White Witch (of Rose Hall)

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The White Witch, Annie Palmer, was born in Paris. She is a character in Jamaican folklore.

According to legend, she was a beautiful but spoiled young white woman who arrived on the island as the wife of the owner of Rose Hall Plantation, east of Montego Bay in 1820. Annie's husband, and several husbands afterwards, all died suspiciously. Annie became known as a mistress of voodoo, using it to terrorize her slaves, and taking male slaves into her bed at night all of whom she subsequently murdered.

She is also supposed to have dispatched three husbands allegedly because she was bored of them. Assuming this is true it would make Annie an extreme example of a clinical psychopath although the stories are speculation at best. The legend has her murdered in her bed during the slave uprisings of the 1830s.

Rose Hall is widely regarded to be a visually impressive house and the most famous in Jamaica. It is a Georgian Mansion with a stone base and a plastered upper storey, high on the hillside, with a panorama view over the coast. Built in the 1770s, Rose Hall was restored in the 1960s to its former splendor, with mahogany floors, interior windows and doorways, panelling and wooden ceilings. It is decorated with silk wallpaper printed with palms and birds, ornamented with chandeliers and furnished with mostly European antiques. There is a bar downstairs and a restaurant.

Rose Hall is also known for fanciful legends of underground tunnels, bloodstains and hauntings that surround it. There is little evidence to support the legend other than a version of which was written by H. G. de Lisser in his 1928 novel The White Witch of Rose Hall.