The Cecil Hotel is a 15-floor, 700 room hotel located in Downtown LA. It is located close to "skid row", which is an area of downtown LA that has been overtaken by homeless encampments and has a reputation for violence and heavy drug use. Over the years skid row has grown closer and closer to the Cecil, causing more violence and illegal activity to creep into the hotel itself.

Over the years the hotel has seen more than a dozen suicides of various guests. In 1964, a longtime Cecil resident named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood was found brutally murdered in her room and her murderer was never brought to justice. Sometime in the 1980s, serial killer Richard Ramirez aka "The Night Stalker" may have stayed at the hotel for a few weeks, during which time it's likely he committed at least one murder.

The most famous and mysterious case to come from within the Cecil Hotel happened more recently, when in 2013 Canadian student Elisa Lam seemed to disappear into thin air from the hotel. She was last seen by hotel security cameras in an elevator acting as if she was being followed by someone. Although she was reported missing by her family soon thereafter, there was no sign of Elisa for more than 2 weeks. After other guests complained of poor tasting water coming from the tap, a maintenance worker went to check on the water tanks on the roof of the hotel and discovered Elisa's naked body inside a tank.

Although there has been wild speculation as to whether Elisa was murdered, investigators have concluded that Elisa had stopped taking her medication for her bi-polar disorder and had a psychiatric episode in which she climbed into the water tank but was then unable to get back out.