Haunted Resorts: The White Witch of Rose Hall and The Ghosts of Hotel Del Coronado // Dark Summer Series
We're continuing our descent into Dark Summer with a look at some of the most haunted, summery resorts in the world. Would you dare stay a night in the most haunted room at the Hotel Del Coronado?
TW: Suicide
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SOURCES
https://boroughsofthedead.com/white-witch-rose-hall/
http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples/fred03.htm
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-696/B-001-001-696_djvu.txt
https://thepalmsjamaica.com/annie-palmer-white-witch-rose-hall/
nva.com/design/DAGAoHIY4PA/w2V8IghnF_3tasbjVxKaSg/edit
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-23166213
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/haiti-ancient-traditions-voodoo
https://www.pilotguides.com/articles/a-short-history-of-slavery-and-sugar-cane-in-jamaica/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-02-19-fi-33889-story.html
https://www.10news.com/lifestyle/exploring-san-diego/is-the-hotel-del-coronado-haunted
https://www.reddit.com/r/sandiego/comments/qif899/kate_morgan_hotel_del_coronado/
https://sandiegomagazine.com/everything-sd/living-design/i-tried-it-room-3327-at-hotel-del-coronado/
https://hoteldel.com/press/haunted-hotel-del-coronado/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghosts/comments/9t6sk2/has_anyone_experienced_ghost_attachment
https://www.newspapers.com/image/380092020/?match=1&terms=hotel%20del%20coronado%20death
https://www.newspapers.com/image/27534837/?match=1&terms=%22hotel%20del%20coronado%22%20kate%20morgan
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore
We’re deep into our summer series here on the show, and today, I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a while.
Picture it, you’re relaxing on the beach all day, soaking up the sun on a vacation, and then you retire to your room at the resort for the end of the night. The cold water from the shower feels good on your sun worn skin, and the thread count is so lovely. You fall asleep in just a few minutes, ready to do it all again tomorrow.
But, sometime around 3am, you awake to a noise in your room. Maybe it’s just the breeze coming through the window, but maybe it’s something else. The place you're staying at, as beautiful as it is, has a dark past. Many resorts do. It’s just that the tourism industry has done a good job of making sure that you don’t know that
Today, I want to dive into the dark history of a few summery locations, and the ghost stories that accompany them. We’re going to look at a Jamaican resort that’s said to be haunted by a witch, and then I want to tell you about the sunny California hotel and the mysterious tragedy that happened on its grounds.
As a reminder, you can listen to this show ad free over on patreon or by subscribing on Apple podcasts. For just $5 a month you’ll get all the episodes ad free AND a monthly bonus episode. And then On patreon and the high council tier you can also join me for our show Footnotes, where I go over the case file for each episode now. Recently I’ve been doing those episodes on video so I can show you guys the photos and videos I collect on each story, and for this one I have some ghosty photos I’ll be sharing.
Ok, we’re going to get into it, after a short break.
Picture a grand mansion standing tall against a backdrop of a clear blue sky, framed by lush greenery and tropical flora. This is Rose Hall, an 18th-century Georgian mansion perched on the hills overlooking Montego Bay, Jamaica. With its whitewashed facade and imposing stone steps leading up to the entrance, it radiates an air of elegance and grandeur.
Rose hall sits over Caribbean sea, and from its front steps, you can see the turquoise water glistening in the sun, just past a field of manicured grass. And while it’s a beautiful summer stay for families on vacation, guests often complain of….strange things happening to them.
Take for instance, the story of a woman who stayed at Rose Hall in 2007. One night, she lay in bed fast asleep when she heard a banging on her door. She rolled over to one side to check the clock, and the red glow read 2:30AM through the darkness. Maybe she imagined it, she thought as she started drifting back to sleep. But there it was again.
This time, her eyes shot open. The room was so dark shapes danced around in her eyes as she looked around the room. She rolled over to her husband to nervously wake him and ask him to see who was at the door, but he wasn’t there.
Terrified, she tiptoed out of the bed and bumbled her way over to the door in the dark where she held her eye to the peephole. Outside was the shape of a man. It was….her husband?
She pulled the door open. What are you doing out here?
But her husband looked confused. What do you mean? He asked. You asked me to come out here.
Her husband proceeded to tell her that a few minutes prior, she had apparently woken him from his sleep and told him to go out into the hall. But… she didn’t. She was dead asleep, and she had never been one to sleep walk or talk.
