Where was the 'haunted house' near 'Old Blue Lake' near Herbert, Ala.?

Some time ago, Len Price loaned me an interesting little book called “Conecuh County, Alabama: 1818-1870.” This 50-page book was published in February 1970 by the Pinckney D. Bowles Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy “as a collection of memories of Conecuh County and its people.”

I was flipping through this book the other day and an item about an old haunted house caught my eye. In this portion of the book, UDC member Grace Wiggins was telling about her grandfather, David Jay Brown, who served in Co. F of the 2^nd Alabama Infantry. After the Civil War, Brown returned to Conecuh County and married his young sweetheart.

Brown and his young wife settled near Sepulga Swamp, a few miles south of Travis Bridge. Brown was a timberman and ran rafts of timber down the Sepulga River to be sold. His travels down the river often left his wife and young children at home alone for several days at a time.

“She must have been very brave for between their house and the river was a large lake known as Blue Lake,” Wiggins said. “The story was that it had no bottom but plenty of fish.”

In the opposite direction, not far from where the Browns lived, there was a “haunted house,” Wiggins said. Wiggins noted that she was a little girl when her family moved to Herbert, and through the woods their house wasn’t far from the old Brown homeplace. Her grandfather would often visit her family and said that the bottomless “Old Blue Lake” was the best place he knew for fishing.

“Of course, we went with grandpa fishing, but this meant passing the haunted house,” Wiggins said. “And I was scared to death to pass it. All of this was frightening, but I couldn’t resist the trip.”

Wiggins went on to say that her mother and aunt thought the huckleberries and dogwood bushes (for making yard brooms) around the old haunted house were the best around.

“While they were busy picking, the children listened for the ghosts inside the house,” Wiggins said. “We could hear someone hammering and many other strange noises inside the house, although it was vacant. We didn’t dare go too close and not far from our mothers.”

After reading this story, I did some research and found a David J. Brown, who died in 1909 and was buried in the Welcome Methodist Cemetery. This David J. Brown was born in 1844 and his headstone says that he served in Co. E of the 38^th Alabama Infantry. His wife was Mary Elizabeth Brown, who died in 1929 and is also buried in the Welcome Methodist Cemetery. Records reflect that David and Mary got married in 1871.

Also in this cemetery, you’ll find the grave of Grace Wiggins, who would have been five or six years old when her grandfather passed away. She died in 1994 at the age of 90, so she would have been about 67 years old when she recounted her “haunted house” story for the UDC’s book on Conecuh County history.

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone in the reading audience with more information about the story above. Where was the supposedly bottomless “Old Blue Lake” that Wiggins described? Where was the old haunted house? Does it still stand today? If not, what happened to it?