One Nights Stay

A Memory of West Monkton.

My name is Pamela Ross, I live in Leicestershire, 40 years ago, i went hiking around the area of Taunton, with my future husband and his friend, after getting off the train, and walking for some time, it was getting dusk and we were walking along a country lane, when we had a car pull up next to us, it may have been a mini, (probably red) this chap asked what we were doing and if we needed somewhere to stay, we had got tents, so we were trying to find somewhere to pitch our tents, so we were reluctant to get into his car, but he was very persistent and kept saying there are 3 of you, so you will be ok. so in the end we stupidly got into his car. He drove us to a cottage in West Monkton, next to a post office. He said he did not live there, he was just borrowing it, as far as i remember, (40 years ago) so hard to remember too much detail. any way he said his name was Bob. He asked me to make some beans on toast, when i was in the kitchen he came in to show me where things were. AT this point he gave me the creeps, I decided i did not want anything because the kitchen was dirty, and the draws were filthy so i made the others some but i did not even have a drink. I remember regretting coming back to this chaps place, i did not feel easy with him, i remember going to the bathroom and feeling very uneasy, like i was being watched, anyway that was perhaps just my imagination. Anyway that evening he was doing a lot of bragging about being an expert in some form of karate or some form of marshal art. We all felt very worried, because he seemed very strange. So when it was time for us to sleep, he suggested that my then boyfriends friend should go upstairs to sleep and that myself and my boyfriend should sleep downstairs (myself being on the settee and him being on his sleeping bag). but my boyfriends friend said he would rather sleep downstairs. (We felt like he was trying to separate us). After he had gone to bed, we thought he had been lying about his name, when we found a letter on the shelf, and it said a different name, so we thought it was either his letter or who ever owned the house. We decided we would get up early in the morning to escape early, because he told us he was taking us to a farm, we were all a bit worried that we would end up as pig food. But much later after we had settled down to sleep, I thought they were both asleep, when all of a sudden he came downstairs and stood over my boyfriends friend and started to do this weird laugh as he was looking down at him, he had on a short red silk dressing gown. I was terrified, i thought he was going to do something. But after that he just went back upstairs, they had also been awake but were pretending to be asleep. so if he had tried something they would have been ready for him. As soon as he had gone, we all grabbed are things as quickly as possible and got outside, i was the last out, and as i was about to go out the door, he came running down the stairs, saying "WAIT, I WAS GOING TO TAKE YOU TO THE FARM". I just said, dont worry we wanted to make a early start. Then we ran down the road, thinking ourselves very lucky to have escaped. I do have a memory for what he looked like, and i also think i can remember what name was on the letter, and have felt sure it was a well known mass murderer, but because i cannot be absolutely sure, i have never told the police. But maybe someone else can remember a man staying there,at that time (summer 1974) and may know who he was in the event of me getting it wrong. Can anyone shed some light on this?