The Real-Life Inspirations Behind American Horror Story: Hotel
American Horror Story often draws inspiration from real-life events, and this might be more true than ever for Hotel, which introduced Evan Peters' horrific take on serial killer H.H. Holmes last week.
Executive producer Ryan Murphy revealed at the Television Critics Association summer press tour that the idea for Hotel was inspired by Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Vancouver woman who was found dead in February 2013.
Lam was staying at the notorious Cecil Hotel, a hotel known for its guests' mysterious deaths and suicides, when she disappeared on Jan. 31.
During the investigation, police released a surveillance video of Lam acting bizarre in one of the hotel's elevators.
The four-minute tape featured Lam waving her arms around, pressing all the buttons and hiding in the corner as though she were being pursued.
The Hotel Cortez has beautifully ornate elevator cars, and we're betting their presence will factor into at least one gruesome murder this season.
In the 1980s, the Cecil was home to Richard Ramirez, a serial killer known as the Night Stalker, whose childhood was shaped by violence.
Ramirez's victims ranged from 9 to 83 years old and he killed using a variety of weapons, including a machete, a hammer, a carving knife and a gun.
Often dubbed "America's First Serial Killer," H.H. Holmes designed and built a hotel during the 1983 Chicago World's Fair specifically to aid in and conceal his murders.
The labyrinthine three-story, block-long hotel was dubbed The Castle by locals and featured more than 100 windowless rooms, doorways to nowhere, secret chutes, soundproof rooms fitted with gas lines that allowed Holmes to asphyxiate guests and a bank vault where he would leave certain victims to suffocate.
In order to conceal his murderous design, Holmes was constantly hiring and firing construction workers so no one man would have a full picture of the building.
Many of Holmes' victims were his employees, whom wer