Lee is a venerable handyman with thirty years’ experience in the trade. He makes a speciality out of repairing old trailers and houses in Borrego Springs. You might assume repairing houses is a relatively mundane occupation and that, apart from the risk of falling off a ladder, the job is otherwise without hazard. Yet Lee’s recent experiences have proved quite the contrary, because he has supernatural encounters in the course of his work that would make your hair stand on end.
“It wasn’t a career choice,” admitted Lee with phlegmatic good humor. “When I left high school, a man who had a handyman business lived across the street from me, so I asked his son for a job and I’ve been stuck in it ever since. I have at least twenty regulars, shops, trailers, and houses, and quite a few are here in Borrego. I like the freedom, the meeting of people and the fact that I haven’t got a boss on my back.”
In spite of growing competition from contractors who offer general and finish carpentry as a package, Lee has maintained his business manfully, even in the face of the COVID recession, but now he faces a challenge of another nature entirely. Although, before I elaborate, let me emphasise that Lee is one of the sanest, most down-to-earth men you could hope to meet.
“I’ve heard there is a handyman in Borrego Springs who sees ghosts,” I said, to broach the delicate subject as respectfully as I could.
“That’s me,” he confessed without hesitation, lowering his voice, “I’ve seen quite a few. Five years ago, at Holiday Homes, I saw a prospector. I was outside cleaning a window and this prospector passed in front of me. He was pulling his coat on. He put his arms in the sleeves, moving as he did so, and then walked through the wall. He looked like a prospector from around 1900 I would guess, in his full outfit.”
“Another time I saw a twelve year old girl on a stair at Roadrunner. She was bent down, peering at me through the staircase. I was about to fix the staircase, and I could feel someone watching me. Then as I turned she was at the next door looking down at me. She had on a grey dress with a white sweater over the top. And she had a blank stare.”
Lee’s testimony was touching in its frankness; neither bragging nor dramatizing. Instead he was thinking out loud, puzzling over these mysterious events in a search for understanding. I naturally asked Lee if he has seen any more ghosts. At once, he turned reticent, stopping in his tracks and insisting that he maintain discretion. “I don’t tell my customers if I see ghosts in their houses,” he informed me absolutely. Looking me in the eye, he said, “They don’t need to know and I don’t want to go scaremongering.”
