While Christmas in the United States is not only full of happiness and joy tales; some gruesome and horrible true stories are needed to be told, as the real story of Bloody Bob Sims.

Born in 1839, in Womack Hill community, Alabama,  Robert Bruce Sims was a Confederate veteran that returned from the war to continue farming.

During the war, Bob Sims served in the Twenty-Second Alabama Infantry. Sims was injured in battle, captured and imprisoned at Camp Morton in Indiana, by the by Union.

On his return to Choctaw County, he briefly served as a county road surveyor.

His strong church views only grew with the time in the war field, but it divergent from standard teachings.

After strong conflicts with local churches leaders, Sims founded his church.

As a result, they become known as “Simsites.”

For Sims only one law could follow, the God’s Law. He refused to obey county laws and refused to pay taxes on land, goods and, to his brand new venture, Moonshine,

Bloody Bob Sims and The Choctaw County War

Revevrend Richard Bryant Carrol was one of the opposition. Also, preached against Sims’ moonshine business.

One of the Simsites wanted to date the Soulwipa preacher’s daughter. Rev. Carroll ran away with the man from his property.

In the next morning, on May 1st of 1891, Rev. Richard Carroll’s body was found with bullet holes laying on his porch.

Local police did not arrest anyone, but among locals, Sims and his followers were the main suspects.

As a result of that, both sides shared confrontations and heated arguments.

On that same year, on December 23, the Simsites raged and burned a local merchant John McMillan’s home.

John McMillan name was listed among the names from the town, who reported Sims to federal officials.

Inside the house, people, including women and ten children woke up with smoke and flames engulfing the home.

In desperation, they fleed from the burning home they faced Sims and his men shooting and aiming to kill anyone who tries to leave the house.

Two adults and three children died, Belle McKenzie, the young teacher, died from her wounds three weeks later.

The End of Bloody Bob Sims

The next day, Christmas Eve, a posse, with the addition of angry residents, surrounded the Sims house.

Inside, Sims, his wife with their children had the company of several church members.

The standoff, between the sheriff and the Simsites, barricaded inside the house while negotiating to Sims turn himself in.

With the Sheriff promise to protect his family and followers from the outraged crowd, Bob Sims would agree to surrender.

On Christmas Day, the Sheriff agreed to keep the woman and children safe from harm, but the other would be arrested and prosecuted.

As a result, Sims agreed, and the sheriff took Bob Sims and his followers into custody.

They were taken by the pose and escorted, in a wagon, toward the jail by 25 men.

But the unhappy mob surrounded the wagon, dragging Bob Sims and other three men to hang them from a tree limb.

The sheriff keeps his promise protecting women and children.

The bodies of Bloody Bob Sims and his followers buried in Sims Cemetery by the days after the Christmas of 1891.

References

• “Alabama Scoundrels: Outlaws, Pirates, Bandits & Bushwhackers” by Kelly Kazek,‎ Wil Elrick

The recently re-branded, Stay On Main Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, is an icon of the town and the paranormal world. You may not recognize the name, but the chances are you know the place like the Hotel Cecil.

The historic building over 90 years old collects an extreme amount of murders, suicides, serial killers and ghosts.

The History of The Stay On Main Hotel

With the plan to attract businessmen to Los Angeles, The Hotel Cecil was erected in 1924, with its 700 rooms with a cost of $1,000,000.

The building, at 640 S Main St, had a marble lobby with stained glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary.

But the Great Depression didn’t spare the Art Deco style hotel.

The neighborhood quickly declined into the area known as Skid Row, with as many as 10,000 homeless people living within a four-mile radius.

A New Beginning to The Hotel Cecil

In 2007 new owners came to refurbished a portion of the Hotel Cecil.

But the new beginning came to the almost centenary hotel,  in 2011, it was re-branded to The Stay on Main Hotel.

Three years later, more changes, Simon Baron Development, New-York based firm, bought the ground lease on the property, and the NYC hotelier, Richard Born, acquired the hotel for $30 million.

The Los Angeles City Council granted historic status to the Hotel Cecil on February 2017.

