The Library Story

The Library Story

Hey there, the name's Agnieszka (I know, that's probably hard for you to say, I'm of Polish descent, sorry.) What follows is a true story from the library I worked at. This takes place a few years ago in the UK but I won't be more specific than that.
At the time I had worked in the library for a long time and I really did enjoy my work there, but this incident just shakes me to my core whenever I think about it. So, it all starts one day, a day just like any other, I am just in the library, doing my usual stuff, when this man walks over to me. An older man, he introduced himself as Pete Bland and said he was looking for some books. Ok, that's fine. Happens all the time. I help him with this, but the air around the conversation was incredibly creepy and kept getting creepier by the second. He kept making sexual references and at one point he even tried to grab my hand. A couple of other people in the library were looking over now as well. Things get even worse from there. Luckily, a co-worker, Mustafa (he's from Turkey, and yeah he's heard all the Lion King jokes about his name and he would like to remind everyone that the lion is called Mufasa and not Mustafa), came over to us. I was so grateful for that because it seemed to scare him out. Another co-worker, Anna, noticed the odd behaviour of this person too and came walking over. He'd already ran out of the door. It was scary but for now, he was gone.
At that time we didn't know it, but this was only the first encounter with a man we would soon come to know as "Creepy Pete." You see, Creepy Pete seemed to have quite an obsession with me, somehow, even though he had only seen me for a few moments. The second time, I was sitting at the desk when he slammed a book in front of me. It was a book on human anatomy and it was open. He had turned it to a page about sex.
"You know, this book reminds me of you," he said in a menacing tone. I still remember the way he said it to this day. Mustafa ran over to chase him out.
Things started to get even worse after that. Creepy Pete started coming to the library a lot. At first, a few times a week, and soon, every day, multiple times a day at times. Mustafa told me that even on my days off he would come into the library, looking for me, and when he couldn't see me, he would simply walk out. Obviously, this was incredibly alarming behaviour, and our boss, Tim, banned him from the library. But that didn't stop him. Creepy Peter would continue trying to get into the library, and had to be removed by security on several occasions. Sometimes he would stand outside the window and just look in until security chased him off. On one time Pete tried to fight Mustafa, on others Creepy Pete stood outside the library yelling racist things (I think he blamed Mustafa for his library ban for some reason.)
The worst thing happened when I wasn't even at the library. It was my day off and I was at home, but the next day my co-workers told me all about it. Pete showed up at the library again, but the security guards were dealing with someone else, a homeless drunk person who had come in looking for a fight. So Pete was free to walk right up to the desk, where Mustafa was. Pete had already tried to fight Mustafa once before so this wasn't good at all. Mustafa barely had time to look up before Pete jumped right over the desk and slammed him into the floor, and started trying to choke him. The security guards were soon on it and he was arrested by police.
He was granted bail and was soon back at the library. But enough was enough. He got arrested again. The last time I saw him was then, when he was being arrested by police the second time. I never saw him again after that. He never came to our library ever again. I would hope that he either got bored of stalking young girls or is in jail, my fear is that he just found new victims instead.
But I am so grateful to Anna, Mustafa, Tim and all the others who helped me in this dark time. And of course all of the security guards who removed this scary person. I am still in touch with all of them, even though I don't work at that particular library anymore (I loved working there, but the security situation wasn't great as you can probably tell from this story.) And even better, Creepy Pete is gone. It's been years now and I haven't seen him, and that can only be a good thing. I just hope that he doesn't bother anyone else.

- Agnieszka