MONROVIA, Liberia — Construction crews are hard at work at fixing up this country’s Executive Mansion, the enormous and historic edifice that is supposed to be home to whoever wins the presidential elections.

If, that is, they have the stomach to move in.

The place, as any Liberian will tell you, is both haunted and jinxed. I’m from Liberia, so I should know. No president who has slept at the Mansion for any extended period has come to a decent end. Spirits are said to roam the hallways, while the applause of ghosts can be heard late at night, as if clapping at the end of a speech.

Security guards stationed at the Mansion — everybody in Liberia calls it “the Mansion” — report that sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, around the time President William R. Tolbert was gutted, in pajamas and bathrobe, by men led by a successor (who would come to his own premature end), the smell of cooking food wafts through the air as ghosts prepare poor Mr. Tolbert’s last meal.

The current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, appears to have made it to the end of her term intact; she will be stepping down in January after her successor is chosen in a runoff scheduled for Nov. 7.