The Dark Past From the Cecil Hotel

It’s understandable the marketing idea of changing the hotel’s name because the name Hotel Cecil is connected with dark and strange murders and deaths.

The Skid Row neighborhood added to the mix. This place is known for drug dealers, robbers and all sort of outlaws.

The Black Dahlia

On the morning of January 15, 1947, a lady found Elizabeth Short’s naked body, in two pieces on a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue Midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street.

The body drained entirely of blood, her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect called the “Glasgow smile”.

Since Elizabeth Short hadn’t a fixed residence, she used to live in between Florida, Massachusetts, and California.

A variety of reports claims Short made her last stop before being murdered, at the Hotel Cecil.

The murderer, well, was never caught.

Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker

From June 1984 until August 1985, Richard Ramirez used the Hotel Cecil as a base for his killing in Los Angeles.

Ramirez used different forms and weapons to murder his victims, from a hammer, knives, a machete, handguns, even using a tire iron.

He received the name of “The Night Stalker” by the press.

Without any remorse for the lives he took, Ramirez admitted being a Satanist.

Jack Unterweger

Austrian crime journalist, by the name Johann Unterweger, registers into the Hotel Cecil in 1991.

An Austrian magazine hired Jack, his nickname, to write about crime in Los Angeles most specific about the differences between American and European attitudes to prostitution.

Jack Unterweger even worked with the police’s help, riding thru prostitution areas.

What people from today’s Stay On Main Hotel didn’t know was that Jack Unterweger was an Austrian serial killer who murdered prostitutes in several countries.

Jack Unterweger became a journalist after being released in 1990 as an example of rehabilitation.

While Unterweger’s stay at the Hotel Cecil, three prostitutes (Shannon Exley, Irene Rodriguez, and Sherri Ann Long) was beaten, sexually assaulted with tree branches, and strangled with their bras.

In Austria, rumors spread that Jack Unterweger was involved in it. Since no other suspects appeared during the investigations, the police kept him under surveillance but could find nothing to connect him to the crimes.

Austrian police later found that Unterweger killed a prostitute in Czechoslovakia and other six victims in Austria right after his release in 1990.

Hunted by law enforcement all over Europa, Jack Unterweger was arrested in Florida, and on the 29th of June 1994. The jury sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Johann Unterweger committed suicide that same night at the prison by hanging himself with a rope made from shoelaces and a cord from the trousers of his track suit.

The Horrible Case of Dorothy Jean Purcell

In September 1944, Dorothy Jean Purcell, 19, and Ben Levine, 38, checked into the Cecil Hotel.

Purcell woke in the middle of the night with stomach pains, going into the restroom she delivered, what she believed to be, a dead, baby by herself.

The young girl apparently unaware she was pregnant threw her newborn from a window, without waking her sleeping partner.

The body was later found on the roof of an adjacent building.

Dorothy Jean Purcell was charged with homicide but in January 1945 Purcell was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Pigeon Goldie

A retired telephone operator, “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, was found dead on June 4, 1964, by a hotel worker distributing phone books in her room.

Pigeon Goldie was strangled, stabbed and raped.

Her Dodgers cap and a paper sack full of birdseed that she fed the birds in nearby Pershing Square were found near her body.

Jacques B. Ehlinger, 29-years-old, was arrested walking through Pershing Square in bloodstained clothing.

After further investigations, he was cleared of the crime.

Another unsolved case.

Suicidal Tendencies at the Cecil Hotel

On 19 November 1931, the body of the 46-year-old W.K Norton was found in the Hotel Cecil.

A week earlier a “James Willys of Chicago” checked into the hotel and never was saw alive again.

W.K. Norton, from Manhattan Beach, came to the hotel with clear intentions to take his own life, by taking poison capsules.

Less than a year later, Benjamin Dodich, shot himself in the head. The 25-years old was found the next day by the maid, without a suicide note.

Sergeant Louis D. Borden, former Army Medical Corps, slashed his throat with a razor, in 1934. The 53-year-old left a note making reference to his ill-health.

Three years later, Grace E. Magro died from injuries she received from falling out of the window of her room. LAPD could not determine if the fall from the ninth story window was accidental or suicide. Her fall, in March 1937 was broken by telephone wiring that “entangled about her body”.

