My Final Day in Cecil Hotel

It’s been three years since I was found floating inside Cecil’s Hotel water tank.

I was a student at the University of British Columbia. What got me into Cecil Hotel was what I called my “West Coast Tour”. I was planning to visit several cities but I never made it.

When I first got to Cecil Hotel – on January 28th – I was initially assigned into a shared room on the fifth floor. Strangely, guests began complaining about me. They claimed I was behaving oddly so I was later moved into a room of my own.

I went missing on January 31st, I was supposed to check out and leave for Santa Cruz. I had been calling my parents every day since I left Columbia but when I didn’t do it that day, they called the hotel to see if something was wrong. Hotel staff had not seen me that day and Katie Orphan – a very kind bookstore manager – was the only person who claimed saw me that day.

I had read about the Cecil’s Hotel before checking-in. Its halls and rooms had witnessed suicides, homicides and paranormal activity through its history. Even three serial killers – Richard Ramirez, Jack Unterweger and the “Night Stalker” – had been guests in the hotel.

As I entered, I could feel the energy running around the halls and rooms. However, I decided to stay positive, my goal was to move on to another destination.

You don’t need to be an expert to know that hotels’ tanks are locked on the rooftop and that to get to them you need to climb some stairs. Climbing into the water tank, getting naked and drowning myself in a water tank never crossed my mind when I first got there. However, since I got into the Hotel, I felt a strange presence following me everywhere.

I tried to run away from this energy which was always around me. I felt someone was watching me all the time. The day I went missing I continued to sense this presence around me. Suddenly, on February 1st, while I was in the hotel’s elevator, jumping into the water tank didn’t sound so absurd. So I just made my way through the locked door, got naked, climbed the stairs to the water tank and jumped into it.

It was until that moment I realized what I had done but it was too late. It took me four minutes to lose consciousness. In the meantime, I experienced what I would say is the most maddening and painful moment a human being can go through.

I did not want to kill myself, my only desire was to travel across USA’s West Coast. I guess that was never meant to be; one cannot simply escape what is already written.