The Lassiter Hotel Footage, Part 3

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On June 3rd, 1996, the Molnar family checked into the Lassiter Hotel. Julia Molnar (41) had booked the trip as a surprise for her husband Edgar (40) and their daughter Tiffany (6). They were informed of the "no photography" policy, and were shown to Room 38, a double queen room. Their week was pleasant and largely uneventful, though Julia did complain that she was having strange dreams in a phone call to her mother on the 6th.


On June 10th, the Molnars missed check-out time. When members of hotel security were dispatched to their room, they found it vacant, with their luggage still present, their beds unmade, and the television turned on to the local NBC affiliate.


After the room was searched, they discovered a lump in one of the mattresses. Cutting it open, hotel security discovered a Sony CCD-TR500 Hi8 camcorder, heavily waterlogged to the point where it was unusable.


The tape within was intact.


Part 3: The Molnar Footage (1996)


The Molnar Footage refers to the final 17:28 of the VHS tape; prior to this, footage shows the Molnar family enjoying their vacation, visiting Wildwood and the Cape May Zoo, taking part in a whale-watching cruise, and enjoying time on the beach.


The footage starts in Room 38. Edgar is filming, even though his wife pleads for him to stop. "It's our last night here! What are they going to do, kick us out for filming in our own room?"


"They said no filming, Ed! I don't want Tiffany's first vacation to end with her seeing us get sued."


"But you already have suits!" Tiffany giggles. She's over on her own bed, bouncing up and down, trying to touch the ceiling.


"I just want to get a shot of the ocean from our room, then the camera gets put away. All right?"


Julia relents, and Edgar goes over to the window recording three minutes of the beach and the Atlantic as viewed from the Lassiter. He turns the camera around just in time to catch his daughter landing on the bed. She gives him a gap-toothed grin.


And then, she begins falling through the bed. Tiffany screams with glee as she's sucked through the bed, and her parents scream as they're faced with an inexplicable void dragging their daughter into it.


Edgar leaps in after her, camera in hand, and yells at Julie to call 9-1-1 before he lands elsewhere.


It's dark where he lands. He picks up the camera, and turns on the infrared view, allowing him to see. The footage appears to show another hotel room, vacant; there is no sign of Tiffany, nor are there any windows. The television is playing static.


He calls for his daughter, but receives no answer. After a moment, the camera spins around, revealing the door to the room swinging ajar. Garbled speech is heard, before Edgar bursts into the hallway.


What he finds himself in is not the Lassiter Hotel. The structure is dark with a high ceiling, and seems to be made of sandstone. There are signs of the space having been recently burned; scorch marks are plainly visible, and ash is falling from above, settling into piles around the structure. “Tiffany!” He calls out again, voice strained.


He hears a response this time, and for a moment, the camera films the ground, swinging back and forth as he runs, calling her name. “Tiffany!” He yells. “Daddy’s here! Keep calling for me!”


The scene transitions from an ash-covered structure to one that is inundated. He stops, confused as his feet grow wet, and he aims the camera upwards, showing he’s now in some form of courtyard with a pair of shallow pools down the middle. There is a figure laying by one of the pools; as Edgar approaches, it becomes clear that it's the skeleton of an adult, wearing a high-visibility safety vest, thick gloves, and a hard hat.


Edgar calls for his daughter again, and hears her scream; not in pain or terror, but in delight. Edgar's camera swivels up to see her bouncing up and down in a doorway across from Edgar, seemingly unharmed. He approaches her, and picks her up, dropping the camera.


It is now he must realize that he has no idea how to return to his hotel room. He calls for his wife, but is met with silence. He curses and screams, before he's seen picking up his daughter and vanishing into the complex.


After two minutes, the camera is picked up by a new, unseen entity. It glides across the ground, and briefly what appears to be writing is visible, the word "ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗ" (“bibliotheke”, Greek for “library”), carved into the stone.


The entity finds Edgar carrying his daughter in an area that resembles the space he entered. He is inspecting a wall when his daughter points at the camera. Edgar tries to scream upon seeing it, but instead finds water flowing from first his mouth, then his nose, then from everywhere else. The man is lost under a flood, and his daughter is swept away by the current, squealing with glee.


The camera turns to her, and a limb made of liquid picks her up. She laughs, and then after a splash, falls silent.



Supplemental:


Those of you who are into true crime are probably familiar with the name Tiffany Molnar, as she is a perennial subject of age progression photography. She would be thirty-two years old this year. An incisor was found under the pillow in her bed, and the DNA from that tooth has been compared to dozens of female cadavers over the years. To date, no match has been found.


This is the best-known instance of the Lassiter Hotel footage, but it is often scrutinized, due to its prominence. Strange Pictures and several other programs have attempted to analyze it for signs of doctoring or special effects, despite the fact that analysis of the film has shown evidence of no tampering other than Bracing.


A 9-1-1 call was placed from the Lassiter by an unidentified woman, believed to be Julia Molnar; a transcript is included below.


Dispatch: 9-1-1, do you need police, ambulance or--


Caller: My daughter! My daughter and my husband, they fell!


Dispatch: They fell? Ma'am, do you need an ambulance?


Caller: They fell through the bed! But I'm sitting on it, and there's nothing there!


Dispatch: Ma'am, where are you?


Caller: The Grand Al-- hold on, someone's at the door. Ed?


Twenty seconds of silence.


Caller: No, we didn't know.


Ten seconds of silence.


Caller: We didn't know it hurt!


The Lassiter Hotel appears to host multiple entities, or multiple manifestations of the same entity, that are averse to being recorded on video. The Institute has encountered several of these entities in the past; the general term for them is “Videophobe”. The Videophobic entities appear to reside in an extradimensional space connected to the Lassiter, possibly created by an item possessed by Richard Lassiter, the Typhon Papyrus mentioned in the previous article.


This item vanished in 1996.


Even so, the Lassiter was a perfectly safe hotel to stay in, provided no recording occurred; “was” being the operative word. After the disappearance of the Molnar family, the Lassiter was closed down permanently; too many tragedies had occurred in the hotel. It remains standing, despite efforts of the Cape May government to tear it down. Because of this, it was thought to be prime territory for a 2011 episode of the third-most popular ghost hunting show in the USA and Nova Network’s highest-rated show at the time, America’s Most Haunted.


Next week, we will be discussing exactly what happened on the set of AMH, and uncovering the footage that caused Nova Network to cancel the show for almost half a decade.

Next Entry: The Lassiter Hotel Footage, Part 4