As the documentary shows, even before Elisa’s visit in 2013, the Cecil Hotel was trying to clean up its image, which had taken quite a turn from its opulent beginnings. The grand lobby may have remained, but as the area surrounding it became more downtrodden, so too, did Cecil. The ’80s and ’90s, in particular, seemed an especially dark period for the Cecil, with two serial killers — Night Stalker Richard Ramirez and Austria’s Jack Unterweger — staying for a time. In a 2007 effort to clean up the hotel’s reputation, Marie Claire reports new ownership essentially split the property in two, with one half remaining the Cecil Hotel and serving as shelter for long-term residents and the other being rebranded as Stay On Main, a boutique hotel for visitors. 

Stay On Main is what Elisa would have booked for her West Coast trip from her home in Vancouver, B.C. We don’t know if she was aware of the hotel’s seedy reputation or even that the two properties shared elevators, a sometimes dicey situation for a place blocks from Skid Row. It was in one of these elevators that Elisa’s disturbing video was captured, leading amateur investigators to seek it out. The Netflix doc shows curious visitors testing the elevator’s buttons (as Elisa did in the video) and trying to gain access to the roof. If you’re tempted too, you should know that you likely won’t find much evidence of the place Elisa stayed in 2013.