Bittersweet Infamy - #125 - The White Witch of Rose Hall

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Josie tells Taylor about Annie Palmer, the legendary murderous vodou matron whose ghost is said to haunt her Montego Bay plantation—and how her story wrestles with the true spectre of slavery in Jamaica. Plus: learn about Lapu-Lapu, the hero of Philippine resistance who crushed Ferdinand Magellan's dreams of circumnavigating the globe.

Welcome to Bitter Sweet and Food. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in IN2E. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet.

Welcome, dear listeners. Back to another Bitter Sweet. You're here, we're here. We did it. We've all done it We've shown up how you doing Josephine. I'm doing well fine machine. I am flying high Flying low keeping the altitudes the pH is in balance. Yes, the pH level of altitude is is steady. Yeah, dance for fucking high How are you getting fucking high? Yeah. Stands for fucking high. How are you?

Getting fucking high if I can help it. Cheers. I'm about to get fucking high. I'm really good. You know, the weather has been shockingly consistent as BC weather goes, as BC springs go. And it is now kind of easing into the time where you can walk outside in your sweats and a t-shirt and maybe even shorts if you're one of those types who likes to expose patella, you know?

Oh, oh. How's the weather going down in Houston? Oh, it's fucking hot. We've got the nice weather is long gone. Damn. We were outside today and it was just like red faced. Like, are you re drinking water? Like, Jesus, like the dog is too hot. Like we should go inside

This is done. We're done outside if the done is outside. We are hitting up a pool tomorrow It's it's the type of heat where if you want to be outside you got to be in a pool So I see then you get really nice with all your friends who have apartment complex pools and you you make it happen How's the pool banter in Houston? Do people have good Marco Polo banter or what's the story? Do you banter in Marco Polo? I feel like- Yeah, one person says Marco, the other one says Polo. Yeah, then I guess it's pretty standard. Yeah.

I did have a funny interaction with a friend with an apartment pool where I just kind of was like, when are you inviting me over? I don't understand. And he was just kind of like like, when are you inviting me over? I don't understand. And he was just kind of like, he was taken aback by squeeze me. Yeah. Like in a Jane Austen context, you've made like a big faux pas here kind of thing. Like a lady doesn't invite herself. You have to wait for like the copy to come via the mail. Right? Yes, exactly. It's like, oh, I didn't realize. I apologize. We were out to dinner and I did like lean over and like take a fry from his plate

as I was asking. So maybe there was there's some other things happening. You know, context. Oh, he was like, she wants to fuck me in the pool. No wonder he was sadly mistaken and sadly disappointed. Not only did we cover James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic over at the Bittersweet Film Club, that's k-hy-fin-f-i dot com slash bittersweetinfamy joined by our ardent titaniac slash bittersweetheart Dylan. What a guest. What a guy.

A great big guest spot. That episode of Bittersweet Film Club is longer than the movie Titanic. And I dare say better. Better written. Oh, oh yeah. That improv. Yeah, totally. Yes and. So you can go and listen to that along with 13 other episodes we've done. And coming up for the end of May here, as long as we get it out in time, we tend to slip over the first of the month, but we're keeping track. We're making sure you don't get short change subscribers because next up we're gonna be covering

another Kate Winslet filmic sensation. So this is third total two in a row for Kate Winslet on the Bittersweet Film Club. She's coming for your neck, Barbara, watch out. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're gonna be covering the dressmaker. I didn't wanna learn too much about it because like all the genre descriptions

were like Western thriller drama mystery. And I was like, okay. Oh, I learned nothing. Let's see how that works out. Yeah. So yeah, I'm excited to watch this film at the behest of our subscriber and past guest, Erica Jo Brown.

Erica Jo Brown. Yeah, it's, I have seen the film and so has Mikhschel. It's a good one. It's kind of one of those nice little sleeper, sleeper, deepers. I'll be the judge of that. You will. You do. You get a vote.

And so do the rest of you over at the Bittersweet Film Club. Join us as a monthly subscriber and you get to tell us what movies to watch and we'll watch them. And it's great at coffee.com slash bittersweetinfamy, K-O dash F-I dot com slash bittersweetinfamy. Josie, since we're doing updates, I heard you cheated on me with another fucking podcast. I know.

Well. I feel alive again. That's why I got my hair done. That's why I'm wearing this scarf and going to the opera mysteriously at night. I got you. my hair done. That's why I'm wearing this scarf and going to the opera mysteriously at night. I got you. It keeps our relationship like popping, you know? Yes. Yes. Spicy. So I had a chance to be a guest on the Art Wife podcast, which is a podcast that is in

companionship with a literary journal called ArtWife. And I had a short story of mine published in their inaugural issue. It's all online, so I'm not sure, issue volume. Lip Megs, if you're listening to this, ain't nobody going out and buying like a $10, fucking $15 Lip Meg, fucking read some poems about grain. You put that shit online so I can show it to my parents and grandparents who are the people who give a shit. You know what I mean?