Next year, another fall, this time Roy Thompson, a 35-year-old jumped from the Hotel Cecil’s top floor, to be found on the skylight of the building next door.

In January 1939, a 45-year-old teacher tried to take her life by poison. In May, Erwin C. Neblett, 39, didn’t have the same luck. The sailor died in his room employing the same method.

In November 1947, Long Beach resident Robert Smith jump to his death from Hotel Cecil’s  seventh floor.

Registered as Margaret Brown, Helen Gurnee met her death after falling from the same seventh floor, a week later, on October 22, 1954. She landed on top of the hotel’s marquee.

It Didn’t Stop There.

Julia Frances Moore, 50-year-old, jumped from the eighth floor on February 11, 1962. She left no note, just 59 cents in change, an Illinois bank book showing a balance of $1800 and a bus ticket from St. Louis. Her body landed in a second story interior light well.

A couple had a definitive argument in their ninth floor’s room. The husband tired of the argument left to get something to eat and clear his mind, on October 12, 1962.

While he was gone, his wife, Pauline Otton, 27-years-old, committed suicide by jumping from the room’s window. But the cruel destiny of her decision landed her on top of a 65-year-old pedestrian, George Gianinni. Both were killed instantly.

The primary investigation from the LA Police could not find any live witnesses, resulting to a conclusion of a double suicide.

After further analyses, George Gianinni was still wearing shoes and with his hands in his pockets, unlikely characteristics from a person that attempts suicide.

Elisa Lam

The last drop in the darkness history of the Hotel Cecil.

By 19th of February 2013, Hotel Cecil’s guests complained of the water smells, dark color, lack of pressure and that water “tasted funny.”

A maintenance worker checks the water supply tanks on the hotel roof and found the decomposed body of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian student.

Lam’s body was naked with her clothes and personal effects floating aside her in the water.

Elisa Lam went missing almost three weeks earlier, on January 31, 2013.

During the investigation, LAPD found disturbing video footage from the Hotel Cecil’s CCTV taken from inside an elevator shortly before her disappearance.

What happened to Elisa Lam?

The surveillance footage showed Lam acting erratic, pressing multiple elevator buttons, hiding in the corner of the elevator, and waving her arms wildly, causing widespread speculation about the cause of her death.

Even after pressing multiple elevator buttons, the elevator doesn’t move.

With the footage becoming public, more questions were unanswered and the paranormal speculation grows with claims that Lam was possessed or being chased by the Hotel Cecil’s ghosts.

Lam’s parents later informed them she had a bipolar disorder, which could have contributed to her death as well as her strange behavior in the elevator.

Los Angeles County Coroner’s office took four months to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the cause of death was accidental.

Soon after Elisa Lam’s body was discovered, a deadly outbreak of tuberculosis occurred there.

As the situation was already strange, the name of the test kit used in these types of situations is LAM-ELISA or Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay. Coincidence?

The guests at the Hotel Cecil sued the hotel over the incident.  Lam’s parents filed a separate suit later the same year.

The investors saw the need to re-brand the Hotel Cecil as The Stay on Main Hotel, in the hope that the dark events stay in the past.

Read an exclusive post telling more details about Elisa Lam’s case.

Ghosts From The Stay On Main Hotel

A large number of paranormal investigators, mediums, and locals believe that The Stay on Main Hotel is haunted.

But aside the strange elevator video, that cannot be classified as Paranormal Evidence.

The only close to paranormal evidence is a unique photo.

Ghost Photo at The Stay On Main Hotel

A photo was taken by Koston Alderete, a Riverside boy with a passion for horror movies and ghost stories.

“When I looked at the window, it just seemed a bit scary to me, and then I showed my friend, and he was terrified. It scares me yet,” said Alderete.

Koston Alderete complains that he had nightmares after taking the picture.

So, is The Stay On Main Hotel photo real? Does it show a ghost? Leave your opinion.

