Inspiration by Netflix
About a year ago, on a lazy Friday night, I was flipping through my options on Netflix, looking for a new show to binge-watch. I’m a true-crime addict, so a trending documentary about the mysterious disappearance of a young woman from a hotel in Los Angeles caught my eye. The documentary was called, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, and by the end of the first episode, I was hooked.
The documentary detailed the tragic story of Elisa Lam, a young Canadian tourist who ventured out on her own for the first time in 2013 to travel to California. While in Los Angeles, she lodged at a trendy youth hostel called Stay on Main, which occupied several floors of another hotel, The Cecil Hotel. The two entities were in the same building and shared a common elevator. Originally constructed in 1924, the Cecil was an old building with a sordid past. Due to its proximity to skid row, the hotel often attracted a less-than-stellar clientele. Even serial killers had been known to stay there. During the 1980s, drug use and prostitution ran rampant by occupants of the Cecil. Previous guests had been threatened, beaten, raped, and murdered behind its walls. Several suicides at the Cecil have also been documented.
After three days in L.A., Elisa Lam disappeared from the hotel without a trace. Her personal belongings remained in her hotel room. The only clue to her disappearance was several seconds of creepy footage from a camera mounted inside the elevator, which showed Elisa acting erratically and appearing to hide from someone. Her naked body was eventually found floating in one of the hotel’s rooftop water tanks.
One compelling aspect of the documentary was the number of plausible theories about what happened to Elisa. It was never quite clear if her tragic end was caused by an external force, a trusted person within the hotel, or even an internal struggle within herself. The hotel’s sordid history was intriguing, and many wondered if the building was somehow cursed. A few of the amateur sleuths featured in the documentary believed that the building embodied the pain and suffering of so many people who had stayed there previously and that the building’s negative energy somehow transferred to current guests. Alternatively, others believed it was likely that a vagrant from skid row had infiltrated the hotel and attacked the young woman. Others thought only someone from within the hotel staff could pull off a disappearance and murder without leaving any evidence behind. Still, another theory was that Elisa had willingly harmed herself.
The Girl Before Me
As I watched the documentary, I was shocked that a woman could disappear from a busy hotel in the middle of a major city without anyone seeing something suspicious. While glued to my screen, I had tons of theories about what had happened to Elisa Lam, and it turned out that all of them were wrong. Mostly because I could not get the story of Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel out of my head, I sat down to write my own story about a missing woman, this time an Australian woman who was temporarily living in Chicago. The Girl Before Me is the harrowing tale of Rachel, a woman with a young daughter who begins a new life in a downtown apartment after escaping an abusive marriage. But on her move-in day, Rachel intercepts an ominous letter intended for the previous tenant and realizes the woman who previously lived in the apartment has gone missing, or worse. Rachel digs for information but discovers that no one in the building saw the previous tenant move out. Now Rachel senses something terrible has happened and that she may be the next victim.
Much like the story of the Cecil Hotel, my novel had to be set in a building with a sense of history and a feeling of “if only these walls could talk.” I created the fictional 1920s midrise apartment building in my story to further the unease surrounding the missing woman. The creaky elevator, thin walls, and shadowy storage cages in the basement contributed to the unsettling atmosphere.
I lived in downtown Chicago for nearly ten years of my life. I remembered what it felt like being a young woman who moved to a big city for the first time. It had been my first experience living alone, without roommates, and I’d initially enjoyed the freedom of having my own space. But I also recalled how difficult it was to fall asleep those first few nights in the old apartment building. My ears weren’t used to the creaky floors and hissing pipes. It had been impossible to ignore the sirens frequently blaring in the distance and boisterous late-night conversations from people outside. Even then, the constant noises made me think that it would be difficult to know if someone else was inside my apartment.
While writing The Girl Before Me, I embraced the idea from the Cecil Hotel documentary of multiple threats—both internal and external–to my main character. And just as I did when I moved to the city, Rachel hears unfamiliar noises at night. Who is creeping around Rachel’s apartment as she sleeps? Another tenant in the building? Or could it be her ex-husband? Or someone from the private school where her daughter has been awarded a scholarship? Or maybe Rachel is paranoid and imagining the whole thing.
It is important to note that my novel’s circumstances and ending are much different from the tragic fate that met Elisa Lam. Elisa’s story ultimately hinged on mental illness, while my book does not. I did not intend to copy the documentary but to draw inspiration from it. Ultimately, I wrote a creepy tale featuring fictional characters and plenty of plot twists. Hopefully, The Girl Before Me pulls readers into the mysterious disappearance of a young woman, just as the true-crime documentary about Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel did to me.
The Girl Before Me will be published by Bookouture on April 29, 2022.
www.LauraWolfeBooks.com
Laura Wolfe’s fascination with things that go bump in the night probably stems from having watched too many scary movies when she was younger. She is an active member of multiple writing groups, including Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. Laura enjoys living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband, son, and daughter. She can often be found hiking through local nature trails, eating vegetarian food, or doting on her rescue dog.
