Elisa Lam disappears while traveling alone, leaving behind a macabre tumblr and a haunting surveillance video from the most haunted hotel in America.

 

The book opens explaining it “is a cross-pollination of true-crime and psychological memoir” but I would argue that a healthy dose of conspiracy theory and paranormal activity is also involved. Jake Anderson seeks to destigmatize mental health and humanize the subject of his inquiry, Elisa Lam, while investigating everything from law enforcement injustice to the damage websleuths do to due process.

 

The investigation into the workings of the LAPD is disappointing as usual when Anderson is able to draw parallels between Elisa and The Black Dahlia. It’s obvious many entities had to come together in order for this event to remain unsolved. The book in its entirety is a head-trip. I often found his information hard to accept given his honesty about his own struggles with mental health and substances during his time writing it but that in itself highlights one of his points about Lam’s state of mind and her demise.

 

I really felt for Elisa, as happens with many unexplained missing women, she was quickly dehumanized by the media and amateur investigators in their attempt to solve the unsolvable. The human tendency to scratch an itch until it’s resolved forcing them into every corner of her life only to regurgitate it back into forums to start the process over again.

 

Honestly for me, the real star of this show was The Cecil hotel, of American Horror Story and housing multiple serial killers fame. The owners recently secured Historical Landmark status insuring it cannot be burned right to the ground as it justly deserves. I don’t know about the paranormal shenanigans going on in this case but I believe energy collects and this place is bad news. It works its weird voodoo on Anderson as he investigates, shining a light on the vulnerability of the mind and its ability to override its host.

 

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