Students Receive Calls From Whispering Man

Is the “serial whisperer” back in business?

Female residents of Hollis North said they received late-night calls Sunday from a soft-spoken man asking to talk. The caller identified himself as “Michael,” saying that he was a construction worker from the Boston area.

“He just wanted to talk to someone,” said Lauren A. Onofrey ’12, who received one of the calls. “He sounded legitimately very sad.”

The description of the calls earlier this week echo those of a series of anonymous phone calls to undergraduates dating back to the late 1990s.

In 2007, a caller who also identified himself as “Michael” made late-night calls to Harvard dorms, most of them to upperclassmen dorms. “Michael” called multiple rooms in Hollis, apparently calling consecutive dorm phone numbers.

Onofrey said other Hollis students even provided “Michael” with a phone number for an assistance hotline.

Before speaking with Onofrey, “Michael” called the room of Marissa A. Reichel ’12 and Leslie A. Rea ’12. Reichel spoke with him for 10 minutes, according to Rea. Two minutes later, they could hear the phone ringing in the next room.

By midnight, several rooms had received calls and the students informed their proctor, who notified the Freshman Dean’s Office.

Gretchen M. Gingo of the FDO said the office will include a message in the Freshman Yard Bulletin tomorrow telling students what to do if they receive a suspicious phone call.

She declined to comment further on the calls.

Steven G. Catalano, a spokesman from the Harvard University Police Department, wrote in a statement that the department has not been notified of the calls yet this year.

In 2001, HUPD identified a man in south Florida as the original “serial whisperer.”

Back then, the “whisperer” made harassing early-morning calls in which he told students he “was crazy about you.”

While police could not take action against the man because his actions were not illegal, local police told him to cease and desist.

Similar calls resumed in 2003, though there was no confirmed link to the man in Florida.

Onofrey said the oddity of the call was less unusual than just getting a call itself.

When the phone rang, “my roommate picked up the camera because this was the momentous event,” she said.