Her mind immediately went to earlier that day, when the couple, along with their 10 year old daughter, had done a tour of the grounds of Rose Hall, where they heard the terrifying stories of of the resort’s history, and how strange occurrences like this weren’t that uncommon.
They heard about the Hall’s devastating past. How it was first built by a man from England, Henry Fanning, on a plot of land he had purchased to build a large sugar plantation on. Henry named it after the woman he was about to marry, Rose Kelly. He would never be able to enjoy the home, however, because he passed away shortly after the wedding. The home was completed by Rose’s second husband who also passed away before he could make any use of it.
It was as if the land that the home was built on was trying to purge itself of the ownership.
But they had heard stories of an evil spirit that haunts the grounds, known as the White Witch. It’s said that the Witch’s above ground tomb is still on the property of Rose Hall, and her spirit is forever tethered to the land.
To tell the story of the white witch, we have to tell the story of how Rose Hall came to be, which is deeply embedded in the history of Jamaica. So let’s go back to that time, in the 1700’s, when the white witch wasn’t in her tomb, she was a living woman named Annie Palmer.
Annie Palmer was born in the 18th century in England, but moved with her parents to Haiti around the age of 7. It’s said that while she was there, she was mostly raised by her Haitian Nanny while her parents did business. That nanny taught her how to do everything, how to ride a bike, how to braid her hair, and also, how to practice Haitian Voodoo.
Voodoo is a respected religious practice in Haiti, brought over by West African slaves who practiced it for over 6,000 years. If Haitian practices were taught to white families, they were almost always blended with catholicism to make it more palatable.
But Voodoo was and still is openly practiced to honor nature. It’s not the voodo-doll revenge religion it often gets portrayed as. A typical practice happens outside and can start with a (priest or priestess) sacrificing a chicken to the Loa as a welcome offering so that they can come to provide spiritual influence on issues in congregants’ lives, like their health.
So Annie, with the aid of her nanny, turned to Voodoo for help when her parents became gravely ill when she was 10. They both died the same year from what was most likely yellow fever.
By 18 years old, Annie went to Jamaica to find a husband, where she met John Palmer, the nephew of Rose Kelly, the woman who the hall was named after.
Annie would have walked up to Rose Hall on a sunny day when the land was a fully functioning plantation. Thousands of slaves would be working the land, cutting sugar cane since before the sun rose, hands raw and bloody from squeezing the sugar cane all day to extract the product. And yet, when she saw it, she immediately fell in love. She and John Palmer married shortly after.
But if you look at historical records, you’ll see that John Palmer died shortly after they were wed. There are a few different versions of what happened that survived from over 200 years ago. One says that Annie was bored with John, and took a lover, perhaps one of her many, many slaves. And one night, during a rendezvous he caught her, and hurt her. Another says that Annie wanted the plantation to herself. Either way, it’s believed that one night she brought him a poisoned drink and watched as he writhed on the floor until the light left his eyes.
After that, Annie ran the plantation, and her personal life, with bloodlust.
She was said to be extremely cruel to her slaves and what started as violence as discipline became violence for sport. She’d watch them be beaten from her favorite balcony and then instruct them to be starved to death, all alone, in the dark basement if they disobeyed her. Anyone caught running away was likely snapped up in bear traps that were set along the edge of the plantation. Even the children were put to ridiculous standards; if they spilled a single drop of water in the heavy wooden buckets used to carry water to the main house, they’d be severely punished
No one in Annie’s life was spared, and she was vitriolic towards each of her following husbands all of which she killed. Her second husband was stabbed to death and just to make sure the deed was totally done, Annie then poured hot oil in his ears. Her third husband was strangled.
Their bodies are said to be buried under three palm trees which still blow today in the Jamaican breeze by the 5th hole of the Cinnamon Hill golf course.
Annie wouldn’t meet her match until she struck up a relationship with one of the slaves on the plantation, a man by the name of Takoo. Takoo was patient with Annie, possibly because he wanted to slowly gain her trust and use what he learned from her to protect his friends and family.
But one day, Takoo left Annie’s quarters to find that his grand-niece, Millicent, had been killed. What happened? Takoo asked. It was explained to him that Annie had used a spell to kill Millicent when she realized that another man Annie was interested in, Robert Rutherford, was eyeing the girl.
