For most of her life, University student Libby Shannon has never been afraid of leaving her door unlocked.
That all changed Saturday at 3:30 a.m.
Shannon and her roommate, University student Kristi Kraus, were the latest victims in a series of unwanted exposures by the infamous campus masturbator who is rumored to have been in the campus area since 2002.
Shannon and Kraus had spent their evening at a few bars before heading back to their house with some friends. The two University seniors normally left their blinds open and the back door unlocked, until around 3:30 a.m. when they tromped into the kitchen for a late-night snack.
“We were standing in the kitchen when some guy opened up the back door, walked into the kitchen and started to masturbate,” Kraus said.
She identified the man as wearing khaki pants, a plaid shirt and an imitation of the mask used in the movie “Scream.” Kraus and Shannon said it took a minute for them to understand what was going on; they initially thought the person was a friend of theirs pulling a prank.
Once they realized it was not a joke, they screamed and ran into Shannon’s room.
“We started yelling and banging on the wall to wake up our third roommate,” Shannon said.
After waking the third roommate and her boyfriend, the four went back into the kitchen to see if the man was still there. He was gone and had left the back door wide open.
“He just vaporized,” Kraus said. “Like a ghost.”
There have been several indecent exposure reports in the past month, five or six of which are related, said Eugene Police Department spokeswoman Kerry Delf. In each incident the offender disappeared before police could catch him.
Rumors of the campus masturbator originally began in 2002 when three incidents of a man masturbating in front of female students’ residence hall windows were thought to have been perpetrated by the same male suspect.
Victims of the 2002 incidents described the campus masturbator as a Caucasian male in his 20s. Kraus described the man in her kitchen in a similar light, adding that he was dressed “like any average … guy who’d gone out to a nice dinner.”
Delf advised female students to be very aware of their surroundings, especially if they are walking at night by themselves. If confronted by a threatening individual, distract him or her if possible, she said, adding that distractions might keep the offender from running away so that police can apprehend the suspect.
Delf said victims should also get as accurate of a suspect description as possible and call the police immediately.
Kraus said she was worried that the man might come back to the house another night, or that his fascination with scaring females might manifest into something more dangerous.
“It’s really scary,” she said. “Our doors aren’t ever going to be unlocked again.”