Jake Anderson Books In Order
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Gone at Midnight: The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam | (2020) |
Jake Anderson
Jake Anderson is a filmmaker, writer, activist, investigative journalist, and web publisher. He is a contributing journalist for The Anti-Media, as well as multiple alternative media outlets, and runs the popular website The Ghost Diaries. The Ghost Diaries is his sight where he analyzes unexplained mysteries and cold cases.
Jake’s been a featured guest on Spaced Out, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis, West of the Rockies Nocturnal Frequency, and Common Ground.
He is originally from Little Rock, Arkansas and has moved around quite a bit. Jake is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Portland, Oregon.
He’s always been fascinated by the vastness of the universe and the philosophies of the mind, and wonders about the being connected in some way, shape or form.
He first heard about her through the surveillance video, like a lot of people did. Soon after that, he discovered her blogs and this led him into a deeper investigation of her death. Jake couldn’t believe so little was known in such a case that was being so widely discussed and wanted to dig up new evidence.
Jake got involved in the Elisa Lam case was because he was fascinated by the young woman’s battle with bipolar disorder. Part of his book “Gone at Midnight” is him figuring out that he is on that spectrum of bipolar.
Through writing the book, he wanted to write a true crime book that was a bit more experimental, a bit more personal, and not just all about the grisly and gory details. He wanted to get into more philosophical ideas on existence, life, and consciousness. In all, it took him roughly five years, on and off, researching the book.
Jake’s first book, called “How to Make a Spider”, was released in the year 2014. His work is from the true crime and science fiction genres.
“Epic Robot Fail” is a book that was published in the year 2015. The year is 2084. Powerful machine minds called Artilects run our entire economy, as well as our sex lives. Humans are now free, not to mention unnecessary. We are able to watch the Olympics on the Moon in virtual reality, have complex emotional relationships with our washing machines, and upload our consciousness into flawless cybernetic bodies.
Virtual Drug-Love and demented robot sex fetishes keep us from losing our minds in this world overrun by quickly accelerating Artificial Intelligence, self-replicating nanotechnology, and a brand new form of capitalism that is based on data mining the history of human consciousness.
From this world, we meet characters like Mark and his AI house, Harold, who might or might not have some ulterior motive that involves sex and politics. Then there is Kip and Cher, who is his flirtatious washing machine and Phil who risks his life and his own minimum wage job filing documents for some house-sized robot in order to try and save mankind from being gutted by some blood-thirsty capitalist robots. It is the future. Do the robot.
Jake is able to depict this clash of inevitability and absurdity in such an amusing and succinct way that makes it easy to sympathize with the humans. Fans of the book found this to be a creative and well written book.
“Gone at Midnight: The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam” is a true crime book released in the year 2020. A missing young lady. A Los Angeles hotel with a haunting past. One disturbing video that is followed by a stunning discovery. A cold-case mystery that’s become an internet phenomenon. And for a determined journalist, a life-altering journey toward some uncomfortable truths.
Elisa Lam, a twenty-one year old Vancouver student, was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after checking into downtown LA’s Cecil Hotel, which is a six hundred room building with a nine decade long history of tragedy and scandal. It is a hotel that two serial killers have stayed at. There very next day, she disappeared. One search of the hotel didn’t yield anything.
Over a week later, complaints by the guests about some foul-smelling tap water led them to a gruesome discovery: her nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in one area that was incredibly difficult to access without setting alarms off. The sole apparent clue was one disturbing surveillance video of Elisa, which was uploaded to YouTube in hopes of public help.
While the spooky viral video went viral, so did the questions about its tens of millions of viewers. Could Elisa’s death have been caused by suicide, murder, or paranormal activity? Was it at all linked to the Cecil’s menacing reputation? In the video, what accounted for her odd behavior? With the aid of investigators and web sleuths from all over the world, journalist Jake Anderson set out to reveal the facts behind one death that became a macabre internet meme, and a magnet for conspiracy theorists.
While poring through Elisa’s revealing social media posts and online journals, he realized that he had much more in common with this young woman than he imagined. His quest for justice and the truth became a personal journey, a dangerous descent into one of the quiet epidemics of America. Along the way, he exposed the botched investigation as well as the previously unreported disclosures from some inside sources that suggest there could have been a police cover up and corporate conspiracy.
In this book Anderson chronicles discoveries about who Elisa Lam truly was as well as what, or whom, she was actually running from. He presents new evidence that could re-open one of the most chilling and the obsessively followed true crime cases of this century.
Readers found this to be a magnificent read, and one that true crime buffs will not want to miss this gripping quest for the truth. Jake’s done a thorough and outstanding job researching this case, and the book is well written. Readers were impressed with the level of sincere interest and concern that he shows for the victim and strong desire in continuing looking for the ultimate truth in Elisa’s case.