Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel

The Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles has a reputation for strange and spooky happenings. It's also the site of many infamous crimes, including the murder of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia.

Netflix's Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel dives into that mystery and more. It's part true crime, part ghost story.

How to watch

Ghost Adventures is a paranormal reality show in which Zak Bagans and his crew visit haunted destinations around the world. In each episode, they acquaint themselves with the location; interview locals about alleged ghosts; and then conduct a dusk-to-dawn “lockdown” to obtain physical evidence of the paranormal.

Season 25 of the show is airing on Travel Channel and Discovery+ right now. And there are also two Ghost Adventures spin-off shows — "Ghost Hunters: House Calls" and the recent special "Ghost Adventures: Horror at Joe Exotic's Zoo."

There are a few different ways to watch Ghost Adventures without cable, but the best option is through Discovery+. The service costs $4.99 per month, and it's a good deal for cord cutters looking to get the latest episodes of the show. If you sign up for a free trial, you can watch new episodes of Ghost Adventures online for a week.

Another great option is fuboTV, which is available on a variety of streaming devices. The service is also affordable and offers an on-demand library. You can use mobile devices, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast, and computers to watch.

The only drawback of this service is that you can't get a cloud-based DVR with it. However, you can add one for a small fee.

Philo is a new streaming service that focuses on a few specific channels at a relatively affordable price. For $16, you can stream a lot of live TV, and the on-demand library is quite impressive.

You can watch Ghost Adventures with Philo on mobile devices, Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, and other streaming devices. Read our review to learn more about this service, and sign up for a free trial to try it out.

Sling TV is another streaming option that costs just $25 a month for both Sling Orange and Sling Blue. Both packages feature over 30 channels, including Travel Channel. You can also add channel bundles for a small fee, and you can watch Sling on a variety of devices.

DIRECTV NOW is another great choice for streaming Ghost Adventures. It works with a wide variety of devices, and it's available for a free weeklong trial. If you don't like it, you can cancel before the trial is over.

Streaming options

The once-grand Cecil Hotel grows in infamy when young Canadian student Elisa Lam vanishes during a visit to the Downtown Los Angeles hotel. With footage of Lam in an elevator triggering a viral hunt, the case takes on a sinister gloom that's hard to ignore.

In a case that's reminiscent of the Japanese horror classic Dark Water, Lam's death remains eerily eerily eerily unsolved. It's the perfect set-up for a chilling true crime documentary, and that's what Netflix has delivered with its latest true crime offering, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.

Directed by Joe Berlinger — who was also responsible for Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost — the series centers on Lam’s disappearance and the various theories that have surfaced surrounding her death. Lam was visiting from Canada when she mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a handful of belongings.

Luckily, police had footage of her in the elevator and the hotel’s surveillance camera, which gave them the lead they needed to track down her. But Lam’s strange behavior triggered an endless round of internet conspiracy theories.

The most obvious and most ludicrous claim was that Lam died in the hotel’s water tank, which spawned an entire web of baseless speculation. One YouTuber accused Pablo “Morbid” Vergara, a death metal singer, of murdering her and dumping her body in the tank.

This is an incredibly ham-handed approach to creating drama, and it's one that's borderline offensive. As a result, it's not only distracting but downright jarring to watch.

What's more, the sleuths aren't just making baseless claims; they're actively derailing the investigation and hurting people along the way. In fact, this is the most dangerous part of the whole show.

These sleuths aren't even necessarily amateurs; several have a background in the film industry. It's a scary thing when these people assume expertise without checking for credibility, and Cecil Hotel is a prime example of how these sleuths can go awry.

The sleuths in this episode are particularly erratic, especially in the first half of the episode when they're trawling through Elisa Lam's Tumblr blog and dissecting it without any form of criticism. But when they're also involved in a YouTube video of a death metal singer who was visiting the hotel, it becomes more than a little obnoxious to see them treated so badly.

Availability

If you love the ghost-TV genre, then you’re going to want to watch Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel. Streaming on the new Discovery+ service, this two-hour special is all about one of the most notorious haunted hotels in the world: the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles.

The hotel has been known for its dark history of multiple suicides, murders and devil worshiping over the years. It’s also inspired a season of American Horror Story, as well as several books and movies. But the infamous hotel is most famous for the death of 21-year-old college student Elisa Lam, who showed strange behavior in an elevator video before she was killed in 2013.

So when it came time for Bagans and his team to investigate the Cecil Hotel, it wasn’t too surprising that they got drawn to this particular haunted landmark. But the fact that Lam died in the hotel and was found floating in a water tank made it even more enticing to get a closer look at the place.

But it wasn’t until they were investigating in the room where serial killer Jack Unterweger stayed that Bagans experienced his most paranormal moment yet. He claims that he saw the bathroom faucet turn on by itself, and that it was a spooky experience that he can’t explain.

Whether you’re a fan of ghost-TV or not, this episode will definitely creep you out. For example, there are a lot of things happening that don’t make sense at all, like scratches and disembodied voices.

In addition, Bagans is sure that there’s something supernatural about the hotel itself. He explains that it’s been known for its dark history and has been linked to several people, including Richard Ramirez, who killed a number of people. He says that his belief is that the satanic rituals and evil residue of Ramirez’s satanic worshiping added to the malevolent energies of the hotel.

The Ghost Adventures crew has been exploring haunted locations around the world for a decade, and they’re always up for an investigation of some sort. They interview locals to learn about the alleged ghostly activities and then hold a dusk-to-dawn “lockdown” in an effort to get physical evidence of the paranormal.

Ratings

The Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures is one of the network’s longest-running and most popular shows. Founded by Zak Bagans, the show focuses on finding real-life haunted houses and capturing evidence of spirits on film.

The show stars Bagans and his team, including Aaron Goodwin and Jay Wasley, as they tour haunted locations in America and abroad. The crew interviews locals about alleged paranormal activity before entering the buildings and going face-to-face with the spirit world.

Season two kicks off with a trip to Preston Castle in Lone, California, which was originally a reform school that housed incarcerated juveniles. Its dark history and murder of a young housekeeper add to the spooky atmosphere.

During their investigation, they heard a disembodied scream and witnessed a shadowy figure walking down the hallway. They also captured a series of apparitions, such as a large floating orb and a tall figure chasing them through the courtyard.

Another spooky spot the crew visited was Yuma Territorial Prison, a former jail in Arizona that has been rumored to have some of the world’s most spooky ghosts. The team encountered a number of EVPs (electric voice phenemona) throughout the episode, with one recording a clear, female apparition telling them to “get out of here.”

Finally, the Ghost Adventures crew made their way to the infamous El Rancho Hotel in Las Vegas. They heard reports of employees quitting en masse due to paranormal activity, and it was clear the hotel was no stranger to the supernatural. Upon their arrival, the crew noticed some very spooky evidence, such as a shadowy head poking its head out of a door frame and a water faucet that turned on by itself.

It is important to note that ghost hunting can be dangerous, especially if you aren’t a certified ghost hunter. Always check with the owner of a property before you begin your research and make sure you have written consent to enter the building.

Discovery+ recently signed a three-year deal with Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans, committing to produce over 100 hours of supernatural and horror content for the streaming platform. Bagans will star in new seasons of Ghost Adventures, semi-scripted series The Haunted Museum and a number of specials. He is also currently working on a handful of untitled creative projects for the platform.