Synchronicity and the Elisa Lam Case

[This article is from a book I'm working on--in addition to a documentary--and was originally published on The Ghost Diaries]

Statisticians often write off synchronicity as nothing more than the collateral overlap of information patterns playing out in an incomprehensibly large numbers game in the universe around us. To such people, it is mathematically likely that the most absurd of coincidences will happen and that there is no inherent significance. There are others who believe grim coincidences constitute more than mere chance. Some believe there is a cosmic meaning to seemingly unrelated events that ties people, places and objects together across space and time.

Paranormal activity as a subject of scientific inquiry came about long before the scientists at Princeton made their discoveries regarding the psi phenomenon (discussed in a previous chapter). In fact, there is a long history of preeminent scientists tackling the intellectually taboo field of parapsychology, one of the first being C.G. Jung. Jung developed the concept of synchronicity, which he was never able to fully define or prove and which remains nebulous to this day. Jung believed synchronicity gave meaning to random coincidences in time and space.

There are several utterly confounding instances of synchronicity to be found in the Elisa Lam case — bizarre coincidences that feel almost otherworldly.

First, what is synchronicity? Jung spent the better part of his illustrious career developing the concept. When he discusses synchronicity, Jung throws around phrases like ‘acausal parallelism’ and even more academic sounding vernacular. At the heart of it, Jung believed in the meaningfulness of random coincidences. If this sounds like a somewhat New Age belief for a renowned scientist to hold, it’s because Jung studied and embraced parapsychology long before there was even something called ‘paranormal activity’ in our collective vocabulary. Back in a time when physicists found themselves puzzled beyond their wildest dreams with new discoveries in quantum mechanics, Jung sought to find a scientific method to the madness of supernatural speculation. He approached the mystery of the so-called ‘ghost in the atom’ from a psychological perspective.

Despite his academic rearing, Jung kept a wide open mind when it came to psychic phenomena and even attempted to produce statistical confirmation of extrasensory perception (ESP), particularly psychokinesis and clairvoyance. Approximately a half century before the Noosphere Project would discovery quantitative proof of a mind-matter connection using state of the art technology, Jung tried to unravel some of the great mysteries of human existence using nothing more than philosophical and psychological query. He wasn’t the only scientist who did so, but he was one of the few who can be said to have crossed over from a skeptic to a believer, though the extent of this is disputed. It is fairly well established that the professional divergence between Jung and Sigmund Freud revolved around the issue of paranormal phenomena — with Freud remaining a hardened materialist while Jung went down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

Specifically, with his writings on synchronicity, Jung posited that in relation to the psyche, time and space are elastic – postulated by the mind. “All reality”, he wrote “[may be] grounded on an as yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same time psychic qualities.” 36 He also believed “states of mind can express themselves synchronistically in the thoughts of another person, or even in the arrangement of external events.” 37

Jung ruminated over whether dreams have anything to do with ghosts. Part of his fascination with paranormal activity came about because of his own anomalous experiences, including a dream he had the night before his mother died. He also documents at great length the experiences he had with a house he believed was haunted. To be fair, Jung challenged his own mind during these experiences, questioning the legitimacy of so-called paranormal events. He concluded at one point that spirits are the unconscious projection of psychological complexes. Though Jung experienced telepathic and parapsychic phenomena, he stated in more than a few writings that he had no reason to think the phenomena constituted real spirits but rather psychological projections.

Yet Jung believed these projections were strong, so strong he contended we might as well consider them real. For example, Jung had his own fantasy figure, an entity he called Philemon, his ‘ghostly guru’ with whom he actually conversed. He believed such figures in his subconscious created themselves and had a life of their own. This belief figured into an incredible experience he had in his own home, which he considered haunted. In 1916 Jung meticulously documented a week-long haunting, which his children also experienced, that featured apparitions of the dead and poltergeist activity. It didn’t end here. The next year, Jung wrote about waking up to a figure with part of its face missing in bed next to him.

How does Jung’s theory of synchronicity factor into the Elisa Lam case? How do any of the incredible coincidences described above connect? It has to do with the idea of meaningful coincidences and an extrapolated idea we will call ‘the synchronicity of evil.’

