Is AHS: Hotel Inspired by the Creepy History of the Cecil Hotel?

During a panel at the Television Critics’ Association press tour, American Horror Story co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk revealed new information about Hotel, the horror anthology’s upcoming fifth season.

The story will take place in downtown Los Angeles, at the fictional Hotel Cortez. Via EW, Murphy described the real-life inspiration for the new season. “There was a surveillance video that went around two years ago that showed a girl getting into an elevator in a hotel that was said to be haunted and she was never seen again,” he said. If that sounds familiar, Murphy may have been alluding to the story of the Elisa Lam, the 21-year-old Canadian woman whose dead body was found in a water tank at downtown L.A.’s Cecil Hotel in 2013.

During the investigation, a hotel surveillance video was released of Lam acting erratically in an elevator. The disturbingly spooky clip raised a lot of questions about what happened to Lam, though her death was later ruled accidental.

The Cecil was also the residence of two serial killers, Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger. Ramirez, also known as the Nightstalker, lived at the Cecil during his killing spree of 13 women in 1984-1985. Unterweger, a journalist and copycat of Ramirez, murdered three prostitutes during his stay at the Cecil in 1991. The hotel also had a reputation as a place for suicide. With all of this frightening history, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the Cecil was indeed the inspiration for AHS: Hotel.