building a nickname. They didn't
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: call it the Cecil. They called it the suicide. Wow.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I really want you to think about the psychological weight
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of that. Imagine living in a building, right? Waking up,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: walking through the lobby to get your mail, getting into
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the elevator, and you and your neighbors casually refer to
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: your home as the suicide.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Just normalizing it.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: What does that do to the morale of a community
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: living inside it?
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it creates a culture of complete apathy. If a
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: building is known for tragedy, then tragedy just becomes expected.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: It becomes part of the daily routine rather than a
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: shocking anomaly.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: People stop asking if something terrible is going to happen,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: and they just start waiting for when it is going
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: to happen.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of like a Hollywood movie set. From
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the street, the marquee is shining. The facade looks like
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: a million bucks.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You see the marble lobbies, the grand entrance. Right.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: But if you walk up and actually scratch the gold paint,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: you realize it is just cheap, rotting wood underneath. The
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: illusion is instantly broken. But my question is, you know,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: how did that rot happen so fast? How does a
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: place go from being a hotspot for the rich and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: famous to being literally nicknamed the suicidal in barely a decade?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: What is the actual mechanism there?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, we
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: really have to look at the macroeconomic timeline of the country.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, the bigger economy.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the hotel opens in 1927. What happens in 1929?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, the stock market crashes.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The Great Depression begins. The money that funded the
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Roaring Twenties dries up overnight. The people who were booking
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: those luxury suites suddenly couldn't afford them.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: But the building is still there. A 700-room hotel has
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: a massive overhead. So to survive, to literally keep the
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: lights on during a depression, management has to drastically lower
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: their rates.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Which changes the entire demographic of who stays there.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Completely. And as the late 1930s transition into the 1940s,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: we see the early signs of post-war urban shifts. The
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: building was literally absorbing the economic realities of Los Angeles.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: As the money and the glamour moved out of downtown
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: and into the suburbs, economic desperation moved into the vacuum
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: they left behind.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And honestly, nothing symbolizes that strange, desperate twilight era of
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the 1940 Cecil Hotel better than its connection to the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: most infamous unsolved murder in Los Angeles history.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, the Black Dahlia.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: The Black Dahlia, yes. Elizabeth Short.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: For those unfamiliar with the case, she was a young,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: aspiring actress who was brutally murdered and mutilated in 1947.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Her case became a massive, highly sensationalized media circus. And
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the lore surrounding the Cecil always points out that there
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: are persistent rumors she was drinking at a bar inside
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the hotel just days before her murder.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Which is a very famous part of the Cecil mythos.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: It is. But I actually have to push back here
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: for a second. Wait, is there actual police proof that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short was at the Cecil? Or is this just
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: like Hollywood myth-making attaching itself to a creepy building? Because
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of true crime lore just lumps famous names
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: together to make a good story.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: That is the perfect question to ask. And the honest
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: answer is there is very little concrete verifiable police evidence
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: placing her at that specific bar on that specific night.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So it's a rumor.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It is largely anecdotal. But in terms of the building's history,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: the factual verification is almost secondary to the cultural reality here.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: How so? What do you mean?
