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Title details for Gone at Midnight by Jake Anderson - Available

Gone at Midnight

The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam

by Jake Anderson
Erik Bloomquist
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after she checked into downtown LA's Cecil Hotel-a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More than a week later, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa's nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms. The only apparent clue was a disturbing surveillance video of Elisa, uploaded to YouTube in hopes of public assistance. As the eerie elevator video went viral, so did the questions of its tens of millions of viewers. Was Elisa's death caused by murder, suicide, or paranormal activity? Was it connected to the Cecil's sinister reputation? And in that video, what accounted for Elisa's strange behavior? With the help of web sleuths and investigators from around the world, journalist Jake Anderson set out to uncover the facts behind a death that had become a macabre internet meme. In Gone at Midnight, Anderson chronicles eye-opening discoveries about who Elisa Lam really was and what-or whom-she was running from, and presents shocking new evidence that may re-open one of the most chilling and obsessively followed true crime cases of the century.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 25, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781684577552
      • File size: 346442 KB
      • Duration: 12:01:45

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 27, 2020
      Investigative journalist Anderson looks into the case of 21-year-old Elisa Lam, a student diagnosed as bipolar who vanished from L.A.’s seedy Cecil Hotel one day in 2013, in this outstanding debut. As days went by, residents of the hotel began to complain about the water quality and pressure. Finally, a maintenance worker went to the roof to check the hotel’s cisterns, only to find Lam’s naked, dead body floating in one of them. The coroner ruled her death an accident by drowning with bipolar disorder a contributing factor. But Anderson found too many inconsistencies in the case, and the internet went wild with conspiracy theories. Lam was no stranger to the blogging world, having a Tumblr account where she documented her mental health problems and where her scheduled updates appeared for months after her death. That Anderson’s obsession with the case led him to examine his own mental health issues adds depth. He ponders whether it was suicide or a psychotic breakdown—or something more sinister that killed Lam. Anderson also vividly details the dark delusions he suffered while making a documentary at the Cecil Hotel. What really happened to Lam may never be known, but true crime buffs won’t want to miss this gripping search for the truth.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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