DARK WEB: The Elevator Game

First found on Korean and Japanese forums around 2011, the Elevator Game was said to be a paranormal ritual game that could transport you to alternate dimensions. That if you followed a series of explicit instructions, traveling to different floors in a particular order, the doors would open to a world similar to our own, yet very different… The problem is, if you don’t follow the rules correctly, you may be trapped there forever.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  En 1905, Albert Einstein primero propuso su teoría de la relatividad. Una parte de la idea era que nosotros, como humanos, no solo experimentamos el mundo en tres dimensiones: altura, longitud y anchura. También experimentamos una cuarta dimensión: el espacio-tiempo. Cuando se trataba de entender el mundo alrededor de nosotros, esto fue un cambio de juego. De repente, las cosas como el viaje en el tiempo parecían completamente posibles. Pero también puso en pie el suelo para otra probabilidad científica: los burbujas. O mejor, puertos a otros lugares en el espacio y el tiempo, tal vez incluso dimensiones alternativas. La clave era cómo acceder a ellos.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Ahora, no soy un fisicista, así que no tengo idea de lo que necesitaría construir una máquina como esta. Pero si la Internet se cree, tal vez no necesitemos alguna tecnología nueva. Todo lo que necesitas es un buen antiguo elevador, un edificio de 10 pisos y un montón de coraje. Las rumores comenzaron en Corea o tal vez Japón en 2011, que si seguías una serie de pasos, el elevador abriría a otro mundo, uno que parecía nuestro, pero se sentía muy diferente. Mientras algunos dicen que no es más que un juego de ritual paranormal, aquellos que lo han jugado afirman que en realidad funciona.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Y si no te atreves, es posible que nunca llegues a casa. Soy Ashley Flowers, y hoy en So Supernatural, estamos jugando al juego del elevador.

• 2:10Yvette Gentile?

  Welcome back to another episode of So Supernatural. I'm Yvette Gentile.

• 2:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecoraro. And today's topic is a true, modern-day urban legend. One that's taken paranormal sights by storm. The Elevator Game. It's kind of like Bloody Mary or Candyman, except it's a slightly higher-tech version that involves a detailed set of instructions. And if you follow them correctly, you can take an elevator to another world known as the Shadow Side.

• 2:44Yvette Gentile?

  So basically, it's a paranormal ritual game that can transform an ordinary elevator into, I don't know, a sort of a vehicle, right? One that can travel through space and time, crossing over into alternate universes. At least, that's what the posts say.

• 3:02Rasha Pecoraro?

  We don't know who wrote the rules down, or when they did it. But the very first directions on how to play the Elevator Game began circulating online around 2011 or so. Though, one internet sleuth says there's a post about the game as early as 2008. All the earliest versions were written in either Korean or Japanese. Skoshi nihongo desuka. "I only speak a little Japanese", is basically what I just said. But anyway. That means the game might have originated in either Korea or Japan. But no one knows for sure. So it started off as just a few odd posts here and there. But eventually, it was showing up in major horror-themed blogs and discussion boards.

• 3:47Rasha Pecoraro?

  Including, in English. Then people started going into these forums to say that they had played it for themselves. And it was terrifying.

• 3:58Yvette Gentile?

  As for what the game entails, well, there are a few different versions of the rules, but the gist is always pretty much the same. To play, you must be in a building with at least 10 floors, and of course, an elevator. And you have to play alone, or in some versions of the rules, with a maximum of one other person. You and your buddy need to be the only people in the elevator. If anyone gets on or off at any point in the game, you have to quit immediately. As in, you gotta go straight back to the lobby, walk out of the building, and don't look back. If you don't follow those rules, awful things will happen.

• 4:42Yvette Gentile?

  Except, nobody's entirely clear on what those bad things are. But supposedly, that's because the people who break the rules never return. Allegedly, they're trapped in the other universe forever. As for what's in that universe, there's only one way to find out. You have to play for yourself. Okay, here are the rules. You start on the ground floor, then take the elevator up to the fourth floor. When you get there, don't get out. Instead, you push the button for the second floor. And once you get to the second floor, again, do not get out.