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Because the myth matters. The fact that the rumor was
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: instantly believed by the public, the fact that the Cecil
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: is naturally, effortlessly tied to Hollywood's biggest, darkest, unsolved mystery,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: that shows you how deeply ingrained the hotel had become
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: in the city's dark underbelly.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: It was the kind of place where it was entirely
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: plausible that a doomed, tragic figure like the Black Dahlia
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: would spend her final days. No one heard the rumor
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: and said, wait, the Cecil? No way. That place is
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: way too classy.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: They just accepted it.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: They heard it and said, of course she was there.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: It just fits perfectly. So the mythos of the Death
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Hotel is being built brick by brick. It is no
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: longer just a place where sad individuals quietly take their
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: own lives in their rooms. It is now associated with
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: a profound, terrifying external mystery.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Wow. So the narrative shifts entirely. It goes from internal despair,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: you know, people hurting themselves, to external danger.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And that fading glamour you mentioned earlier, that created a
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: massive economic vacuum. Because a 700-room hotel is a beast
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that constantly needs to be fed.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: It needs bodies and beds.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Right. The era of the Cecil being a place of
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: isolated tragedies was essentially ending. Because the city around it
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: was fundamentally changing. Which means... The hotel was about to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: be transformed into a formalized containment zone.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: And this brings us right into the structural changes of
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: the 1950s through the 1970s. The descent goes from, you know,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: a steep hill to an absolute cliff edge.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the 1950s. The reports we read
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: note that the hotel's reputation is just in a total
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: freefall at this point. Crime is rising rapidly in the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: surrounding downtown neighborhood.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Very rapidly.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And the extremely cheap rates make it a permanent, long-term
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: home for people who are completely down on their luck.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: And we see the tragedies start shifting in nature, like
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: we just said. They aren't just private suicides anymore. They
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: become violently public, and they actually start affecting the outside world.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: The 1962 case is a horrific example of this transition.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly grim. We have a 27-year-old woman named
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Pauline Otten. She gets into a severe argument. And she
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: takes a suicidal plunge from her window high up in
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the hotel.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Which is tragic on its own.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't just end her own life. As she falls,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: she lands directly on an elderly pedestrian named George Giannini,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: who was literally just taking a walk down the street below.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Just walking by.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And it killed them both instantly. The internal pain to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the hotel could no longer be contained within its walls.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: It was now literally falling onto the streets and killing
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: innocent bystanders.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: And then just two years later, in 1964, the violence
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: turns inward again, but in a much more predatory, malicious way.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Which is so scary.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: The historical records detail the death of a woman known
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: as Pigeon Goldie Oswood.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, this case is so heartbreaking.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: It really is. She was a long-term resident of the hotel.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: She earned her nickname, Pigeon Goldie, because she would go
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: out and feed the pigeons in the nearby park every
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: single day.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: She was a fixture in the community.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: She was. She was popular. She was well-liked by the
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: community there. But she was found dead in her room.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: And she had been brutally sexually assaulted and violently slain.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: In her own room.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: In her room. The place was ransacked. And just like
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: the Black Dahlia, her murder remains completely unsolved to this day.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: A sweet elderly woman who feeds birds is violently murdered
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: in her own room. I mean, it is the exact
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: definition of predatory violence. And this is really the pivot
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: point for the building. Because by the 1970s, The city
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of Los Angeles officially establishes the surrounding area, which is
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: what we now know as Skid Row, as what they
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: actually called an essential containment zone for transients.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: An essential containment zone.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and crime skyrockets. The sources we read cite former
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: residents and LAPD investigators who actually refer to the hotel
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: in this era as ground zero for violence. It essentially
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: became a dumping ground.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what it was.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Convicts who were newly paroled, sex workers, people experiencing severe
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: untreated mental health crises, they were all pushed into this
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: specific area, and by extension, into this massive cheap hotel.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I really, really want to spend some time dissecting that
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: exact phrase, containment zone.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Because that is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. You know,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: that is a deliberate, calculated act of urban city planning.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: What does that actually look like in practice? Because it