It was then that Takoo swore he’d get his revenge, and the next day, he calmly walked into Annie’s quarters, digging his fingernails into his fists to control his rage. There, he found Annie laying on her bed casually, the warm caribbean breeze was gently flowing into her room from an open window. She looked like she didn’t have a care in the world, none of this mattered to her. Takoo was overtaken by such a violent rage that he lunged at annie, and strangled her in her own bed. Yet another owner of the plantation to meet an unfortunate and untimely end.
But Annie didn’t let her earthly death stop her terror on the property. She’s haunted Rose Hall from her grave, an above-ground tomb that sits on the grounds as a grim reminder of the hotel's history.
In 1833, Slavery was abolished in Jamaica after a slave uprising, and The plantation fell into disrepair. Eventually, A family tried moving in in the early 1900s, but moved out when an invisible hand pushed their maid off of Rose’s favorite balcony. It remained unoccupied until the wealthy Rollins family immaculately restored the manor in the 1960s to its full splendor, even making it a commercial tourist destination with a restaurant, a bar, a golf course, and wedding venue.
Still, even after all these years, there’s a portrait that hangs in the main hall of the resort. Though there are no names on the photo, it’s assumed to feature Annie wearing her favorite color red, which reminded her of blood. In the photo, the woman in red is surrounded by children who all look strangely morose.
That’s because Annie never had any children, and according to the legends, used dolls as stand-ins for the family she’d never had to make her be portrayed as a good-hearted mother. It’s said that when you walk under the photo to this day that Rose Hall’s eyes will track your every move
And that picture would have been seen by the family who experienced the strange event at the beginning of this story, when the woman’s husband wound up out in the hall after his wife told him to leave. Some have suggested that was the voice of Annie, expelling a man from a woman’s sleeping chambers for fear that she’d be killed in her own bed.
While it’s been debated how accurate the story of Annie Palmer actually is, how much of her real story was passed down vs how much became folklore over the years, it’s not hard to find stories of people who experienced hauntings on the property. It’s also not uncommon to find stories of people who believe a spirit attached to them on the property and followed them home.
In 2018, a man complained that he felt like something was off after visiting Rose Hall with his wife on vacation. He felt like no matter how much sleep he got upon returning he was always horribly exhausted, something that was not common for him. He also was randomly struck with bouts of deep, intense sadness. The man also claimed that the electronics in his home had all started going haywire out of the blue. Not usually one to believe in the supernatural, he couldn’t help but wonder if something from Rose Hall had followed him home.
Another woman couldn’t shake a recurring nightmare that she was photographing Annie’s apparition, even when she had made it all the way back home to New York. In the dream her camera would be smashed as she tried to capture a photo of a white figure. She’d awake from the dream feeling like she was being suffocated in her own bed, her heart beating out of her chest.
Whether or not you believe in the Ghost of Annie Palmer the White Witch, Rose Hall was built on land that didn’t want it by people who died untimely deaths trying to complete their vision. And to me, it makes sense that now as people come to the island to visit, to marvel at its horrors and indulge in its beauty, they feel as if something is trying to expel them from the land, and occasionally haunt them even when they make it home. Is it the ghost of Annie Palmer who haunts Rose Hall, or is there something else, something that belonged to Jamaica wayy before Annie even went there, that’s causing these disturbances?
More, after the break.
I wouldn’t be able to do an episode on Haunted resorts without talking about the infamous Hotel Del Coronado in California.
Nestled along the sun-kissed shores of Coronado Island, California, stands an iconic red-roofed edifice that has witnessed more than its fair share of history and mystery. This opulent Victorian beachfront resort has graced the coastline since 1888. Its gleaming white facade and striking red turrets rise against the backdrop of the serene Pacific Ocean, presenting an image of timeless elegance and grandeur.
But, as with many beautiful and interesting things I talk about on this show, there’s much more to the Hotel Del Coronado than its hauntingly beautiful design.
Just ask Cecelia, who worked in the Hotel’s gift shop starting around 2008.
When Cecelia would check guests out, she’d ask them how they were liking the hotel. And sometimes they’d get this look on their face. Like they had something on their mind but they were afraid to tell her. Almost like they thought she’d think they were crazy if they said anything.
But usually they did. They’d nervously ask her, Do you think the hotel is haunted?
Guests would go on to describe strange things that were happening in their rooms. Like how they’d close all the windows and turn off all the lights when they left for the day, only to come back and find that every light and fan was somehow on. And yet everything else would be right where they left it, it’s not like their room had been serviced.
Or how sometimes the volume on their tv sets would randomly switch to full blast. Or how in the dead of the night the sensored light in their bathroom went off, even though no one was in there. According to Cecelia, this ALWAYS happened between 4 and 4:30 in the morning.