• 5:27Yvette Gentile?

  Instead, hit the button for the sixth, and when the doors open, the same rules apply. Stay on and hit the button for the second. When you get there, same thing, but hit the button for the 10th. And then when you arrive, head for the fifth. You have to go in this exact order. Otherwise, they say the game won't work.

• 5:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  When you get to the fifth floor, though, something weird will happen. Some say that's when a woman gets into the elevator with you. Now, I know we just said the game is over if any other person joins you, but this woman is the exception because she's not human. No one's entirely sure what she is, but everyone agrees she's dangerous. In fact, you shouldn't even acknowledge her. Do not talk to her. Don't even look at her. If you do, she can trap you in that other universe for eternity.

• 6:31Yvette Gentile?

  Which is especially scary because this woman will supposedly try and trick you into chatting with her. She might ask you where you're headed or what you're doing there, but you should never, ever answer. Not if you want to make it home alive.

• 6:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  Instead, you should stay silent and keep the game going by pushing the button to the first floor. If you've played exactly right, however, the elevator will appear to ascend to the 10th floor. But this time, when the doors open, you'll be in another world.

• 7:09Yvette Gentile?

  It might look like you're in the same building, but if you pay close attention, you'll see signs that you are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

• 7:19Rasha Pecoraro?

  For example, you might notice that the floor seems completely empty. Other than you and your companion, of course, no one ever encounters other people there, except for that woman from the fifth floor. In fact, if you step off the elevator on the 10th floor, she might keep trying to talk to you. All the rules say it's best to keep ignoring her, and that would be so hard for me. Once you step off the elevators and the doors close, she will eventually go away, but that doesn't mean your journey is over.

• 7:56Yvette Gentile?

  By the way, if you try to record footage on the 10th floor or even check your phone while you're there, you may find that your stuff doesn't work. Your battery might be dead, cameras won't turn on. And that's how you know you're in the shadow side.

• 8:14Rasha Pecoraro?

  Online posts calling another dimension or an alternate universe. But beyond that, no one seems to understand how this other world even works.

• 8:25Yvette Gentile?

  Some people have reported seeing a window there, though. And when they've looked out, they find a world with a dark, empty landscape. There are no other visible buildings or roads, just an eerie red cross glowing in the distance. And a lot of people have claimed to make it all the way to the shadow side just to panic and immediately want to go home. Like, can you blame them?

• 8:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  No, not at all. But going home is harder than you might think because the steps to return to our world are just as complicated as the ones you followed to get there. First of all, you need to use the exact same elevator that you used to get to the 10th floor, which is tricky because on the shadow side, space supposedly has a way of warping and shifting. You may only wander just a few steps away from the elevator when you get there. But when you try to go back, you find yourself walking for hours without ever getting closer to it.

• 9:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  Some visitors also say it's extremely easy to get lost and turned around in the shadow side.

• 9:37Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, but let's say you do make it back to the correct elevator. From there, the only way to return to our world is to visit particular floors in a particular order, right?

• 9:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  Right.

• 9:49Yvette Gentile?

  I mean, and some websites say you have to hit each floor in the same order you did on your way up. Otherwise, they say you have to go in reverse. I'm already confused again.

• 10:00Rasha Pecoraro?

  Same.

• 10:00Yvette Gentile?

  This is a lot. I even saw one that says you can go straight down to the first floor as long as you never actually stepped out of the elevator on the 10th. And the point is, nobody is in agreement on how to get back, which is frickin' terrifying because everyone says that if you don't do the ritual exactly right, you'll end up trapped on the shadow side.

• 10:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  And even if you do make it back, it's said that ghosts can follow you into our world, haunting you until you die.

• 10:41Rasha Pecoraro?

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• 11:21Rasha Pecoraro?