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: sounds incredibly dystopian when you say it out loud.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, it is deeply dystopian. What a containment zone means
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: in practice is that a municipality looks at a map
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: of their city. They see the rising homelessness. They see
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the shuttered businesses, the untreated trauma, the severe addiction.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: All these really hard social issues.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Right. And instead of allocating funds for medical clinics or
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: subsidized housing or actual job training programs, They draw a
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: literal boundary around a few city blocks.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: They just quarantine it.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They say we will tolerate the illicit behavior, the
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: drug use, the sex work, as long as it stays
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: strictly within these borders. They physically isolate vulnerable populations. And
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: the police are often instructed to essentially enforce the border,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: keeping people in rather than actually protecting the people inside it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It is a grim, bureaucratic quarantine of human suffering. And
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: the Cecil Hotel, with its 700 incredibly cheap rooms, was
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: sitting right smack in the middle of it.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I completely push back on the bureaucratic cruelty
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of that term, containment zone. The city planners made it
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: sound like they were handling a radioactive spill, not actual
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: human beings that were in severe crisis.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: That's important.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: If you look at it systematically, it is exactly like
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: a pressure cooker without a release valve.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: How do you mean, a pressure cooker?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Well, if you take all of society's struggles, extreme poverty,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: severe untreated trauma, heavy addiction, violent criminal histories, and you
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: push all of those people into one single 700-room building,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: and then you essentially lock the door and tell the
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: police to look the other way, explosions are going to happen.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: The brutal murder of a popular resident like Goldie Oswood
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: isn't a random supernatural anomaly. In a pressure cooker like that,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: it is mathematically inevitable.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: You are exactly right. When a society creates a dumping
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: ground for the vulnerable, it is simultaneously and completely inadvertently
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: creating the absolute perfect hunting ground for predators.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, that is chilling.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Because if you are a wolf, you don't go hunting
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: in a well-lit, heavily guarded fortress.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: No, you go to where it's easy.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: You go to the containment zone. Right. You go to
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: the place where the police explicitly don't want to patrol,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: where the screams of your victims are ignored by the neighbors,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: and where the people you are attacking are considered basically
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: expendable by the very city planners who put them there.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Which is just a chilling transition. Because when you build
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the perfect hunting ground, the apex predators of the true
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: crime world will inevitably check in.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: And they did.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to what is easily the most
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: terrifying chapter in the Cecil's history. The 1980s and the 1990s.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: The serial killer era.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Yes. We have two incredibly infamous names attached to the
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: hotel during this period. The first, in the 1980s, is
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Richard Ramirez.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Known to the world as the Night Stalker.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: The Night Stalker. During his horrific, terrifying killing spree across
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles... which was a spree that involved home invasions,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: sexual assaults, and brutal murders, he reportedly made one of
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: the rooms at the very top floor of the Cecil
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Hotel his temporary home base.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting and honestly profoundly
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: deeply disturbing. I want to talk about the sheer logistics
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of this.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the day-to-day reality of it.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: The Night Stalker, while actively terrorizing the entire state of California, well,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: his face is literally on the front page of every
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: single newspaper, is living at the Cecil.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Just staying in a room.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: The lore suggests he would commit these brutal murders, take
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: off his blood-soaked clothes, throw them in the dumpsters behind
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the hotel, and then just walk through the lobby in
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: his underwear, covered in blood, go up to his room
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and sleep. Yeah. And no one stopped him. No one
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: called the cops.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: It sounds totally impossible to comprehend today. But then in 1991,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: we have a second apex predator. Jack Unterweger. He was
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: an Austrian serial killer who actually traveled to Los Angeles
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: on a journalistic assignment to write about crime.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Which is just wild on its own. It is wild.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: And he rented his own room at the Cecil. The
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: records indicate that during his stay there, he murdered at
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: least three sex workers.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: The sheer horror of a hotel functioning as a safe
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: harbor for active serial killers is just hard to overstate.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It is one thing for a place to be dangerous.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: It is another for it to be A literal bed
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and breakfast for monsters.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: But I have to ask you to explain why. Like,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: why did they choose the Cecil? Was it really just
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: because the rooms were $ 14 a night?