First, let’s consider that there are three primary belief systems held by people who have looked into Elisa Lam’s death at length. The first is that Elisa died of her own accord, that she essentially accidentally (or possibly purposely) committed suicide as a result of an intense bipolar episode. The second belief is that Elisa was murdered. The third belief is that Elisa was possessed by a paranormal entity, which caused her to commit suicide or be physically displaced in some way so as to end up in the water cistern.

Jung’s theory of synchronicity holds that the psyche ‘exists in a continuum outside time and space’ 38 and that this continuum contains archetypes that produce meaningful coincidences that seem random but which actually are interconnected in a way that we do not fully understand.

There are at least four incredible instances of synchronicity that arise in the Elisa Lam case. No doubt, Jung would have had a field day with this mystery.

The first instance is the history of the hotel itself. While there are mathematical explanations for the statistical anomalies that seem to arise in these cases, it remains nonetheless wholly jaw-dropping that one hotel would experience so many strange macabre episodes. As previously noted, at least two serial killers lived in the Cecil, one of which lived on the same floor, the 14th, on which Elisa stayed (after she was transferred because her roommates complained about her abnormal behavior). The history also includes a brief visit by the Black Dahlia, or Elizabeth Short the night she was brutally murdered (although some historians dispute that she ever stepped foot in the Cecil).

Further, the similarities between Elisa Lam and the Black Dahlia are synchronistic as well. The site Esotouric.com, which notes that the Cecil Hotel is now the top crime bus tour stop in Los Angeles, summarizes them well:

~Both have names derived from Elizabeth.
~Both were women in their early 20s, traveling alone and using public transportation.
~Both of them had loose travel plans that were known only to themselves.
~They were both petite, attractive brunettes, with personalities described as charismatic and outgoing. Both also suffered from depression.
~Each one traveled from San Diego to Downtown Los Angeles in January.
~Each was last seen in a Downtown hotel.
~Neither woman’s disappearance was immediately reported. Both were missing for a number of days before being discovered, dead, in a shocking location.
~And the deaths of both of these unfortunate young women has inspired enormous media attention and speculation.

If the psyche exists outside of space and time, and if states of mind can express themselves in others’ psyches, as Jung believed, then hypothetically it is conceivable that the derangement of the past events in the Cecil (particularly the killings by Ramirez, who lived on the same floor as Elisa’s elevator experience) played a role in Elisa’s demise.

Jung believed in something called a ‘psychoid,’ an archetype with the ability to manifest itself synchronistically in both material and psychic contexts – 36 I submit that the Cecil Hotel is inhabited by a psychoid, a manifestation of horror and evil that continues to claims lives.

I consider the history of the hotel as anecdotal synchronicity, the accumulation of coincidences over the course of many decades that results in a weighted pattern.

The next instance of synchronicity is a real doozy.

In the 2002 film Dark Water, a girl falls into a water tank at the top of a hotel and drowns. The infected water creeps down into the hotel walls and eventually taints the hotel water, spurring tenant complaints. Sound familiar? There is even a scene in which a female character is flipping out in an elevator. In the 2005 American remake of the film, two of the characters are named Dahlia and Ceci, which align roughly with the Black Dahlia and the Cecil Hotel.

The third instance of synchronicity in the Elisa Lam case is almost hard to believe. During the course of the investigation, independent reporters discovered that there had been an outbreak of tuberculosis in downtown Los Angeles at around the same time as Elisa Lam’s disappearance. According to the CDC, 4,500 people were exposed to a drug-resistant form of TB.

Incredibly, the name of the TB test used to make this diagnosis is called….the LAM-ELISA test. It is a whopping coincidence, one that has actually led online conspiracists to conclude that the Elisa Lam case is part of a much more convoluted conspiracy, though, as with many of the conspiracy theories related to this case, there is little if any hard evidence to be found.

The fourth instance of synchronicity in the Elisa Lam case concerns none other than the legendary and infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, who practiced black magic and sex rituals in the 19th century. In 1888, Crowley was introduced to George Cecil Jones, a member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which Crowley would soon be a member. Crowley would go on to be an influential member of many occult groups and even formed his own religion, called Thelema, that is still practiced today. Crowley considered himself a prophet with the rare ability to communicate with demons and entities from other dimensions.

