Is the Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel episode worth streaming?

The Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel two-hour special premiered as part of the launch of discovery+ on January 4.

Yes, another streamer to sign up for, but they’re offering a seven-day free trial. If you’re a GA fan, taking a few moments to sign up will be well worth it. Even if you’re not a fan of the show, but are curious about the Cecil Hotel, it’s worth it. Here are 10 reasons why.

10. The Cecil Hotel May Be the Biggest, Scariest Location Yet

Okay, confession. I publish a lot of posts about upcoming Ghost Adventure episodes thanks to the press releases I receive, but I rarely watch the show anymore.

However, I watched the Cecil Hotel episode for two reasons. One, I was curious what the discovery+ platform would look like and have to offer. Two, I’m super curious about the Cecil Hotel.

Therefore, I actually don’t know if square footage-wise the Cecil is the biggest place they’ve ever investigated or not. If you know of a bigger location they’ve been to, by all means, feel free to Check-In and clue me in.

However, even Zak said it’s the biggest and most sinister place they’ve ever been. It has to rank as one of the scariest places they’ve ever been, if not the scariest.

Of all the ghost hunting shows I’ve ever watched, this episode had me feeling anxious and a bit freaked out.

Maybe it was just great editing on their part, but I swear I could feel the intensity pouring through the screen. I’m pretty desensitized to ghost hunting shows anymore, and even ghost stories for that matter, so I’m rarely creeped out by anything I see on TV. Plus, I think most of it is staged anyway.

Which, probably some of it was, but whether it was or wasn’t, the activity they come up with is crazy and they have some pretty intense experiences. A water faucet suddenly turning on, shadowy figures and masses, and someone –or something– standing in a lighted hallway. And that’s only a little of what happened!

9. Unprecedented Exclusive Access

In a coup for Ghost Adventures, they’ve apparently worked a deal where they’re not only the first, but the last, ghost hunting team to ever be allowed to film in the Cecil Hotel like this. That’s what Zak says as they head inside.

The building was also closed to the public during their investigation, which meant they had the entire place to themselves, from the basement to the rooftop, with access to all of it. As you might imagine, they took full advantage.

Surprisingly, even though they investigated the basement, it’s the one place in the hotel that didn’t really have any stories associated with it, either true crime or paranormal. Mostly it’s just creepy because it’s a basement. Not to mention it has a creepy “Watch Your Step” caution sign on the wall leading down the steps.

8. The Reactions

If you like big reactions, the kind where people suddenly feel cold spots or claim to feel overwhelmed and have to leave, this episode has a lot of that. Not only is Aaron overcome with rage, but some of the guests they bring on have big reactions too.

Like Patrick Langdon, a former crime scene photographer for the LAPD. You know he’s seen some s**t in his time. He felt overwhelmed at one point and booked it out of there.

7. The Psychics

If you like seeing psychics and mediums on investigations, Zak’s got you covered. He invites husband and wife psychic team Michael and Marti Parry as well as Patti Negri along during different nights of the investigation.

The Parrys

Michael and Marti kick off the first night. Unbeknownst to her, Zak puts Marti in Richard Ramirez’s room while he accompanies Michael to the rooftop.

There’s nothing on the water tanks, but Michael is drawn to one of them and says he sees something on it in his mind’s eye. Later he reveals the shape he saw was a pentagram.

Meanwhile, down in Ramirez’s room, Marti draws at least three sketches of possible former residents, and perhaps current restless spirits of the Cecil, including one who may have been Pigeon Goldie Osgood. Pigeon Goldie was raped and murdered in her room at the hotel in 1964.

When Zak and Michael rejoin her, the first thing Michael says is, “Hi, killer.”

Michael doesn’t know that’s Ramirez’s former room either and Zak points out the irony of his word use.

But it gets weirder because Marti says she wants to know who’s the murderer in the room. Zak asks her why she asks that, and she says she doesn’t know.

Thinking maybe she’s made some kind of connection, he takes the couple to Elisa Lam’s room to see if they can make any contact, but nothing really significant happens.

The next night it’s Patti’s turn.

Patti Negri

Zak says he likes Patti because when they worked with her before at the Black Dahlia house, their equipment went off in unison with her readings. He decides he’ll let Patti be a spirit finder and go to whichever floors and rooms she’s drawn to most. She picks the 8th floor first and says she feels a lot of lost people.

At the same moment, Billy used the Paranormal Puck to ask, “Who’s here?” and the dictionary comes back with, “Lost.”

Patti also says something is keeping spirits confused in the building. An entity of some sort, one that’s “running the place.”

She says she doesn’t think it’s human, but she never says it’s a demon either. No surprise, Zak does though.

Then Billy asks the Puck “What’s on this floor?” It responds, “Evil.”

But Patti’s most startling reactions happen in Rooms 1431 and 1016.

A man jumped out of the window in 1431. When Patti gets in there, she says she needs to get out and starts acting really weird. She seems disoriented and goes to open the window, repeating a need to get out.

Zak hasn’t shared the room’s history with her, but he’s concerned to see her behavior. When she sits down in a chair by the window, the SLS catches a figure either standing in the window or hovering there.

Whether it’s the spirit of the man who jumped or an entity that tries to lure people to their death, who knows. Later in the episode, Aaron goes into that same room to find the window open, but they show where Patti closed it again when Zak asked her to. It was one of the super creepy moments of the show.

Then next came when she led Zak and the team to the 10th floor and directly to room 1016, which is where Pigeon Goldie was murdered. As soon as she enters the room, she gets fidgety and starts “crunching” down and covering herself, as if she’s trying to prevent someone from touching her privates.

Either she’s a fantastic actress or she truly felt the terror Pigeon Goldie must have known in her last moments because it was super intimate and uncomfortable to watch.

Follow the finger to see the rest of the reasons why the Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel episode is worth streaming and what you’ll see when you do.