Late-Night Caller Rankles Quadlings

Answering her red phone in Cabot House late at night, Vanessa Vargas ’09 was greeted by a soft-spoken male voice.

Though Vargas didn’t recognize the man who called her, she stayed on the line for a few minutes because the stranger “sounded like he was trying to reach out for help.”

“He kept repeating that he just had a really bad day,” Vargas said of the incident which occurred last week. “And he kept saying that he wished he had someone to hold.”

Vargas is one of several female Quad residents who over the past several weeks have reported being disturbed or frightened by late-night phone calls from a man who identifies himself as “Michael.”

The calls are currently under investigation by the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD), which receives about 50 reports of annoying and harassing phone calls each year, according to police spokesman Steven G. Catalano.

The majority of those calls are made during a short time period, Catalano said.

“Callers will use a soft voice or a whisper to distract the person they are calling into thinking that it is someone they know calling,” Catalano wrote in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

The reports are similar to a string of phone calls placed by a man known as the “serial whisperer,” who targeted female students by calling dorm numbers consecutively, often saying that he needed company or asking lewd questions.

In 2001, HUPD ultimately traced the calls to South Florida, where local police ordered the man to cease and desist. The phone calls then stopped temporarily.

In the fall of 2003, however, students again began receiving morning calls from a whispering man.

There were more reports of inappropriate phone calls in 2004.

Catalano cautioned against assuming that the “serial whisperer” has returned, noting that it is difficult to identify the caller without a caller ID or a successful trace.

Currier House resident Melissa M. Garcia ’09, another victim of the calls, said that she heard a nearby room phone ring after hanging up with the inappropriate caller. The caller told Garcia that he had just dialed random numbers looking for someone to talk to.

“It was his voice that really freaked me out,” she said.

“He sounded like he was crying, suicidal, and it sounded like the voice of someone who was about to snap,” she added.

—Staff writer Nan Ni can be reached at nni@fas.harvard.edu.