A magnificent mansion with a sombre past, tales say that a White Witch lived here, and now haunts the house.
With a backdrop of wildly forested hills – its blank windows staring, its walls a ghostly white – you'd be forgiven for thinking there was something a little spooky about the Rose Hall Great House. And you'd be right. This is the home of one of Jamaica's best-known legends – the White Witch of Rose Hall.Whether this morbid tale of witchcraft, murder and hauntings has any truth to it, Rose Hall remains a striking building. And its real history is just as fascinating as the myths that have been woven around this place over the centuries.The Great House was actually built in the 1750s, a time when the colonial English plantation owners were fabulously wealthy thanks to sugar-cane – and slaves. Rose Hall is probably one of the most impressive of their mansions, three storeys high, with rich mahogany floors, carved staircases and silk wall-paper.It was restored in the 1960s, and exhibits the opulent lifestyle of the plantation-owners – and the cruel, harsh lives of Jamaica's slaves at the time. But it's the tale of the White Witch that brings visitors here – and Rose Hall doesn't disappoint. It revolves around Annie Palmer, the 19th-century mistress of the house, said to have murdered her four husbands while practising the dark arts of voodoo.Her tomb can be found in the gardens, but she isn't there. Instead she is thought to haunt the house, unable to rest after her murder by a slave. The legend has it that her depravity extended to seducing them, and then murdering them to hide her actions. Many claim to see her passing along one of the house's grand hallways.You can delve into the White Witch story by attending one of the Night Tours – by candlelight of course – or watching the White Witch play. And whether you end up as a sceptic or a believer, a glass of the house rum cocktail – inevitably named Witches Brew – rounds the evening off nicely.
