Welcome back to Spooky L.A., a series where we shine a flashlight on some hair raising history and haunts across Los Angeles. Today, Esotouric L.A.’s Kim Cooper walks us through the Hotel Cecil in downtown L.A.
Once intended as a luxury stay for business travelers, the hotel has a dark and troubling history that includes serial killers and suspicious deaths spanning nearly 100 years.
When Hotel Cecil took a turn for the worse
The Hotel Cecil was built in the 1920s with the intent of providing accommodations for traveling business people. But the hotel succumbed to the Great Depression and by the 1930s, it was a known site for many suicides for people from all walks of life .
By the 1960s, Cooper said Hotel Cecil experienced a decline like many other buildings in downtown. She said the hotel went from being travel friendly to hosting long term residencies.
“In the 1960s, people who were getting displaced from Bunker Hill chose to live in Hotel Cecil because it was a large, well run hotel,” said Cooper.