Call Revives ‘Serial Whisperer’ Threat

At 4 a.m. Wednesday, Lauren M. Wolchok ’07, awoke to a call from an unknown male whispering angrily and scolding her for not being able to identify him.

“He kept saying ‘it’s me, don’t you know who this is?...How dare you not know who I am!’” Wolchok wrote in an e-mail.

The call has revived rumors about a “serial whisperer,” a male said to harass female undergraduates over the phone.

Wolchok’s complaint is one of about 15 to 20 reports of inappropriate phone calls that the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) receives each year, spokesman Steven G. Catalano said.

In 2001, police traced similar calls to a suspect in Boca Raton, Fla. Local police contacted him and “we asked him to cease and desist, and there was an immediate dropoff of calls,” Catalano said in November 2001.

Whispering calls also occurred in September and October 2003, including one conversation that became sexually explicit.

Police do not know whether there are multiple whisperers or who they may be.

“There is no way to tell if this is the same person,” Catalano said. “The only thing that is consistent is that someone is whispering.”

Catalano said he has only received one complaint this week, but said he could not estimate how many calls go unreported.

“A lot of people do just chalk it up to being a prank phone call,” he said.