Cecelia was never surprised when guests told her their stories because it happened so frequently. And to be honest, she experienced quite a bit of strange activity herself just working in the hotel’s gift shop.
It usually started with the lights flickering. She usually felt like that signaled that something was about to happen. Then, an object like a book or a pair of binoculars would fly off of their display case onto the floor.
Sometimes she’d come into work and find that not only had the books flown off their shelves, but they had arranged themselves near the threshold of the room.
One time, Cecelia noticed that a marble game on display was missing 3 marbles. Maybe it was some kid that came in and jacked them without anyone noticing. It was annoying, but it was just the display game, so she left it alone.
However, 2 months later, she noticed that two of the marbles had reappeared in the game. No stranger to the weird things happening at the hotel, she jokingly said out loud to whatever spirit was haunting the store “If you’re going to bring the marbles back, at least bring all of them!”
Just then, a perfume bottle across the room smashed on the floor a few feet away from where it was displayed. Cecelia was the only one in the store.
When asked exactly what she thought was going on, she explained that she believed there were a few spirits that haunted the grounds at Hotel Del Coronado, but the most prevalent one, and the one that comes up the most when you research the history of the Hotel, is that of Kate Morgan.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1892, a 24-year-old woman checked into the Coronado under the name Lottie Anderson Bernard. She had no luggage with her, yet didn’t give a checkout date. The clerk assigned her room 302, for $3.80 a night, all meals included, and she was on her way.
For the next 5 days, the young woman stayed in the hotel. At first, her demeanor was chipper, she was drinking whisky cocktails and riding horses. But staff would later testify that as the week progressed, she seemed to become more ill. “I’m dying of stomach cancer,” she told one staff member. Another she told she was suffering from Neuralgia, which was causing her severe pain but that she had a brother who was a doctor who would be arriving any day to look after her.
On day 4 of her stay she went out into the shops in San Diego where she purchased a gun, a .44 caliber american bulldog pistol. A Christmas present for a friend, she insisted.
On day 5, she vanished.
It wasn’t until the next morning when an electrician was walking down towards the beach after the storm, that he saw the body of the woman sprawled out on the steps of the beach path, a bullet hole in her right temple.
The hotel tried to find her next of kin, but the doctor brother she spoke so highly about seemed to not exist. In fact, the woman seemed to not exist. Anywhere they searched the name Lottie Anderson Bernard came up empty. The woman must have used that as an alias.
To find the true identity of the woman, police sketched her face and what she was wearing, all black everything; black dress, black underwear, and even included the ring she wore, hoping that any of these details would trigger something in someone's mind. She earned the nickname in the papers of “The Beautiful Stranger”.
Soon, an unknown source sends in a letter to the police claiming that the woman went by the name Katie Morgan, and that she was from an upper class family in Iowa.
That’s around the time that the police get a phone call from the Grant Family, a well-to-do family in Los Angeles. They say that their servant, a young woman named Katie Logan, had gone missing. She left the day before thanksgiving, saying she had to go down to San Diego to have some papers signed but would be back the next day to cook them thanksgiving Dinner. She had left all of her belongings at their home and left with nothing, so the police went over to the Grant Family house to check it out.
And inside the luggage was a marriage certificate for Katie Farmer and Thomas Morgan. Bingo, this must be the woman at Hotel Del Coronado. On december 11th, the San Francisco Chronicle published that there was no doubt the woman was Katie Morgan.
The Grants said that Katie didn’t tell them much about her past, but she seemed to have a rocky marriage with Thomas.
The police received a report from a witness who claimed that Katie was with Thomas on her train ride down to San Diego, but that the two were arguing and Thomas got off in Orange County while Katie continued on.
The coroner, with her identity confirmed, ruled her death a suicide, without ever conducting a full autopsy. He didn’t even check to see if she had the stomach cancer she told so many about. Obviously, questions lingered. Was it truly suicide, or was she a victim of foul play, even though the gun she bought the day before was found near her body? Did Thomas come back to find her in San Diego and murder her on the beach? Conflicting testimonies at the inquest only fueled speculation.
Rumors started spreading that Kate was actually heading to the hotel to meet a lover after it was revealed that she had been estranged from her husband.
Kate’s family in Iowa insisted it wasn’t suicide, but what it was, we may never know. There’s a lot we wont ever know about Kate. Like why did she lie about her illnesses? And if she was from a well off family, why did she move to California to be a servant.