Crowley never stayed at the Cecil Hotel where Elisa died. However, he did stay at the Hotel Cecil in England and it was here that Crowley supposedly composed a poem called Jephtha. One blog notes that Jephtha was an Israeli judge who burned his daughter, Seila, as a sacrifice. Seila, one might notice, is an anagram for Elisa.

The lines of the poem Jephtha read as follows:

-Let my LAMp, at midnight hour,

-BEEN SEEN IN SOME HIGHLY TOWER

-Where I may oft outwatch the Bear

– The spirit of Plato, to unfold.

– What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold

– The immortal mind that hath forsook

– HER MANSION IN THE FLESHY NOOK.

– And of those Daemons that are found

– In fire, air, flood, or under ground,

– Whose power hath a true consent.

– With Planet, or with Element.

– Some time let Gorgeous Tragedy

– In Sceptr’d Pall come sweeping by.”

– “Il Penseroso.”

The lines that open the poem are perhaps the most enigmatically relevant here. A lamp is referred to at the ‘midnight hour,’ which police believe is approximately the time Elisa disappeared. ‘Been seen in some highly tower,’ could be construed to refer to the water cistern in which Elisa’s body was found.

Moving further into the Crowley connection, it should be noted that according to Thelemic legend, Crowley came into contact with either an interdimensional alien or demon named LAM. He drew a sketch of LAM and it looks almost identical to modern reports of Grey aliens.

The LAM demon became so important to Thelema and Crowley followers that one disciple, Kenneth Grant, composed a document called The Lam Statement, which is an operational instruction book on how to open ephemeral cosmic gateways and conjure the demon (or order of being) LAM. LAM, which is also the Tibetan word for Way or Path, was hence referred to as an order of consciousness, as opposed to an individual being.

According to Thelemic follower Brian Butler, sometimes called Crowley’s contemporary protege,

“[LAM is] eternal. It’s ancient. And it’s also futuristic. It’s from a dimension that’s beyond what our perception of time is, too. So not only is it not a warm-blooded creature, it’s also transcending the barriers of time and space. There are certain limitations you need to function in the world—such as a body—so it’s impossible for a human being to fully comprehend what it could be, just by nature of being alive. If you don’t retain those things, such as an ego or sense of logic and reason, then you can’t function in society. These entities operate outside of those rules. So it’s very difficult to classify them. We can see a small part of them, but the whole thing is too much, it’s overwhelming. It helps you to evolve, and it also can be terrifying, the vastness of where they’re coming from.”

Is there a real connection between Elisa Lam and Aleister Crowley? It’s a stretch, certainly, but the instances of synchronicity are striking here. Let’s also repeat that Crowley’s LAM demon looks almost identical to modern Grey aliens. According to MUFON and Nuforc, there were 18 recorded UFO sightings in Los Angeles between January and February of 2013, when whatever happened to Elisa happened. A UFO connection is tenuous at best. Jung had an interest in UFOs and advanced early iterations of the idea that UFOs are poltergeist events. This parapsychological hypothesis doesn’t directly pertain to the Elisa Lam case, but it’s interesting to consider the idea that UFOs are physically manifested by the human mind.

Also, with regards to Crowley’s supposed ability to summon beings from other dimensions, I’d be remiss not to mention that at one point in his life Crowley lived in a home overlooking the Loch Ness Lake.

The theory of synchronicity is fascinating and, though it is still not fully understood or proven, it may help to inform a wide variety of paranormal anomalies and parapsychological events that continue to confound the human race.

Let’s consider that evil is not universal. Maybe humans create evil and then it takes on a life of its own, a psychic fog that passes through space and time, picking up minds and devouring them along its way. A wave of defaced souls trundling like hell on earth. The many discrete fogs sometimes merge; like currents to storm fronts, across the gulf of reality different incarnations of evil operate, manufactured by human minds with the ability to knowingly and unknowingly project their suffering and wickedness onto the world around them.