The White Rose
The Caribbean is home to beautiful historical sites and buildings. Many stand high, providing panoramic views of their surrounding lush gardens. Visitors hike to the top of mountains where old jails once stood, or tour plantation homes where sugar and crops were once harvested. On the surface they appear peaceful, but some, if you take a closer look, have haunting histories. So lets take a deeper look now beyond the secrets within the black owl…
Rose Hall sits high on a Jamaican hillside. A Georgian mansion, it is one of the most impressive and famous of the great houses on the island. Built in 1770, it was reconstructed in 1960 with its original mahogany floors, and decorated with silk wallpaper, chandeliers, and European antiques. Today, visitors can tour Rose Hall as they would any museum. However, the story behind Rose Hall is not as lovely as the building itself.
Annie Palmer moved from Haiti to marry the owner of Rose Hall, named John. Coincidentally, or maybe not, John and two of her other husbands died. She is suspected to have been the culprit of their demises, earning the nickname, “Mistress of Voodoo”. It is rumored that she took male slaves into her bed at night and murdered them. Legend has it that her own death came during the night of the 1830s slave uprisings. One of her slave lovers is said to have suffocated her.
Today, seances are held in the house and visitors can explore the haunted parts, such as her bedroom, where the murders allegedly took place. Although no ghosts have been found on the premises, I wouldn’t want to mess with the White Witch of Rose Hall.
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