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't just the price tag. It was because
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the hotel offered unparalleled camouflage.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Camouflage.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Think about the physical environment we just described with the
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: containment zone. You have a massive, echoing building packed to
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: the brim with transients, sex workers, drug activity... and daily
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: normalized violence. In an environment that chaotic, a stranger coming
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: and going at odd hours wouldn't raise a single red flag.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: A scream down the hall wouldn't prompt anyone to call
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: the front desk because screaming was just the ambient noise
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: of the building.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: It was just Tuesday.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And a guy walking through the lobby with blood
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: on him in the Cecil in 1985, that barely warrants
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: a second glance.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: It is the dark irony of Jack Unterweger that really
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: gets me. Here's a guy who is an international killer,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: He comes all the way from Europe to Los Angeles.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Out of all the thousands of motels, hotels, and apartments
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: he could have rented in all of Southern California, he
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: specifically seeks out the Cecil.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: He hummed right in on it.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: It is almost as if the building had developed this
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: dark gravity. It was actively pulling in bad actors. Because
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: predators like Unterweger, they have a radar for chaos. They
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: knew they could hide in plain sight there.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: This raises a really important question about the concept of
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: invisibility in our society. Because look at who Unterweger specifically
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: targeted while he was staying there. Sex workers. The exact
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: demographic of vulnerable women that city planning had pushed into
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: this containment zone. The exact demographic that society had deemed
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: invisible and unworthy of protection. Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: did not bring the darkness to the Cecil Hotel. No.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: The darkness was already there. They simply exploited the apathy
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: and the decay that society had already allowed to fester
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: in those hallways.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: They were just swimming in the water we provided for them.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: It is honestly devastating. But when you look at this
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: entire timeline we have just walked through, you know, from
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: 1927 to the 1990s, it is almost too heavy to process.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: It is overwhelming.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: You have a luxury boom, immediate suicides in the opulent lobbies,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the Black Dahlia mythos. Pedestrians being crushed by falling bodies,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: unsolved brutal murders of sweet old ladies, a state-sanctioned containment
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: zone of human misery, and two active serial killers using
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: it as a base camp.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: All in one building.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: The facts of this building are so brutally heavy, so
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: steeped in real-world sociological failure, that it basically becomes exhausting
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: for a normal person to look at directly. So, society
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: did what society always does when the truth is too ugly.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: It turned the history into a ghost story.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Which brings us to the commodification of the tragedy.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: How this building transitioned from a site of very real
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: suffering into basically a pop culture phenomenon.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The hotel eventually closed its doors to the public,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: citing necessary renovations and a change in ownership. But its
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: legacy didn't die at all. It just mutated into entertainment.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: It became content.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: It became a massive creative inspiration for Hollywood. Ryan Murphy
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: based season five of his hit show American Horror Story
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: directly on the hotel, specifically pulling from the deaths, the
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: elevator footage, and the rumors of hauntings. Right.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And then Netflix released that massive multi-part docuseries called Crime Scene,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, which became a global
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: talking point.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, you have the explicit paranormal investigations,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the reality TV ghost hunters.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, right. The show Ghost Adventures, led by Zach Bagans,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: went into the hotel specifically inspired by Elisa Lam's death. Right.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: They get access to the closed building and they are
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: in there exploring these wild, completely unverified rumors that Richard
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Ramirez was conducting satanic rituals on the roof where Lam's
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: body was found.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Which there is no proof of.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: None. And Bagans claims on camera that he saw a
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: water faucet turn on all by itself in the specific
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: room that Jack Unterweger stayed in. He even gives this
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: quote to the press saying, you know, when you are
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: walking through those floors, you could feel these spirits move
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: through you, around you. They're watching you. And then he
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: delivers the ultimate thesis of the myth. He says there
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: was just something about this building.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: We really need to pause and look at the commodification
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: of real life trauma here because this is deeply problematic.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: on a societal level.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: How do the tragic, very real, very visceral deaths of people,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: of a young woman suffering a mental health crisis like