Resources

• Richard Ramirez – Wikipedia
• Jack Unterweger – Wikipedia
• Black Dahlia – Wikipedia
• LA Daily Mirror
• USA Today
• Elisa Lam opens a big mystery of the hotel
• KABC-TV Los Angeles

Rampart Street Murder House is located in the voodoo capital of America, New Orleans, Louisiana.

On the first floor the New Orleans’s famous Voodoo Spiritual Temple at 826 N. Rampart Street.

If you ask me that would be one of many places I wouldn’t move to, but not because of the Temple, but by my lack of the knowledge of everything that surrounds it.

In my humble opinion, it is very hard to believe that any Priest or Priestess would allow any evil entity around the temple premises.

The Rampart Street Murder House Crime

Zackery Bowen and Adriane “Addie” Hall were heroes by local folk, after Katrina, refusing to evacuate the storm and helping the community.

They used their bartending skills to serve cocktails for burnt-out locals.

A Los Angeles native, and decorated discharged sergeant in the US Army, Iraq war hero, Zack, was a bartender at Buffa’s, in the French Quarter.

Addie was also a bartender at The Spotted Cat. She moved to New Orleans from North Carolina, but besides her temper,  not much else was known about her, even by close friends.

They started their relationship by visiting each other’s workplace and exchanging love notes and flirting.

The Rampart Street Murder House

Took a while but the things started coming back to normal in New Orleans, but not for Zack and Addie.

Friends noticed a change in their relationship, drugs and alcohol abuse, arguments turning into fights and long absences from work.

On October 2006, Zack’s body was found on top of a parking garage by the police.

A surveillance camera, on a rooftop, captured just before 8:30 p.m., his nervous pacing back and forth before jumping to his death.

On him, NOPD found a plastic bag with a key and note with an address:

“This is not accidental. I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took. If you send a patrol car to 826 N. Rampart Street (…)”

The Katrina Cannibal

At the one-bedroom apartment over a French Quarter voodoo shop, a Police officer found two pots were sitting on the stove.

One-pot contained a woman’s head and the other hands and feet.

Spray painted on the walls of the apartment were some of Bowen’s last words:

“Please call my wife. I love her. I’m a total failure. Look in the oven. Please help me stop the pain.”

Inside the oven, detectives reportedly found trays containing cooked legs and arms while checking the refrigerator, they found a woman’s torso.

Zackery Bowen left in the apartment, a letter on eight small pages from his girlfriend’s journal.

An extremely graphic description of his last days, the murder and desecration of Adriane Hall’s body.

Against local belief, Chief Joseph Waguespack came forward to confirm there’s no indication of necrophilia or cannibalism.

An autopsy discovered no human remains in Bowen’s stomach.

But it was too late, the rumors on the street were that Zack had cut up carrots and potatoes and seasoned the body parts.

With that, he earned the nickname Katrina Cannibal.

Trying to find an explanation

According to his suicide note, after the murder of Addie, he left to work, delivering groceries, and spent $1,500 on food, drugs, and strippers.

Further investigation and notes left by Zack, suggested he suffered from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), lead by alcohol, drugs, and depression.

On his body was found 28 cigarette burns marks “one for each year of my existence.”

“Failures — school, jobs, military, marriage, parenthood, morals, love. (…) Every last one of these I failed at (…)”

Zack was married before Addie and had two children, a girl, and a boy.

“I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took.” It was written in the note with him.

The Rampart Street Murder House Haunting

But for the local community of New Orleans, after a decade, The Rampart Street Murder leads to more questions than answers.

Some residents who’ve lived in and near the Rampart Street Murder House believes that the paranormal had more involvement than recreational drugs and alcohol.

Witness report to have seen ghostly figures, the sensation of being watched, disembodied unidentified whispers and the feeling of dark forces surround the building.

This decade paranormal activity made the Rampart Street Murder House leap to one of the New Orlean’s lists of most haunted locations.

What do you think? Can paranormal inspire and/or instigate the person’s psicose to reach this level of evil?

Please reserve a minute of your day to pray for Zackery Bowen and Adriane “Addie” Hall

Resources

• Katrina survivalist’s descent into madness
• Why’d He Do It? Post-Mortem of a Grisly Death
• Voodoo, Dismemberment, and Possession: The Rampart Street Murder House Haunting