The White Witch of Rose Hall, Montego Bay, Jamaica

MythWitchJamaica

Jan 27

In Montego Bay, Jamaica stands a large Jamaican Georgian-style mansion carved out of stone and mahogany. Today it is a museum detailing its past history as a plantation house and tells the story of one of the home’s previous owners from the 1800s.

A woman who seemed to bring death wherever she went and instilled fear in those forced to work the plantation. Long after her death, she is said to still roam the halls and grounds of Rose Hall possibly in a search of more victims.

Today we’re looking at the legend of Annie Palmer, whose actions and involvement with the dark arts and voodoo earned her the nickname, The White Witch of Rose Hall.

PART 1 - The Historic Rose Hall

Rosa Kelly

January 1746 Englishman Henry Fanning arrives in Jamaica looking to settle down and find a bride. He soon meets twenty-four-year-old beautiful and charming Rosa Kelly and they marry by July of 1746. Meanwhile, Henry has also found and purchased 290 acres of land, making preparations to build a large mansion for his new bride. But by year’s end, Henry has passed away, leaving everything to Rosa in his will.

But Rosa wouldn’t remain a widow for long, by 1750 she marries a man named George Ash and together they start the process of fulfilling Henry’s final request of building the mansion. At the time, like many other places in the world, diseases such as cholera, scarlet fever, and smallpox spread through Jamaica unrestrained, and in 1752 George Ash would succumb to disease and die before the mansion, now called Rose Hall, was complete.

The following year Rosa married for the third time, this time to Norwood Witter in a marriage said to have been unhappy for Rosa but financially beneficial to Norwood. The union lasted 12 years before he too passed away and Rosa was once again left alone to watch over the plantation.

John Palmer

Her final marriage was to John Palmer, a widower with two sons and owner of the neighboring plantation. It was around this time both plantations were joined and approximately 300 slaves were forced to work them.

In 1790 Rosa Palmer passed away and seven years later John Palmer also passed away leaving everything including Rose Hall to his sons. After their deaths in 1818, the plantation and Rose Hall were left to a nephew, John Rose Palmer.

Like Henry Fanning all those years before, John Rose Palmer looked to settle down on his newly acquired land and live a relatively peaceful life. In 1820 he met the brash and beautiful Annie Patterson and he believed her to be the woman who would be by his side until his final days. According to legend Annie Patterson would bring terror and death upon the land and ensure his final days were anything but peaceful.

PART 2 - The White Witch

Annie Patterson

Annie Patterson was born in England in 1802 and by 1812 her family moved to Haiti in an attempt to take part in the growing economic prosperity Haiti had to offer at the time. A year later both her parents died of yellow fever leaving Annie to be watched over by their nanny who was secretly a voodoo priestess.

Having become protective of the young Annie, over the next seven years, her nanny taught her witchcraft, voodoo, and seduction spells. After her nanny’s death in 1820, Annie moved to Jamaica to put the spells to good use.

Power and Status

Her goal was to gain power and status and after meeting John Palmer, the owner of one of the largest plantations in Jamaica, she found her target. According to legend, Annie placed a seduction spell on John and he immediately became infatuated with her, asking for her hand in marriage within days.

Though Annie now had what she wanted, it only took a few short months for her to grow bored of John and began taking the slaves from the plantation as lovers. One night John discovered her in bed with another man and beat her with a riding crop, the following day John Palmer was dead. Rumors swirled around the plantation of him being poisoned but no one would dare question Annie.

The White Witch Takes Control

She was now the sole owner of the Rose Hall estate and ruled it with an iron fist. On a daily basis, she rode her black horse through the plantation threatening any who looked at her the wrong way with black magic and death.

Any lovers she took had to have eyes for only her, if she caught them staring or glancing at another she would have them killed or place a curse on them. One maid who talked back to Annie was thrown off the second-floor balcony by an unseen force and fell to her death.

Those that were familiar with voodoo instantly recognized the rituals she was heard performing and word spread quickly through the plantation earning her the nickname, The White Witch of Rose Hall.

Multiple Marriages

Eventually, Annie Palmer married again but she grew bored of her new husband too. By now she had become even more deranged and cruel, instead of divorce she stabbed him to death and had the slaves from the plantation bury the body somewhere on the estate.

Several years later a third husband was also killed, strangled by Annie, and his body buried somewhere on the land. It’s thought she wanted to get out of her third marriage because she grew fond of a local bookkeeper named Robert Rutherford and needed her husband out of the picture.

A Final Ritual

Unfortunately for Annie, Robert was in love with another woman named Millicent. This didn’t deter Annie, she instead decided to get rid of Millicent in her usual ways.

