Rose Hall Great House
Montego Bay, Jamaica

Rose Hall is the best-known great house in the country and is an easy afternoon visit from Montego Bay. This was once the home of the notorious Annie Palmer, better known as the White Witch.

As the story goes, Annie was born in 1802 in England to an English mother and Irish father. At the age of 10, her family moved to Haiti where her parents died of yellow fever.

Annie was adopted by a Haitian voodoo priestess and became skilled in the practice of voodoo.Later, according to the story, Annie moved to Jamaica, married, and built Rose Hall, an enormous plantation spanning 6,600 acres with over 2,000 slaves. According to legend, Annie murdered several of her husbands and her slave lovers. To learn more about the tales of Rose Hall, read the novel, The White Witch of Rose Hall, which you’ll find in gift shops around the island.

Guided tours take you to the ballroom, dining room, and Annie’s bedroom and grave. The gift shop displays photographs of what many believe are ghostly apparitions in the bedrooms of Rose Hall. There's also a pub on site where you can take a sip of the Witch's Brew.

Your tour ends at the grave of Annie Palmer; many tour guides sing "The Ballad of Annie Palmer," a song written by Johnny Cash who lived at the neighboring Cinnamon Hill Great House.