A MAN who lives opposite one of the world’s most haunted hotels has revealed the terrifying things he sees from his bedroom window.
Peet Montzingo has a VIP view of Los Angeles‘ Cecil Hotel – infamous for housing serial killers and the horror backdrop for a number of mysterious deaths.
Instagram / @PeetMontzingoPeet Montzingo lives across the street from the Cecil Hotel – famed for its spookiness[/caption]
TikTok/@peetmontzingoPeet once saw a man staring at him from one of the hotel’s bedrooms in the middle of the night[/caption]
AFPThe haunted hotel is located in Downtown Los Angeles, in California[/caption]
Since moving to his two-bedroom flat in 2019, the 33-year-old has been documenting the strange sightings at the Cecil on TikTok and YouTube.
The hotel – dubbed one of the most haunted buildings in America – has been linked to mass murderers, suicides, and a slew of supernatural occurrences.
From flickering lights to mid-night appearances, Peet was never short of spookiness coming from across the road.
“When I moved into my apartment I had no idea I’d be living across one of the most haunted hotels in the world,” Peet told The Sun.
“I moved here because it was really cheap, and now I know why.
“Most of the time where I recorded the strange things, the hotel had been closed since 2017, meaning nobody could stay in there.”
Peet said he’s never seen anybody coming in or out of the Cecil, and “that’s what made everything so creepy”.
“I’ve seen strange shadows, flickering lights, you name it,” he said.
“At night, I always take a look just to make sure nobody’s looking at me from any of the hotel’s windows.”
Peet nicknamed his spookiest sighting as “the cigar man incident” – which took place not long after he moved to his LA apartment.
“The most vivid episode I had was actually my first sighting,” he revealed.
“I woke up in the middle of the night one time, and I looked out my window and I saw an old man staring at me while smoking a cigar.
“I remember thinking ‘How can he even see me if it’s pitch black?’
“So I decided to run to the other side of my apartment to see if his head were to follow me – and it did.
“He was looking at me and I freaked out, jumped behind the couch to hide and I realised the hotel Cecil hasn’t been open for years.
“I went to peek one more time and he was gone. It was so creepy.”
After learning all about the hotel of horrors next door, Peet became “instantly obsessed with the Cecil”.
He said he “went down a rabbit hole”, getting binoculars, telescopes, and drones to share every single detail with his 24million social media followers.
The 33-year-old then vowed to one day enter the Cecil and explore its haunted hallways.
After many failed attempts to get in on his own, Pete gained the trust of a security guard who let him in at 3am for one hour.
“The hotel was closed for renovation at the time, which allowed me to explore pretty much anywhere I wanted as nobody was in there,” he said.
“I had it all mapped out in my notepad – the elevators, Richard Ramirez’s and Elisa Lam’s rooms, the water towers, everything.
“The moment I got in I just started running up the stairs all giddy thinking ‘I can’t believe I made it’.
“But as soon as I got to the 9th or 10th floor, it hit me. The energy just changed, it felt heavy and very scary.”
Peet noticed that lights started flickering when he walked past them in the hallway, but nothing was scarier than his short time at Richard Ramirez’s room.
“The energy just immediately became so heavy and morbid. It felt like I was being watched,” he explained.
“I also started hearing so many doors slamming shut elsewhere, which wasn’t happening before.
“I tried calling out to him and it all just felt super spooky. My stomach was dropped the entire time. It’s something I can’t explain.”
Peet explained that the same horrifying energy spread across the top three floors at the Cecil.
“The higher up I got on each floor, the more uneasy I felt,” he said.
“The vibe is so creepy that even the security guards avoid doing rounds up there.”
Peet’s fearfulness doesn’t come without a reason, as the Cecil Hotel is marked by a dark past since it opened in 1924.
Its infamous history of crime, mysterious deaths, and association with notorious guests, earned the hotel the nickname of “America’s Hotel Death,” Esquire reported.
One of the most well-known incidents is the disappearance and death of Canadian student Elisa Lam, who stayed at the hotel in 2013 – at the time called Stay on Main.
The case gained widespread attention due to the mysterious circumstances and eerie surveillance footage – and later became a Netflix docuseries.
Elisa was last seen in the hotel’s elevator making odd poses, appearing to talk to someone and pressing multiple buttons as she kept repeatedly exiting and re-entering the lift.
Her naked body was later found locked inside one of the hotel’s rooftop water tanks after guests complained of low water pressure and strange-tasting water.
The official cause of death was ruled as accidental drowning.
But her unusual behaviour in the lift, the locked rooftop water tank, and the lack of clear answers have led to various theories.
The Cecil also housed serial killers like Richard Ramirez – adding to the hotel’s haunted and unsettling reputation.
Ramirez was a prolific serial killer who tormented California in the 1980s, murdering 13 people aged between six and 82.
The criminal – nicknamed “The Night Stalker” – reportedly stayed in room 1419 at the Cecil between 1984 and 1985.
The hotel was also home to fellow serial killer Jack Unterweger, who reportedly killed three sex workers by strangling them with their bra straps.
Many deaths at the hotel have been cited by records as “fell from building” and weren’t necessarily ruled as suicides.
These could have been suicides – but they could have also been accidental.
The list includes Grace E. Margo (1938), Robert Smith (1947), Helen Gurnee (1954), Julia Frances Moore (1962), Alison Lowell (1975), and two unidentified men in 1992 and 2015.
The building, no longer named the Cecil Hotel, reopened in 2022 as affordable housing to solve the local homelessness crisis in LA’s Skid Row neighbourhood.
But that doesn’t stop the rundown premises from attracting negative attention.
“When the hotel reopened as affordable housing, you’d expect for things to be getting better and more under control, but it’s actually getting worse,” Peet revealed.
“There hasn’t been a day without police cars or emergency services showing up.
“There’s still only one guard per shift to take care of the whole building, trying to take care of all these people.
“But the guards I’ve spoken to over the years all said they’re scared to even go upstairs.
“They either say it’s spooky or ‘I might die because people have guns in there’.
“The Cecil is just so rundown, there are people missing all the time.”
Peet has become friends with people living in the building – who tell him of the horrors still taking place between its walls.
“It’s just tragic. They told me there was this lady who was allegedly found hung outside of her balcony door,” he said.
“She apparently was in a coma when they took her down, and then she just died a few weeks ago in hospital.
“Then another girl went missing a few weeks later and everything was plastered up.”
Peet said his coverage of the Cecil helped his career – but now he’s ready to move away from all the spookiness.
“I am definitely looking to move out now,” he said.
“Don’t get me wrong it was an amazing experience and it helped me create so much great content, but it’s just a lot.”
TikTok/@peetmontzingoPeet has documented the many scary sightings from his bedroom window on social media[/caption]
AFPThe Cecil Hotel was infamous for housing serial killers and setting the horror backdrop for mysterious deaths[/caption]
AFPThe horror hotel closed down and the building is currently used as a homeless shelter[/caption]