It’s said she performed a ritual one night, taking one of the newborn babies from the plantation and using its bones to put a curse on Millicent. A withering disease that killed her from the inside within a few days.

But Annie Palmer made a mistake, she didn’t know Millicent was the granddaughter of a powerful witch doctor, named Takoo. After discovering the death of his granddaughter he vowed revenge on the White Witch.

Takoo’s Revenge

Takoo gathered a mob from the plantation, staging a rebellion to gain access into Rose Hall, he then personally strangled Annie Palmer to death bringing her reign of terror to an end, or so they thought.

Takoo knew they had to put Annie’s body to rest with a ritual or else her spirit could rise back up to claim revenge. The mob dug her grave deep into the earth, further down than the customary six feet. Takoo then performed the ritual to prevent her soul from rising but it soon proved ineffective.

The White Witch Returns

Just weeks after her death, many reported seeing Annie Palmer staring out from her balcony before disappearing. Her ghostly figure was seen riding her black horse through the plantation as she had done multiple times before. Many feared entering Rose Hall for they claimed to still be able to hear Annie’s voice performing rituals in the dead of night.

The next few owners of Rose Hall were all said to have died from mysterious circumstances and soon no one dared to enter, leaving Rose Hall to be abandoned for the next hundred years.

In 1977 the Rollins family purchased the estate and fixed up Rose Hall making it a museum offering tours of the land and mansion. They also offer night tours and perform seances to try to reach out to the spirit of Annie Palmer but are they reaching out to the spirit of a real person or just a myth?

PART 3 - The Truth Behind the Legend

There are several versions of the White Witch legend, some versions say Takoo was actually Annie Palmer’s lover and he killed her after she cursed his child. Some versions tell of a much more vicious and ruthless Annie who tortured slaves in a hidden tunnel underground. And other versions say Annie’s Haitian nanny who taught her voodoo was actually a creole nurse who adopted her after her parents died.

Either way are any of these versions true?

Annie Patterson later Annie Palmer did exist but The White Witch of Rose Hall never did. The real Annie Patterson did marry John Palmer in 1820 but this is the only piece of the legend that is actually true.

The Real Annie Patterson

Annie Patterson was born in 1801, her father died shortly before her birth but her mother was alive until 1832. Annie was raised by her mother and stepfather, not a nanny or nurse who taught her the dark arts.

John and Annie Palmer married in 1820 and in reality, were married for seven years until John’s death in 1827. Annie Palmer then moved back to England as the estate was lost due to the large debt that was owed. She later returned to Jamaica but lived a peaceful life far from the Rose Hall Estate; she died in 1846 with no records of her having remarried.

So how did the story of the White Witch start?

Rumors and Stories

It appears rumors of Annie Palmer's wickedness started while she was alive after she had returned to England. In 1830 Reverend Hope Masterton Waddell told of a Mrs. Palmer who was hanged by her slaves near the Rose Hall Estate.

It’s not known where he heard the rumor but after he told it, the rumor was free to take a life of its own especially since Annie was no longer in the area to prove it false.

In 1868 the story appeared for the first time in print, in a pamphlet written by James Castello entitled, Legend of Rose Hall Estate in the Parish of St. James, Jamaica except, in this case, the murders take place in the 1700s and attribute them to Rosa Palmer. In 1891 a guide entitled Tourist’s Guide to the Parishes of Jamaica also blamed the fictitious murders on Rosa and stated she killed 5 husbands.

In 1911 author Joseph Shore writes a book entitled The True Tale of Rose Hall wherein he does the opposite and tells the same story of voodoo and murder confidently attributing it to Annie Palmer, cementing her as the White Witch.

The White Witch of Rosehall

The story then became famous when a historical fiction novel by Herbert G. de Lisser entitled The White Witch of Rosehall was released in 1929. The book muddles fact and fiction even more than the previous stories, for example, it takes the multiple marriages of Rosa Kelly and attributes them to Annie Patterson embellishing the deaths that occurred.

It was here the characters of Takoo; the witch doctor, Millicent; his granddaughter, and Robert Rutherford; the bookkeeper appear for the first time in the legend.

The book and previous tellings of the legend cemented the story of the White Witch as fact and today the legend is still told as if it were true. Those who visit the Rose Hall museum and go on the night tours claim to see the spirit of Annie Palmer roaming the estate, standing on the second-floor balcony, or hear her voice reciting spells and rituals from afar.

Yet we know both Rosa and Annie Palmer never murdered anyone nor were they involved with dark magic and the white witch never existed.