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| Pine Barren Creek in Wilcox County, Ala. |
One of the most majestic, picturesque natural features in
all of Wilcox County is Pine Barren Creek, which winds its long way for many,
twisting miles from the Alabama River, through eastern portions of the county
before playing out well inside Butler County, just west of Greenville.
On Saturday afternoon, I got the itch to get out and do a
little riding around, so I got in my pickup truck and eased up towards Pine
Apple. Not long after that, I found myself on County Road 59, headed north
between Pine Apple and Furman. I eventually crossed over a large bridge and
happened to glance over the side just in time to see a large buck, standing in
a patch of shade, watering himself in the creek below.
Just beyond the bridge, I found a safe place to pull over
and got out my trusty, dogeared copy of the “Alabama Atlas & Gazetteer.”
Using a finger, I traced the red line of County Road 59 on the map up out of
Pine Apple and verified that the wide creek I’d just crossed was in fact Pine
Barren Creek.
A few minutes later, I found myself standing on the bridge, in
the bright sunshine, looking downstream. The deer was nowhere in sight and my
ears were met only by the sounds of the wind in the trees and the whispering
waters below. I crossed to the other side of the bridge, peered west and
remembered that I was very close to one of the spookiest places in all of
Wilcox County – the supposedly haunted “Millie Hole.”
Versions of the Millie Hole story vary, but most agree that
before the Civil War a slave named Millie learned that her owner planned to
sell her away from her family. As you would imagine, this news upset her
terribly, and she became so distraught that she drowned herself in Pine Barren
Creek to keep from being sold away. In the years since this terrible event,
local residents, on moonlight nights, claim to have seen Millie’s ghost rise up
out of the creek.
One longtime county resident told me last year that in the
mid-1950s his family lived on County Road 59, about one mile south of Pine
Barren Creek. One night, his family was awoken about four o’clock in the
morning by an upset man at their door who had been severely cut from running
through a barbed wire fence. The man at the door lived near the Watts School on
County Road 59 and had been walking home from Snow Hill on an old gravel road
that took him within 50 yards of the Millie Hole.
The man told the family that as he passed the Millie Hole,
he saw a woman rise out of the creek in a long, white dress and start towards
him. This frightened the man so badly that he literally ran through a nearby
barbed wire fence. The man who told me this story last year said that he was
only 15 years old at the time, but he remembers the incident vividly because
the man who supposedly saw the ghost woke up his entire family pleading for
help.
In the end, I have to say that while I’ve never been to the
Millie Hole, it’s creepy reputation certainly precedes it. I’ve been told that
the Millie Hole today is about two feet deep and is located on private property
west of County Road 59. I’ve also been told that it is in an area of dense
vegetation and is not recommended for visiting.
With that said, if you get the urge, you can always ease up
County Road 59 like I did on Saturday and check out the nice view of the wide
creek from the bridge. If you happen along at the right time, you might even
see a big buck, standing in a patch of shade, getting his fill of that cool,
clear water as it whispers its way downstream towards the Butler County line.
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