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• 12:01Yvette Gentile?

  After the elevator game began appearing online in 2011, there were plenty of people looking to try it out for themselves. And the stories, at least of those who made it back to reality, are just as chilling as you might expect. Listen to what allegedly happened to one Reddit user named Sammy. In 2018, Sammy posted that they played the elevator game in their own 11-story apartment building. Now Sammy didn't believe in the supernatural, and they really didn't expect anything to happen, right? But they followed all of the rules and did everything right. And nothing happened. Or, at least, that's what they thought at first.

• 12:45Yvette Gentile?

  But when they went to bed that night, they couldn't sleep. Same thing like the following night. And that's when they heard an animal-like shriek in the hall outside their apartment.

• 12:59Rasha Pecoraro?

  They opened the door and they saw a trail of wet, unfamiliar footsteps, leading from their front door all the way back to their elevator. And that was all it took for Sammy to become a believer in the elevator game. They were certain they'd opened up some gateway to another dimension. So, just like you and I would do, Raj. They burned some sage in their apartment and they slept with a crucifix under their pillow. I don't know if I'd do the crucifix, but I would definitely do this.

• 13:30Yvette Gentile?

  I would be wearing my cross around my neck.

• 13:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  You would, for certain. They even had a priest come and bless their house. And none of it helped. Sammy kept waking up night after night to find these same footprints in the hallway. Eventually, they got a new job and moved just to get away from whatever the heck was haunting them. Stories like that are enough to make me never, ever, ever want to mess with the elevator game. It seems like even if you do everything exactly right, you could still have to deal with some pretty freaky possibilities. For example, take what happened to a YouTube creator named Marlon Chan.

• 14:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  In 2020, he posted a video of his attempted journey to another world. In it, he follows those very detailed instructions that we laid out earlier, except he has two companions with him. Their names are Jonathan and Drew, and they're helping Marlon record. So at first, the game is uneventful until they get to the fifth floor, which is where the mysterious woman is supposed to join the players. Sure enough, on the fifth floor, two people step onto the elevator, one of whom is a woman. Now, none of the elevator game rules say that the woman is supposed to have a male companion.

• 14:56Rasha Pecoraro?

  So just to be safe, Marlon and his friends head down to the first floor and start the game over again. After a few more failed attempts, a security guard actually ends up kicking them out of the building. So they end up coming back another time. When they end up trying again, Marlon's buddy Jonathan takes the elevator ride alone.

• 15:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  And shockingly, a few really strange things do happen. Multiple times, Jonathan goes from the lobby to the fourth floor to the second, just like he's supposed to. Then, while he's on the second floor, he hits the button for the sixth. But instead of going to the sixth floor, the elevator descends back to the lobby. He can't help but notice that this happens three times in a row, which makes three sixes. And six, six, six isn't exactly a good omen.

• 15:52Yvette Gentile?

  Meanwhile, though, Jonathan is recording himself alone in the elevator, while Marlon and Drew wait in the lobby and film from their end. Inside the elevator, Jonathan shows that he's following all of the instructions to a T. He doesn't get interrupted, he doesn't miss the sixth floor again, and he doesn't see the woman on the fifth floor either. So, thinking he failed, Jonathan goes back to the lobby, and when the doors open, he sees his friends. And he tells them, "Y'all, it didn't work. He did everything right, but nothing happened." Except his friends are all like, "What are you talking about?"

• 16:34Yvette Gentile?

  You see, while they were waiting for Jonathan to finish playing the game, they saw the elevator doors open at one point, and Jonathan wasn't on board. When he makes it back, they ask him if he stepped off on one of the floors and sent the empty elevator back down. But he says, "No, he was on the elevator the entire time." They show him the footage of the empty elevator, and Jonathan still says, "This is frickin' impossible. He never stepped outside of it." His camera malfunctioned at one point during his trip, so he couldn't prove where he went. But, as we all know, right, talking about all the supernatural,

• 17:19Yvette Gentile?

  electronics don't seem to work in the shadow side. So maybe he did cross over to another dimension? And either he forgot about it, or didn't want to tell his friends about where he went.