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Elisa Lam, of an elderly pedestrian like George Giannini just
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: walking down the street, Of a popular resident like Goldie Oswin,
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: who was brutally assaulted. How do these deeply human tragedies
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: become popcorn entertainment fodder for scripted television and reality ghost
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: hunting shows?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for us? For you
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: listening right now? I really want you to reflect on
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: your own consumption of true crime and mystery. Because when
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: we hear these stories, we actually have a choice in
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: how we frame them in our own minds.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And I would argue... That pointing at the Cecil Hotel
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and blaming satanic rituals on the roof or blaming invisible
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: poltergeists turning on sink faucets, it is actually a deeply
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: comforting cop-out.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: It absolutely is. It is a complete abdication of responsibility.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It is so much easier and honestly so much more
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: fun to imagine that there is a spooky cursed ghost
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: in the walls that makes bad things happen. Because if
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: it is a ghost, it's out of our control.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: It's supernatural. It's magic. But it is terrifying to admit
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the reality. It's terrifying to admit that systematic societal neglect,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: brutal city planning, redlining, and a complete and utter lack
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: of mental health care infrastructure are what actually ruined all
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: of those lives in that building. We basically invented the
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: ghosts so we didn't have to look in the mirror.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I completely agree with that assessment. The human brain is
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: essentially a pattern recognition machine. It desperately looks for connections
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: to make sense of chaos. And when you have an
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: overwhelming density of death in one physical location over a century,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the brain just short circuits. Calling it a cursed death
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: hotel is a psychological coping mechanism for society.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: It's easier to process.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Because as you said, it is profoundly easier to be
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: afraid of a haunted faucet in Jack Unterweger's room than
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: it is to be afraid of failing urban infrastructure, systemic poverty,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: and the fact that we legally allow containment zones to
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: exist in our major cities, the paranormal explanation completely lets
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: us off the hook.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: It really does let us off the hook, which makes
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the whole story of this building so intensely tragic, but
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: also so incredibly necessary to understand.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: So let's quickly recap this staggering journey we've been on
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: with our source material today. We started in 1927. looking
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: at a structure designed to be a luxury establishment, this
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: beacon of the roaring 20s. Right. We watched it almost
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: immediately tarnish as the Depression hit, earning the grim, completely
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: normalized moniker of the suicide from its own residents. We
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: traced how post-war shifts in city zoning laws turned the
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: surrounding area into a containment zone, literally transforming the hotel
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: from a place of internal despair into a literal hunting
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: ground for violence and unsolved murders.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: And we saw how that chaotic environment actively provided the
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: perfect camouflage for apex predators like Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: who exploited the invisibility of the people society had purposefully
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: discarded there. And finally, we saw how that century of
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: accumulated trauma was paved over with a trendy, colorful rebrand
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: called Stay on Main, creating the tragic illusion of safety
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: that Elisa Lam unknowingly walked right into.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: It is a devastating arc.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: And for you, our listener, we really hope this deep
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: dive serves as a reminder of the importance of looking
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: past the flashy headlines.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Yes. Always look deeper. When you see a viral video
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: on the Internet or a trendy rebrand of a neighborhood
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: or a spooky ghost story on television, you really have
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to dig deeper. You have to understand the deep structural
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and often incredibly uncomfortable history of the spaces we occupy.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Because architecture isn't just brick and mortar. You know, it
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: is a physical record of how a society treats its people.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: It truly holds the memory of our priorities.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So I want to leave you with one final
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: thought to mull over today. We started by talking about
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: how we expect buildings to just be passive containers. Well,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: if walls could actually talk, we would probably cover our ears.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: We definitely would.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: But what if the Cecil Hotel isn't actually a cursed building?
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: What if the true death hotel was never haunted by
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: a single spirit at all, but was simply a mirror
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: reflecting a century of society's willingness to look the exact
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: other way when vulnerable people are in pain? Next time
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: you walk past an old building in your city, ask yourself,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: what is the foundation really built on?
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: That is a very powerful question to leave on.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us on this custom
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: tailored deep dive. We will be back next time with
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: another stack of sources and another hidden history to uncover.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Take care.