Rose Hall Great House, Jamaica

The Rose Hall Great House is associated with the infamous ‘White Witch’ of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer. Annie moved to Haiti when she was 11 with her English mother and Irish father. Annie immediately took a keen interest in voodoo. Her parents died from Yellow Fever soon afterwards, but Annie was coached in the art of voodoo by her nanny, who perished when Annie was 18. People close to Annie dying was a familiar theme during her short life. She moved to Jamaica and married John Rose Palmer, the owner of Rose Hall.

After 7 years, Annie Palmer murdered her husband, a pattern that was repeated twice more in the next three years with her two more husbands. Each was killed in a different bedroom using a different method. Annie Palmer also had many slaves lovers during her life and they helped Annie dispose of the bodies via a secret passage that led to the beach. Annie was hated by the slaves for her cruelty towards them, indeed one of her favourite pastimes was to watch them being punished from an upper window.

Annie Palmer was killed during the Christmas Insurrection of 1831 by the slaves on her estate. A brutal ending to a cruel life. Rose Hall is haunted with many sightings of ghosts. Indeed people’s cups have been moved from one room to another while their backs were turned. In the cellar are a number of letters from previous visitors, who have taken photographs in different parts of the house. The images contain an apparition in either a mirror or a shiny surface.

Rose Hall is recommended simply because of the fascinating tale of Annie Palmer. It is almost miraculous that the house is still standing at all given that it lay derelict for 130 years, before being restored by John Rollins between 1965 and 1972 at a cost of $2.5 million.