• 17:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  Now, sure, the whole video totally could have been staged. Jonathan could have stepped off for a few minutes to freak out his friends, or to guarantee that the video, of course, would go viral on YouTube. There's a lot that could have happened here. But there's one story that the Elevator Game was attached to that I think is worth exploring in some depth. A story that made headlines all over the world. The mysterious death of Elisa Lam. But to fully understand how the Elevator Game played a role, we have to start at the top of Elisa's story and travel back to 2013.

• 18:13Yvette Gentile?

  That year, 21-year-old Elisa is looking for an adventure. Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Elisa decides to take a solo trip to California that January. The idea is for her to start in San Diego, head north to Los Angeles, and end the vacation in Santa Cruz before returning home. There's just one catch. Elisa, like a lot of people, is on a budget, and California is very expensive. Which is why on January 28th, she checks into a cheaper spot she found called the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. And we know a little something, something about the Cecil Hotel.

• 18:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  We do.

• 18:53Yvette Gentile?

  We actually did a show, I forget the year.

• 18:56Rasha Pecoraro?

  2019, I think, is when it came out.

• 18:58Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah, and the show was called Mission Declassified. And the director-producer.

• 19:05Rasha Pecoraro?

  And the host.

• 19:05Yvette Gentile?

  And the host. And his name was Christoph Putzel. And he said that we were originally supposed to film in the Cecil Hotel. And we were like, thank God, that is not happening. Because that is one of the last spots that Elizabeth Short, you know, AKA The Black Dahlia, was last spotted.

• 19:25Rasha Pecoraro?

  Allegedly.

• 19:25Yvette Gentile?

  Allegedly, yeah. So we were like, no.

• 19:29Rasha Pecoraro?

  Right.

• 19:30Yvette Gentile?

  Don't want that energy.

• 19:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  No. But he proceeded to tell us about a story we had never heard before. He told us about Elisa Lam on that day that we were filming the show. And both of us hadn't even heard about that. And we're so heartbroken about it.

• 19:47Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah, Elisa picked the Cecil Hotel because it was very cheap. But it isn't just cheap. It's a little rough and tumble, you know? Let's just be clear. It's been around for almost 100 years now, and to be fair, when it was built in 1924, it was pretty fancy and upscale. I mean, then the Great Depression hit and the Cecil just went downhill. Eventually, it became an affordable housing complex, home to many previously unhoused individuals. Historically, it's also known for playing host to a few serial killers, like Richard Ramirez and Jack Untoweger. The hotel is also in an area called Skid Row,

• 20:31Yvette Gentile?

  and it is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. So as you might imagine, it's not exactly the safest place for a young woman traveling alone, especially one who's not familiar with the city. And many think the hotel's location has something to do with what comes next. Because on February 1st, 2013, Elisa Lam goes missing. Her family notices right away, because she usually talks to them every single day. But that afternoon, they can't get a hold of her, so they called the police, who soon learned that Elisa never checked out of the Cecil Hotel.

• 21:14Yvette Gentile?

  Even though her plan had been to leave that day, February 1st, from there, the police launch a massive investigation. They talk to eyewitnesses and they pull all the security footage, hoping to build a timeline around Elisa's disappearance. And as far as they can tell, she was alive and well on the 31st. She went sightseeing, she visited a very well-known L.A. bookstore, chatted with the receptionist at the Cecil, and then the next day, it's like she just vanished. There's no signs of foul play in her room, no body, no ransom notes, nothing. All the police find is security camera footage that shows

• 21:57Yvette Gentile?

  Elisa walking around the Cecil on the day she went missing, January 31st. The video clip is about four minutes long.

• 22:06Rasha Pecoraro?

