LA’s Viper Room kicks off our new series about the places that put the < i > geist < /i > in the < i > zeit < /i > of their eras .

It’s no secret that ghosts lurk in the basement bar of the Viper Room. Ask Ms Rita Fiora, she’s been working the ticket booth there for the past seven years.

“I’ve had my hair yanked, a hand on my leg. Oh yeah, they’re grabby, the guy ghosts,” she says. “But there’s a chick ghost too, she was texting me once from a dead number. I’d talk out loud to her, and she’d text me a response. She was mad that I couldn’t see her.”

Mostly, when Ms Fiora tells ghost stories, people ask her, “Was it River?”, as in Phoenix. The James Dean-ish star of _Stand By Me _was only 23 when he died of an overdose outside the West Hollywood club.