The manor has been on the market for a spell as Miss Peggy and I contemplate a one-level abode to spare our legs and knees for the remainder of our sojourn.

A lovely lake view and a forest-bordered yard apparently aren’t enough to lure eager buyers with checkbooks in hand. It’s a matter of marketing, I’m convinced. After reading an article in The New York Times, I’ve decided that I need to advertise our abode as a haunted house.

The Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Ariz., does a booming business because it has spread the word that ghosts wander within its walls. Apparently, lots of people are eager to share accommodations with ghosts.

After reading the Times article, I’m convinced that our residence could easily qualify as a haunted house. According to the article, guests may be awakened in the Copper Queen by bumps in the night and things disappearing from their dressers.

That happens at our house all the time. Miss Peggy often comes wide awake at night when she hears heavy feet stumbling over a chair or something between the bedroom and the bathroom. When she mentions it next morning, I have no recollection at all of a nocturnal visit to the loo, so it has to be the ghost.

Things get even creepier when articles start disappearing from the dresser.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve put my spectacles on the dresser before turning in at night only to find them somewhere downstairs the next morning. I’ve tried to neutralize this problem by having two sets of glasses, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. But some pesky spook always manages to put them both on the same floor, which happens to be the floor I’m not on when I need them.

The front-desk clerk at the Copper Queen swore to the Times that she once saw a room key floating through the air. We don’t have keys to our bedroom, but if she were staying at our house, she might very well see car keys floating through the void. Mine are constantly disappearing, and the only explanation is that a thieving spook is at work.  I’ve learned not to panic when my keys go into hiding, as long as Miss Peggy’s are where I can lay my hands on them. The spook always returns mine within a matter of days. Often it slips them into the pockets of a pair of pants I haven’t worn for weeks. If the spook is sneaking the car out for a midnight spin, I’m unaware of it. It’s always in its regular place when I get up in the morning. But sometimes the gas hand has slipped a little toward empty.

I needn’t mention the socks that disappear from the drawer. Socks never disappear in pairs. They always go one at a time, leaving an odd sock that can’t be matched with anything else in the drawer. That tells me that one of our resident spooks had a leg amputed before it embarked on a career of house haunting.

Why else would it need only one sock at a time?

The spook obviously doesn’t want us revealing its presence to the world via our cell phone, because it snitched the battery recharger and it stayed gone for weeks. Miss Peggy was sure it would turn up somewhere in the house, so we just relied on the charger in the car. She was right. After two or three months, it showed up somewhere. We had almost forgotten what it looked like.

Sometimes things disappear before our very eyes. I’ve laid a pen or a book down on my desk and the next second it would be nowhere to be seen. A trip to the coffee pot and back is usually all the time the spook needs to put it back where I left it.

Last Sunday, Miss Peggy was missing her collapsible umbrella, and she swore she had packed it in my brief case. I looked under everything in my briefcase and there was no umbrella to be seen. A couple of hours later, I looked in my briefcase, and there was the umbrella. Miss Peggy got a little rain on her hairdo, but the spook stayed nice and dry.

Guests at the Copper Queen often hear mysterious voices around the place. I hear them around the house, too. I know Miss Peggy often slips a DVD into her laptop or catches a daytime drama on the TV set in her sewing room while she’s sewing buttons on my shirts or zippers into my pants. But that can’t account for all those voices. I think I’m overhearing the spooks plotting their next stunt.

Some of my friends claim the only spirits around my house are the ones I keep at the bar. That is not true. Sometimes you can also find a little brandy on the kitchen counter beside the blender. The spooks obviously approve of this, because I notice a little is missing every time I pass by the bottle.

If I ever actually see a ghost, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’ve got to go; I hear noises somewhere downstairs.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson, S.C. 29621, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com.