  So if you've seen this video clip, it's actually quite disturbing. The footage is from inside an empty elevator. The door swings open and that's when you see Alisa walking in. She leans towards the buttons and it looks like she's having a bit of a hard time reading them and needs to find the right one. But, instead of selecting her floor or the lobby, she hits four buttons in a row. Then she steps toward the back wall of the elevator, almost like she's making room for someone else to come inside with her. Only, no one else gets in. And you know how sometimes when you're rushing to catch an elevator, it shuts right in front of you?

• 22:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  You don't always have a whole lot of time to make it inside before the door closes? Well, in the security footage, the elevator doors do nothing for the first full two minutes, which is totally weird. And Alisa seems to get that too, because she pokes her head out the doors to look around. There's no one visible. Definitely not someone there holding the call button. So looking at the video, there's no obvious reason for it to be sitting there. But still, the elevator's not going anywhere. And that's when Alisa steps out of the elevator back into the hallway, but you can still see her on camera. She takes one step to the left, brings her feet together,

• 23:34Rasha Pecoraro?

  and takes another step back, and brings her feet together again. And then she repeats the move. Like if you watch this video, it's almost like she's dancing. And the whole time, the elevator is still just sitting there. It's not going to the next floor, the doors aren't closing. It's really freaky, y'all. And finally, Alisa gets back into the elevator and she hits a bunch more buttons, until the whole panel lights up. And then things just get even more chilling. Alyssa steps out of the elevator again and starts gesturing with her hands. It's hard to tell, but it almost looks like she's having a fully animated conversation with someone in the hall.

• 24:19Rasha Pecoraro?

  Except there's no one else on screen. Eventually, Alyssa wanders out of the frame altogether. This happens at about the 2 and 1/2 minute mark into the surveillance clip. For the final 90 seconds or so, the video just shows that empty elevator. The panel is still lit up with all of the floors Alyssa selected. The doors are still open. And it's still not moving. At least, not until the end of the 4-minute video, when the doors finally slide closed and the car moves. But Alyssa is no longer inside.

• 24:57Yvette Gentile?

  Now, the LAPD eventually releases the security footage of Alyssa, which ends up going viral. Because as people watch it, it reminds them of something else they've seen on the web: the elevator game. If you remember, the game first started appearing online in 2011. And soon, it was everywhere. Alyssa's disappearance happens in early 2013. And for some, that doesn't seem like a coincidence. Which is why online conspiracy theorists are quick to think, "Maybe Alyssa played the game on the night that she disappeared." And here's how they justify it. The Cecil Hotel has 15 floors.

• 25:42Yvette Gentile?

  The elevator game calls for a building with at least 10 to play, right? And when Alyssa hits a bunch of different buttons for a bunch of different floors, it's possible she was trying to follow the instructions. I mean, you're technically supposed to get to one floor before hitting the button for the next. But given how, as we've said before, how confusing and contradictory the instructions are...

• 26:08Yvette Gentile?

  It's not hard to imagine she could have gotten the details wrong.

• 26:11Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Yvette Gentile?

  And then there's the moment in the security footage when she seems to be talking to empty air, like she's moving her hands around like she's having a conversation with someone.

• 26:21Rasha Pecoraro?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:22Yvette Gentile?

  And some people wonder if Alisa was actually seeing someone who didn't appear on camera, maybe that mysterious woman who's said to appear on the fifth floor. But the strangest detail of all is the elevator itself. Again, Alisa kept hitting buttons and then stepping on and off the elevator, but the doors never shut and the elevator didn't move for four minutes.

• 26:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  It's a long time.

• 26:53Yvette Gentile?

  That's a long time. There had to be an explanation, and some people think it could be a supernatural one.

• 27:03Rasha Pecoraro?

  Which is why, in niche corners of the internet, rumors started flying. Maybe Alisa went missing playing the elevator game. But those theories get a lot more complicated when 20 days later, Alisa Lam is found in a place no one ever expected.

