Get Your Angst On: Comic Art for the New Depression

But it wasn’t completely empty. According to the psychic hired by the Dufourgs, the spirit of Pearl Carreto was still inhabiting the space, along with a particularly nasty male poltergeist. And so the Dufourgs turned to Gina Rose, a 43-year-old Arizonan whose specialty is ridding buildings of unwanted energies. Rose counted eight spirits in the place (she hadn’t consulted with the prior psychic), and unlike the standard movie version of how these matters are usually handled, turned down the Dufourgs’ request for a candlelit ceremony and exorcism.

“I don’t do magic or exorcisms,” says Rose. “That gives the spirits more power, and they stick around even longer.” Instead, she merely communicates with the spirits in her mind, as she has since she discovered her gift in early childhood. “All of us have souls, and all of us have spirits inside us, but some of them, after body death, aren’t very nice. I use the simple power of persuasion to get these spirits to leave a room, for them to go to the white light of the creator. Some spirits are afraid of this white light, but when they are dealing with someone who understands them, who tells them, ‘You don’t belong here,’ they go.”

Which they seem to have done. The newest Prive Salon is now open, and apparently clean and clear of both spirit and human troublemakers. (Fabienne says that squatters were living in the space — could they have been the door-handle culprits?) Even the movie stars have returned. Recently, we spotted Ms. Cameron Diaz being styled in the main room. In the back, where the local homeless congregated for years, there is a café modeled after a prayer garden. But the main remnant of the bygone era is the vertical sign that once spelled out “Spanish kitchen” — though it too has been remodeled to simply read “spa.”

—Johnny Angel