Los Angeles has always been a city defined by its glitter and spectacle, the undisputed capital of entertainment since the rise of Hollywood. A land of sun-drenched hills, recording studios, and celebrity mansions, yet also one of the places that best captures the duality of the modern world. For something to shine this brightly, there has to be darkness behind it. Los Angeles has no shortage of it.
Join us for a tour of three of the most chilling places in Los Angeles, a city used to basking in its own glow.
This is the underside of all that manufactured movie magic — after all, every bright light casts a shadow.
The Mysterious Cecil Hotel
If you go to 640 S. Main St. today looking for the Cecil Hotel, you may be surprised by what you find.
Since 2021, the legendary building has operated as supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness — a hopeful turn after the sinister legacy it built up over nearly a century. The Cecil Hotel is widely known as the city’s “death hotel,” a reputation earned through a staggering string of tragedies, mysteries, and acts of violence within its walls.
The hotel opened in the 1920s as lodging for businessmen traveling from across the country. Then the 1929 crash ruined millions of people financially, and the hotel’s troubles began to pile up.
Suicides. Violent crimes in the rooms. Unsolved murders. According to local lore, even the infamous Black Dahlia was seen at the hotel bar having a drink in the days before her murder, though the story has never been confirmed. As the surrounding Skid Row neighborhood declined, the Cecil went down with it — and its dark reputation only deepened.
The 2013 case of Elisa Lam became the grim culmination of it all. The young Canadian woman was found dead in the hotel’s rooftop water tank.
Security footage was reviewed. Access to the rooftop was tested and retested. Investigators searched for an explanation that made sense. The coroner ultimately ruled her death an accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant contributing factor — yet the footage and the unanswered questions about how she reached the tank have kept the case alive in the public imagination.
Her story became the Cecil’s final dark chapter — a building that is now quietly trying to leave its macabre past behind.
Museum of Death
Just as Los Angeles honors its stars along the Walk of Fame, death has its own shrine here, too.
In the heart of Hollywood sits the Museum of Death, a place devoted entirely to death in its most disturbing forms.
The city has, grimly enough, produced some of history’s most notorious serial killers, and this museum documents the most infamous crimes in L.A. history with unflinching thoroughness. It is ground zero for what has come to be called dark tourism.
It is not, however, a place for everyone. The museum houses actual human remains — body parts preserved by professional taxidermists and put on display in urns. There is also an extensive collection of weapons, some of which were used in real crimes. Among the museum’s best-known artifacts are items connected to the mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult.
Moving through this museum means confronting human depravity in its most literal form — evil made tangible, catalogued, and placed behind glass.
The building itself has a gentler past. Before it became a museum, it served as a recording studio where artists including Pink Floyd cut records.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Still in Hollywood, there is a small green sanctuary worth seeking out for an entirely different kind of experience. The Hollywood Forever Cemetery has become one of the city’s most visited places. Some come to find the graves of celebrated actors and artists; others hope to encounter the famous ghost known as the “Lady of the Lake.”
Legend holds that the spirit of Virginia Rappe — whose death sparked one of the biggest scandals of the silent film era — wanders the grounds near the lake at the cemetery’s center.
A portion of the original cemetery grounds was sold to Paramount Pictures, which built a vast studio complex on the land. Over the years, crew members working at those studios have reported strange sounds and unexplained presences — claims that remain unverified and may well double as free publicity for the productions filmed there.
Beyond the ghost stories, Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a genuinely beautiful place to spend an afternoon. On a clear day, the grounds are peaceful and luminous, and the headstones read like a syllabus of American cultural history — from Dee Dee Ramone to the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille.
For those who prefer their history after dark, the cemetery also offers guided night tours.