• 27:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  After Alisa Lam went missing on January 31st, 2013, there was only one big clue to her disappearance, a four-minute-long security video from an elevator. But even with such little information to work off of, the police were dedicated to finding Alisa.

• 27:50Yvette Gentile?

  I mean, y'all, we could spend a whole episode talking about this investigation because there are so many twists and turns. But instead, let's just jump ahead to February 19th, which is about two and a half weeks after her disappearance. Alisa still hasn't been found, and the police still have no idea what happened to her. But the employees at the Cecil have a new problem. Guests and tenants keep complaining that the water coming from their sinks and showers is discolored. Actually, it's black. So a maintenance worker heads onto the roof, which is where they keep their water tanks. They're in these big concrete cylinders.

• 28:35Yvette Gentile?

  And when the worker makes it to the tanks, he sees that one of them is open. The hatch door on the top isn't closed, which is, first of all, unsanitary, but also very weird. So he takes a look inside, and that's when he sees a woman floating in the tank. It's the body of Alisa Lam.

• 29:02Rasha Pecoraro?

  And here's what's super strange. No one really knows how she even got up there. That rooftop is not easy to access for guests. There's not even an elevator that goes up that far. The Cecil does have an interior staircase that goes all the way to the roof, but it's supposed to be closed to the public. If someone goes up those stairs and opens the door to get to the roof, an alarm will go off. There is one other way to reach the water tank, though. You have to climb the fire escape to the top floor. Then you have to go up this rickety old ladder that's mounted on the side of the building. There are no guardrails and nothing to catch you if you were to slip and fall. All to say,

• 29:47Rasha Pecoraro?

  it would be an incredibly terrifying thing for a 21-year-old young woman to attempt on her own.

• 29:55Yvette Gentile?

  But okay. Let's imagine that Alisa got to the roof somehow. It would still have been very difficult for her to get inside that water tank. You just have to imagine this huge concrete cylinder, 10 feet tall and 6 feet wide. And it has a metal hatch on the lid. But it's, I mean, you gotta think about it, right? A metal hatch, that is going to be heavy, probably about 20 pounds. And Alisa is only 5'4", and she weighs about 115 pounds. So the idea that this petite woman could have gotten onto the roof without anyone noticing,

• 30:35Yvette Gentile?

  lug this bulky covering off the water tank, climb inside, and then she dies there? It's sort of mind-boggling to the police and anyone hearing about the case.

• 30:46Rasha Pecoraro?

  The state of Alisa's body raises even more questions. First of all, when she's found, she's completely nude. Her clothes are also in the tank with her towards the bottom. And her autopsy said that there's no sign of violence. As in, no gunshot wounds, no stab wounds, no evidence that anyone attacked her or choked her. There's also no sign of sexual assault. By all appearances, she was physically fine, until for some reason, she ended up in this water tank, where the autopsy states she drowned.

• 31:26Yvette Gentile?

  Lots of people figure there has to be some other factor at play. I mean, the official story makes no sense. And before long, some wild theories start circulating. People say that Alisa was murdered. And maybe the police or other officials are covering up the real cause of death. I mean, it's some pretty wild stuff. But there's a good amount of people online who are saying Alisa died playing the elevator game.

• 31:56Rasha Pecoraro?

  There are a lot of problems with this theory, though. For starters, we don't know if Alisa ever even heard of the elevator game before. She certainly never told anyone that she planned to play it on January 31st. And again, the way she behaved in the surveillance video didn't even match the rules of the game. She wasn't selecting the right floors in the right order. She didn't wait to reach each floor before she chose the next one. Plus, the video was recorded on the 14th floor, while the rules say you're supposed to begin playing on the ground level.

• 32:33Yvette Gentile?

  All to say that elevator game theory just doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, but for reasons that are a lot more complicated than what I just listed. Instead, the police believe Alyssa's cause of death was actually related to a mental health episode.

