FROM BEYOND Neal Dow: easy-going guy BY SARA DONNELLY

Last Monday morning, I received a strange message on my Phoenix office voicemail.

"I’m Victor Guertin," a scratchy voice said. "I read your article (see "Record Keepers," Aug 26) and I speak to Neal Dow every day. If you have any questions for him, you can call me."

He left a phone number and said he’d be in all day.

Guertin, 76, lives in Rye, New Hampshire, where, he claims, he’s chatted with thousands of spirits since the early 1990s, including the long-dead Dow. Also on his roster of ghostly buddies are General George Custer (1839-1876) and Custer’s entire ill-fated troop from the Battle of Little Bighorn. According to Guertin, Custer and Company were stuck on the battlefield until Thanksgiving Day, 2004, when Guertin sent them all "into the Light," even though it was a national holiday and no one on earth or elsewhere would have blamed him for taking the day off.

Sometime last week, Guertin picked up a copy of the Phoenix, read the cover story, which included a description of the Neal Dow Memorial, and decided Dow sounded like a pretty decent guy. Dow died in 1897.

Guertin obligingly called Dow into the room when I returned his call that afternoon, so I could interview the former mayor on the spot.

"Neal?" he said. "Are you there? C’mon in, Neal. There’s a reporter here, the girl who wrote that article I told you about? She wants to ask you a few questions. What are your questions?"

"Well, I guess I want to know what he thinks about the caretaker of his house sitting on his furniture and wearing his Civil War hat."

"Neal, the girl wants to know, there’s a caretaker who’s in your house, he sits in your chair and wears your hat, your Civil War hat, you remember that hat?"

Pause.

"Doesn’t bother him."

"Okay," I said. "What about the fact that we spelled his name wrong on the cover? We spelled ‘Neal’ with an ‘I’ instead of an ‘A.’ We’re really sorry about that. We screwed up."

Guertin repeated the question.

"Doesn’t bother him," he said.

"What about all the bars in Portland now? What about Fore Street, that’s got to get to him, since he was a Prohibitionist."

Another pause to translate.

"No."

"Nothing much gets to him, does it?"

Guertin laughed.

"He says you don’t shake him. He’s been through too much."

Guertin plans to send Dow to the Light as soon as they’re done chewing on a personal matter of Guertin’s, on which he did not elaborate.