Ok, Annie Palmer the white witch haunts Rose Hall you say, well Ben Radford begs to differ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Radford#The_White_Witch_of_Rose_Hall

It seems even fictional characters can haunt locations in Jamaica… And GHI gladly hunt them. It's a sad state of affairs.

Addendum: GHI should of course have creds for their debunk of the mirror and the bottles moving, even though the client was very reluctant to accept their debunk of the mirror. And the client still believes her "house"is haunted by a fictional person. What to say? For some belief trumphs everything…

Strangely enough GHI did not acknowledge or even mention Radford's debunkof the ghost itself. I wonder why… maybe because it interfered with their narrative and position as paranormal authorities (we debunk, we decide). Also, doesn't really look that good to the public hunting for someone who can't be there… better not tell them.

Here's more detail from the Radford article –

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:qQ6WVPwvebQJ:ghosts-hauntings.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_ghost_of_rose_hall+Fortean+Times+239&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

If he has his facts straight, it looks like the present day story comes from a very fictionalized combined version of the lives of two of Rose Hall's mistresses.

The above article is not written by Ben Radford, though. His article is longer and more extensive (six pages in Forten Times according to himself), unfortunately it seems not to be available online.

And here ( http://www.pointofinquiry.org/ben_radford_paranormal_investigation/ ) is even more, from Ben Radford himself from the podcast Point of Inquiry, he does appear in the comments as swell. I might misinterpret him, but he seems to say Annie Palmer is a fictional character something the article by Jill Stefko The Doctor linked to doesn't really seem to say. So I guess what Radford says is that the "white wich" is fictional but there was an actual Annie Palmer who's real story differs greatly, if not in all aspects, from those of the "white witch". Still that would mean there is an Annie Palmer to hunt for, since she has existed, but not in the manner the myth purports. In fact it seems she didn't even die there.

In short, myth has taken the place of history and the actual Annie Palmer is a victim of myth peddling, legends and modern folklore all supported for the sake of commercialism since the myth draws paranormal tourism in large numbers. And paranormal tv shows…

It is rather disrespectful to base any investigation or claim on such myths since if ghosts exists (which GHI do believe) and Annie Palmer is one and present at Rose Hall she has to be infuriated with people slandering her name, making her look like "evil". How about that credo "Ghosts are people too" that TAPS like to reiterate. Would you treat a fellow human like you treated Annie Palmer? Just because she can't defend herself, everything goes, and it seems respect is only reserved for the living. It is truly saddening.

Lest we forget the Ghost Chaser's credo.
"Do not clutter my conclusions with facts".

"I might misinterpret him, but he seems to say Annie Palmer is a fictional character something the article by Jill Stefko The Doctor linked to doesn't really seem to say. So I guess what Radford says is that the "white wich" is fictional but there was an actual Annie Palmer who's real story differs greatly, if not in all aspects, from those of the "white witch"."

That's the way I get it also from the Stefko article, where she uses his article as her source material.

But … in the podcast you linked to he specifically says " Anne Palmer cannot haunt Rose Hall because she is a fiction – the person never existed"

Either Stefko has it all wrong, or Radford statements on this podcast are very misleading. …. Perhaps I'm just being too skeptical of his statements

Hey there!

Actually this investigation will be appearing in my upcoming book Scientific Paranormal Investigation as Chapter 12, it will be available in June.

To clarify (greatly, as the original took me two pages to carefully untangle myth from truth):

The real story of Annie Palmer can be found in an obscure 1965 research report by Geoffrey Yates, an Assistant Archivist at the Jamaica Archives. The following is summarized from his account, “Rose Hall: Death of a Legend.”

Annie Mary Paterson was born in 1802 in England. She traveled to the Caribbean as a child, though instead of being instructed in the dark voodoo arts in Haiti, she had an unremarkable youth. She did indeed marry John Rose Palmer at the age of 18 on 28 March 1820; the couple moved into Rose Hall, but Palmer’s fortunes had ebbed and their life was one of debt and want, not opulence. John Palmer died seven years after their marriage, in 1827 at the age of 42. Palmer died several thousand pounds in debt, and Annie inherited little or nothing. Though John Palmer died young by modern standards, in those days of poor medical care, dying of fever—especially in the tropics—was not uncommon. Research into accounts of the day reveal not even a hint of any foul play in Palmer’s death; as Yates puts it, “there was no murder, no motive and no evidence.” As for Annie, she soon moved out of Rose Hall to another part of the island and never married again, dying in 1846. She was buried in the church yard in Montego Bay on 9 July. The truth is as simple and mundane as that.

Thus it’s clear that virtually everything in the “true story behind the story” is wrong. John Palmer was not rich, nor murdered for his money. (Nor, for that matter, is his corpse is missing; record of his burial can be found in the St. James Parish Register.) Annie Palmer never learned voodoo, nor engaged in any murder, cruelty, or debauchery; she had only one husband, and she was not murdered in 1831 but died of natural causes some fifteen years later. Nor was she even buried on the plantation; her “tomb” on the Rose Hall grounds—from which psychics claimed Annie’s ghost emerged—is in fact empty and not a grave at all.

So how, then, did the convoluted story of the White Witch of Rose Hall arise? It was not Annie Palmer but Rosa Palmer—Annie’s husband’s great-uncle’s wife, born nearly a century earlier—who had four husbands, none of them murdered. The process is classic legend-making. People blended a few facts of Rosa Palmer’s life with a few facts of Annie Palmer’s life, creating a wholly fictional person whose only connection to Annie Palmer is a shared name….

It is an irony that spirits at Rose Hall, “the most haunted house in the Western Hemisphere” and indeed one of “the world’s most haunted places”—as confirmed by a famous psychic medium—is in reality merely myth passed off by careless writers as fact. Some acknowledge that there is much legend and myth in the ghost story (it’s hard to deny, given the heavy influence of de Lisser’s book), but the mistake they make is assuming that somewhere amid the lurid stories and obvious folklore themes there must be some truth. Sometimes—I daresay often in “true account” ghost literature—pure fantasy is passed along as truth.

Though the ghost of Annie Palmer—like the Annie Palmer she was based on—is a fiction, the story of the White Witch of Rose Hall has left victims (aside from the credibility of some writers and psychics). The legacy of an innocent woman has been forever blighted by careless research and false accusations. As Terry Hawkins, a researcher whose uncle was an engineer on the Rose Hall restoration notes, Annie “was the blameless lady who has been constantly slandered by generations of ignorant people and whose very name is still being exploited to sell admission tickets to Rose Hall Great House. I hope that both James Castello and H.G. DeLisser, who originated and embellished this legend in 1868 and 1929 respectively, are spinning in their graves.” Imagine if, a century from now, due to some strange mix of myth and circumstance, people describe you as a cruel, perverted, sadistic serial killer, and psychics confirm this, relaying your sensational confessions to the public.

So did a woman named Annie Palmer exist? Sure. Any conection to the White Witch? No.

all best,

Ben

Hi Ben, and thanks for dropping by with the info –

I wonder if poor Anne Palmer is doomed to roam the corridors of Rose Hall, looking out windows and peeking into mirrors until her true story is accepted and the mediums spreading the lies about her are exposed ?

I'm sure you came across these, but there is some interesting background here – be sure to follow the Rose Hall:Death of a legend link at the bottom. http://jamaicanfamilysearch.com/images/photos26.htm