• 32:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, that's right. Alyssa had severe bipolar disorder, and she was actually on a treatment plan which involved medication. But whenever she ignored the doctor's advice and went off her medication, Alyssa would hallucinate and have symptoms of paranoia. And police found she wasn't using her meds correctly during her stay at the Cecil. Instead, she was either taking smaller doses than she was supposed to or taking them less frequently than she should have been. This was clear from her autopsy results and from the fact that she had more pills in her room than she should have, given the date of her last refill.

• 33:33Rasha Pecoraro?

  So the theory goes that while Alyssa was in Los Angeles, she went off her medication, or maybe took too little of it. Then, her symptoms began flaring. Her odd behavior in the security footage wasn't a sign she was playing a game. Instead, it was evidence she wasn't thinking clearly. Medical experts say her erratic conduct was consistent with paranoid hallucinations. If she actually believed someone was trying to hurt or kill her, she might have stepped into the elevator and hit a bunch of buttons to get away. In fact, it's very possible one of the buttons she hit was the "hold elevator" button,

• 34:14Rasha Pecoraro?

  which would have stopped the elevator from closing its doors for two minutes each time she pressed it.

• 34:20Yvette Gentile?

  It's also worth mentioning that the elevator footage that's publicly available isn't entirely accurate. It's hard to tell unless you're really looking closely. But there are parts of the four-minute clip that are sped up or slowed down, and a few disguised cuts.

• 34:40Rasha Pecoraro?

  For what it's worth, that's still a little suspicious, in my opinion, because it seems like the footage has been tampered with. Supposedly, the tapes went straight from the hotel's employees to the police, and from there to the internet. So lots of people wondered who actually edited that clip and why. To me, it sounds like someone was trying to cover up something. To this day, though, nobody knows who messed with the video or why. We do know that after Elisa left the elevator, she might have wandered around the hotel until she made her way onto the roof. And here's where her story gets really heartbreaking. In the past, when Elisa had experienced really bad paranoia and hallucinations,

• 35:25Rasha Pecoraro?

  her instinct had always been to hide under her bed. Something about small enclosed spaces made her feel safe and secure. So maybe when she made her way onto the roof and saw those big concrete water tanks, maybe they looked like the perfect hiding place to her. She could have pulled the lid off and climbed inside to escape whatever she thought was following her. And without a ladder inside, Elisa might have gotten stuck with no way to climb out. Equally as sad is that after her death, misinformation flew. Because that is the nature of the internet. Everyone has a theory, and anyone can share their thoughts, and very little of that is verified.

• 36:11Rasha Pecoraro?

  And that could be true for the elevator game as well. It's impossible to know who made its rules and posted them on the web for the first time. It could have been a practical joke or a spooky story that just took off when people mistakenly believed that it was true. I mean, you can't deny it makes for a compelling narrative. But at the same time, we're talking about a young girl's life. Sure, the elevator game is a great way to freak everyone out. But I think this legend, especially with how it pertains to Elisa's legacy, proves something. We never know what people are truly going through. And it's easy to look for wild explanations,

• 36:57Rasha Pecoraro?

  sometimes even in the supernatural, to sort of mask the reality that life can be cruel and harsh for so many of us.

• 37:08Rasha Pecoraro?

  And maybe the idea that there's some way to escape to another world is easier than facing the complete unknown of death. But that's not to say there aren't other worlds out there, equally as mysterious as our own. This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com.

• 37:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all-new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

• 37:58Speaker 03

  I've been having a hard time trying to explain what Midnight Burger is. How about I let them give it a shot?

• 38:08Speaker 04

  Your podcast is amazing.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  It's such an amazing show altogether.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  You guys have actively ruined all other audio dramas for me.

• 38:15Speaker 07

  You can't get people to understand the humaning that happens in this damn show.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  Keep doing what you're doing, because it's awesome. You might not think it, but you are far more important than you realize. Thank you.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. Look for Midnight Burger on your favorite podcasting app, or just go to weopenat6.com.