And perhaps it’s this unknown bit of Katie’s history that has prevented her from ever leaving the property. To this day, guests and staff report encountering Katie’s restless spirit. Usually, it starts with her initials. It’s not uncommon to wake up in the hotel and see KM on a bathroom mirror, as if traced in the condensation of hot breath. A woman believed to be Kate is often seen gliding down corridors, standing by windows, or causing inexplicable disturbances in Room 302, which is now room 3327. Lights flicker, doorknobs rattle, and bedcovers are mysteriously pulled off in the dead of night.
In One particularly eerie encounter, a Secret Service agent assigned to then-Vice President George Bush was Spooked by strange occurrences just down the hall from Katie’s room. he demanded a room change in the middle of the night and was allowed one.
Some more Katie Sightings, after a short break
In 2023, a woman named Luneth Bee was staying at the hotel during a trip down the California coast. She hadn’t heard much about it, certainly not that it was haunted.
But that night, as she lay in bed with her partner asleep, they both awoke at 3am to the feeling that something was..off. They couldn’t fall back asleep no matter how hard they tried. They said it almost felt like something in the room was preventing them from going back to bed.
And then, just as Cecelia heard many other guests talk about, the bathroom light started flickering. It was sensor controlled and only would go on if someone was in the bathroom, but the two watched as it flickered on, and then back off, flickered on, and then back off.
The two jumped out of bed and decided to walk up and down the beach until the sun rose in a few hours, they were too afraid of what was in that room. When they came back in later that morning, they told the woman at front desk what had happened, and her face went pale. She informed them that they were staying in Katie’s room, and told them the story.
They didn’t want to believe but when they got back to the room the light was back on — even though they made sure to turn it off. That night Luneth slept a little better. She had closed the bathroom door and put a towel under it. Just in case whatever it was came back. And sure enough, when she woke up the bathroom light was still on. Too terrified to stay, they checked out early.
There’s also the story from 20 years ago, when a 12-year-old girl stayed at the hotel. She was thrilled by the glamor of the Coronado with its Old Hollywood touches and dutiful bellboys. Walking through the front doors, she felt a strange feeling of anticipation she chalked up to excitement as she checked out the lobby and vintage elevators.
When she was checked in, one of the staff members handed her a pamphlet that had a section about Katie Morgan. She remembers being entranced by the ghostly story of Katie, and she turned the pamphlet over and over in her hands, reading everything she could about the young woman’s story.
But that excited feeling slowly turned into feelings of dread after she reached the downstairs area by the gift shop Cecelia would eventually work at. The more time she spent in that area of the hotel, the worst she felt. She wondered if she was just scaring herself by reading so much about Katie.
Up in the room with her mom and her sister, she lied on the bed and read her book. Her father decided to go out in the hall and grab some ice, leaving the door open behind him as he left. But as he did, the door violently SLAMMED shut.
Her dad came back and asked, honestly what any dad would have, why the hell are you all slamming doors. But in the room he found three women scared stiff, with all the color drained from their faces. He tried to calm the mood by playfully asking if they had “seen a ghost or something” and the little girl's stomach dropped. How could the door have slammed shut so violently? The windows had been closed, there was no draft.
And later she nudged the door to test it out, but it hardly budged. It would have taken some extreme force to close the door like that. There was no explanation…other than the ghost she was so excited about making her presence known
When Cecelia was asked what was haunting the hotel, she said there were a few things, but ONE of them was Katie. She doesn’t think that Katie is the only one.
When I was researching the hotel, I read tons of old newspapers looking for whatever else I could find on it. And to my surprise, I found another story that resembles katies, from just a few years after her death.
In 1907, two fishermen were out on the beach by hotel Coronado, when they stumbled upon the body of one of the hotel’s guests. He was sprawled out not too far from where Katie was found, but that wasn’t the only similarity. He, too, had a gunshot wound to his head.
His name was Amos Anderson, and he too was from a wealthy out of state family. The cause of his death was also ruled suicide, but not many other details about the man are known.
Is it possible that Amos is also haunting the hotel? Katie isn’t the only guest to have suffered a tragedy on the hotel grounds. And perhaps she is not alone in haunting it.
So remember that this summer as you head out on your vacations, if you’re lucky enough to do so. Every place has a history, don’t let the tourism industry hide it from you. Dig it up and tell everyone. This show really is never going to be invited to stay at a hotel, is it…..