Make it accessible. Make the written word accessible. Democracy dies in darkness, you guys. It's true. Anyway. Behind the paywall, yeah. There you go. There you go.

Fuck the paywall, climb it over. And Art Wife is a free literary magazine. Thank you, Art Wife. On the internet. Accessible, wonderful. And I got to speak with Hannah Harley, who is one of the creators, founders of Art Wife. And she just asked me cool questions about my story

and about anything that I want to talk about. So I talked about bittersweet infamy. Shit, what did you say? I said, everything perfect. Good, good. Like you always do. Exactly. I never mispronounce anything. Everything comes out smooth and beautiful. But the short story is like, the story itself is kind of based on some historical facts stuff.

So I talked a little bit about like the way that research works into my fiction writing, but also how my research has like developed so much with bittersweet infamy. Where can people go and listen to this, I should ask? You can go to artwifemag.com slash the podcast. Awesome. Google Art Wife magazine or just Art Wife and you should be able to find it. And it's not out yet, yet, upon the publication of art of this episode, but I think it should be sometime in the next few weeks.

We'll plug it on Instagram. We'll plug it on Instagram, exactly. Like we plug our things on Instagram. Well, nice. And what's the story in very brief, for those who might be interested in the story that you wrote, what's that about? So it's a story from a story collection of mine that takes place in like a future San

Diego where it's all flooded out and rained out. I remember this. I think I might have read this short story collection or aspects of it. And the story is kind of later in the dystopian flood out. And so it's very apocalyptic. And the story is called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which is like historically the treaty that ended the Mexican-American war and set up the California border between California and Baja California, US and Mexico. And so the story is about a couple that is splitting up, that's breaking up and like what it means to have been one entity made into two and all of that. Josie's a great writer, y'all.

It's a goofy little, not goofy, it's like a lyric little story. Nice little short shorty porty, some, you know, cute little images, farts, you know, everything, anything you want. Yeah. Even farts. Even farts. If you can believe that. Yeah.

It was really nice to talk about my writing. I felt very like, oh, I'm a writer. I forgot. Oh yeah, I write. I enjoy this. I do this sometimes. Yeah, I enjoy this. This is nice.

Yeah. And I think ArtWife is a really cool publication and they have a cool podcast and like they're doing cool stuff over at ArtWife. So check them out too. Check out ArtWife and check out Josie on the ArtWife podcast in the next little bit. Speaking of research, political things, you got to tell me what's happening in Canada. I don't understand the Canadian voting system. Let me figure it out for you in the next five minutes and then I'll tell you. Okay, great.

Okay. The last time we left off Canada on this podcast, as the puck turns, you know, we were staring down a pretty big bad polling lead to the tune of like 25 points up for the conservatives and the conservatives particularly were under a guy named Pierre Poiliev. We're and still are under a guy named Pierre Poiliev and we'll get to it. He gets labeled as a Trump type and he is but he's like a JD Vance type, you know what I mean? Yeah, eyeliner. Or like a Ben Shapiro type, or like some type of like, okay, debate club, settle down.

You know what I mean? Whereas Trump is just kind of this like boorish populist oath who just like personality disorders his way through everything. Pierre Poilie, I have in my estimation is more of a like, really gets off and being like the hornet in the thing and known for being very argumentative in our parliament, which is a lot like your Congress, etc.

Yeah, yeah. And then a hell of a thing happened, Josie. Thank God, hell of a thing happened. First of all, Justin Trudeau, who was our unpopular center left prime prime minister dropped out and he got replaced by this very bland kind of smug bank guy named Mark Carney. Right around that time was right around the time that Donald Trump started tariffs. And next American state kind of dumbassery yeah. That was it honestly more than the tariffs I think that was it. It's rude that's very rude. It's very than the tariffs, I think that was it. It's rude. That's very rude.

It's very rude. And we don't like that up here. Absolutely not. No. Take your shoes off when you enter our home. Exactly. So it became a very like a national unifier for a lot of disparate types of people in a way that I haven't really remembered seeing in my adult lifetime, other than like maybe when the Olympics came to Vancouver. Whoa. We were all very pro-Canada at that time. People seemed to suddenly cling to the ways in which Canada is different from America to include,

we have a multi-party system where we vote in representatives in a local slash municipal level, and then whichever party has the most representatives ultimately gets to form the seat of government and that party's leader is the prime minister. But it was a situation where I acknowledge the hypocrisy of being on stolen, colonized land and not wanting to get colonized, but I also just really don't want to be American, no disrespect. So it's a real... I mean, two wrongs don't make a right, you know what I mean?

