'Old Purefoy House' described in 'Haunted Places: The National Directory'

I was flipping through a book the other day called “Haunted Places: The National Directory” by Dennis William Hauck. Published in 2002, this 486-page book describes hundreds of supposedly “haunted” places in America, including 41 such “supernatural locations” in Alabama. Of these, only one is located within the borders of Wilcox County – the “Old Purefoy House” at Furman.

According to Hauck, “a buried well in the back yard here is said to be haunted by the spirit of a black man who died digging it. In the early 1800s, Dr. John H. Purefoy was having a new well dug when the wooden rigging collapsed and buried a worker under tons of sandy soil. Although rescuers could hear the man screaming for help, they were unable to save him, and his body was never recovered. Today, grass will not grow over the sunken depression where the well collapsed, and people see the form of a man sitting hunched over the top of the well. His sobbing cries for help still fill the night air.”

A longer version of this old ghost story can be found within the pages of Kathryn Tucker Windham’s classic 1969 book, “13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey.” Also, while I’ve never personally investigated the site of this ghostly tale, I have included Furman’s Purifoy-Lipscomb House in my annual list of “Spookiest Places in Wilcox County.” These annual lists were first published in The Progressive Era in late October 2016.

With that said, next week’s edition of the newspaper will mark the first in the month of October and, if nothing changes, I plan to release my annual list of “Spookiest Places in Wilcox County” in the Halloween edition of the newspaper on Oct. 31. This year, I’d like to include a few spooky locations that haven’t made the previous lists, and I’m encouraging readers to send me their nominations.

For those of you who missed previous lists of “Spookiest Places,” here are some of the places that received mention: the Camden Cemetery, the Castro Tree in Camden, Coy Cemetery, the Coy Railroad Crossing, Dale Masonic Lodge in Camden, Gaines Ridge in Camden, Gee’s Bend Ferry Landing near Camden, the “House of the Dancing Skulls” near Rosebud, the intersection of County Roads 59 and 24 near Pine Apple, the Liddell-Burford House in Camden, Moore Academy in Pine Apple, the “Millie Hole” on Pine Barren Creek, Prairie Bluff Cemetery, Reaves Chapel Cemetery, Snow Hill Institute, the “Unfilled Hole” in Camden and the Wilcox Female Institute in Camden.

This year, I’m looking for new “spooky” places to add to the list, so if you know of any such places within the confines of Wilcox County that aren’t mentioned above, please let me hear from you. Not only will I add them to my list, but I will also make it a point to visit the location myself, if possible, investigate the claims of “supernatural” activity there and write about it for the newspaper in the months to come. Feel free to supply me with as much detail as possible as it will make telling others about it that much easier.