Ryan Murphy's dark, demented horror TV series "American Horror Story" has dipped into real-life myths and legends to raise the show's spook factor.
Season five of the show, titled "American Horror Story: Hotel," premiered last week, which takes place in the hauntingly beautiful Hotel Cortez. Take a look into the storied past of The Cecil Hotel (now known as Stay On Main), the hotel that inspired Hotel Cortez, as reported by the LAist.
1) A 28-year-old man committed suicide at the hotel in June 2015
An unidentified man jumped to his death from the Cecil Hotel and was pronounced dead outside of the building, the Los Angeles Times reported. One of the hotel's assistant managers confirmed that the man was not a guest of the hotel, but it's not the first time that someone had committed suicide on the premises.
Neighbors told the LA Times that they referred to the Cecil as "The Suicide" because of the amount of people who have taken their own lives in the hotel.
2) The disappearance and death of Elisa Lam in January 2013
Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old tourist from Vancouver, checked into the Cecil Hotel in January of 2013, local paper the Laist reported. Her family reported her missing on Jan. 31 after they hadn't heard from her for several days, and after a search of the hotel, police couldn't find her. Lam's body was found on Feb. 19 by a hotel employee. Lam was found face down, floating inside one of the four water tanks on the hotel's roof. Surveillance footage from the night she disappeared showed Lam entering the hotel elevator.
See the video footage of Lam before her disappearance below.
3) Serial killer Jack Unterweger stayed there in 1991
Australian journalist Jack Unterweger checked into the Cecil Hotel in 1991, but his first murder victim was German 18-year-old Margret Schafer, whom Unterweger strangled with her own bra in December 1974, according to the Independent.
After his release from jail in 1990 for her murder, Unterweger fled to Los Angeles as a journalist in 1991, and killed three women he reportedly met during his stay at the hotel. They were murdered in the same way he killed Schafer, by being strangled with their bras. He was arrested in February 1992, and would later hang himself in his prison cell in Austria.
4) Serial killer and rapist Richard Ramirez stayed there in 1985
Known as the "Night Stalker," Ramirez was a notorious murderer and by his 29th birthday, he was sentenced to death after being convicted for 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries, according to CNN. He passed away in 2013 of natural causes, at 53, while waiting on death row.
Ramirez committed his 13 murders while staying at the Cecil Hotel in 1985, L.A. tour guide Richard Schave told CNN. He would return to his room at the top floor of the hotel before "just dumping his bloody clothes in the dumpster at the end of his evening and going in the back entrance."
5) The unsolved murder of "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood in 1964
"Pigeon Goldie" Osgood was a bird lady who would feed pigeons at the Pershing Square, a public park in Downtown L.A., according to L.A. Observed. She was found in her room at the Cecil, raped and strangled and her room had been ransacked. Authorities never convicted anyone for her murder.