Why do it again? But there's all of these like, kind of weird, latent things that have bubbled up, and as a result, the conservative party with its very Trump-like leader at a time when Trump was like ravenously unpopular in Canada. Yeah. Again, the anthem was getting booed at fucking Canadian sports games, the American anthem, that's unheard of. Because of that, the conservatives and the liberals seemingly pulled even. And a lot of it too,

was that, like I said, we're a multi-party system. So basically we've got the liberals, which are our center left party, they're in government most of the time. We've got the conservative, which is our right leaning party, they're what they sound like. And then you've got other groups like the NDPs and the greens, which are left, lefter than the liberals. And you've got the bloc quebecois, which propagates Quebec's kind of voice on a national scale. We could get all into Quebec, but we won't. Yeah. And so basically all the voters for these non-liberal,

non-conservative parties who didn't want to see Pierre Poilier-Evang voted liberal. Whoa. The other parties ate a lot of that, and it has created a lot of problems for them. One thing that I should say is there was some interesting stuff that really went on in Pyr Poliev's own writing. Number one, in order to protest for electoral reform, a group got 80 other candidates to

register there in a longest ballot protest. And the ballot that people had to go and vote on in Pyr Poliev's writing was like thick and long. It had to like and vote on in pure Poliev's writing was like thick and long. It had to like unfold and scroll down. So it was like a massive pain in the ass to vote in this guy's writing, which was part of the protest, that rudeness, right?

Protests must be rude. I mean, Houston suffers from that long, really long ballots. And it is, it's a barrier because it just like, it takes so fucking long to research all of it, to know all of it, to understand what the fuck is going on. Well, there's also been a great deal of like, in Canadian history, there's been a lot of, a recent Canadian history, I should say,

there's been a lot of hubbub of electoral reform because it was a campaign that the liberals ran on, won on, and then ignored, which is very liberal to do. It's why nobody liked them up until fucking Trump stuck his nose in. Oh, man. Wow. And not only that, but Piropolyev lost his seat, which he'd held, his MP seat, which he'd held since like 2004, I think. Oh, you know, that's a beautiful thing.

That's a beautiful thing. So they've kept him on despite his loss overall in the election. They've kept him on as the head of the Conservative Party, but he's going to need to get a new seat and he's shopping around in Alberta. I'm not convinced that the liberals won't fuck this up and Pierre Poiliev won't get in by running either a more toned down version or people will have just forgotten or gotten tired or whatever, but we've got a stay of execution. For now. Yeah. What a nail biter. And then all of a sudden, oh, okay.

Sorya couldn't be you, America. Sorya couldn't be you. You know what? If it's gonna be somebody, let it be Canada. You know? Well, and Australia, because about a week after we did it, the exact same thing happened in Australia. Whoa. The Commonwealth kicking into gear. And people that Trump had just stuck a bunch of money on for no reason when we were supposed

to be friends, bud. What the fuck happened? He doesn't know what friendship is. I'm starting to think this Donald J. Trump isn't a very good friend. If he was my friend, you know what I'd say to him? You're fired. Oh. In Australia. And this is going to get confusing because their conservative party is called the Liberal Party and their Liberal Party is called the Labour Party. But just go with it. OK, OK. So they had a guy in charge of the liberal party, which is their conservative party named Peter Dutton. And the name he

started getting pegged with was Timu Trump. That's brutal. That's hard to come back from. And it was the exact same situation where a kind of like centrist slash lefty government had been running against malaise against against people fed up with inflation, against people fed up with that kind of like wishy-washy centrist government democracy thing that they had, and they were about to go fucking right. And then Donald Trump reminded us

what having a far-right authoritarian figure looks like. And also the danger of having a far-right authoritarian figure in your government who might just lick Trump's balls and give him whatever he wants. The exact same thing happened. The fucking polls flipped. And in fact, Peter Dutton, the liberal guy, lost his seat, just like Pierre Poiliev. A wild fucking ride. I think you're right to have the date of execution because it's just, it's not complete. The story is still. Democracy requires continuous defending, sadly.

Yeah, yeah. That feeling of the polls flipping like that, based off of a volatile figure. Yeah. Then it's like, well, then the polls can flip again based off a volatile figure, you know? And people are fickle and people have short memories. Very short.

Donald Trump was re-elected. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, congratulations. I'm proud of you. Thank you. I'm mostly just happy that Pierpoli have lost and I hope that should he run again, I

get to see it again. But at least I got it once if nothing else. Yeah, yeah. Oh, also a big loser in the Australian election, Clive Palmer of Titanic 2 fame. Oh, that's right.

Him and his little like far right conservative outfit, the Trumpet of Patriots, they didn't blow much. Okay, no vaccines on his ship. So another thing that has actually played out quite recently in my neck of the woods of Vancouver, it's actually a pretty sad turn of events, it's a very sad turn of events that happened locally recently on April 26th.

Did you hear anything about the vehicular attack at the Lapu Lapu Day Festival? I did hear about that, yeah. What did you hear? So this was in the Vancouver area and the Lapu Lapu Festival is a Filipino cultural festival. Yeah. And somebody, yeah, somebody drove into it and killed people. So yeah, this was obviously a horrible event and a piece of tremendously tragic news to Vancouver's communities in general, but most especially Vancouver's Filipino community, because this happened at their cultural festival.

And there's always the specter when something like this happens of like, okay, why was our group targeted? Is this based on hate? What is the motivation here? In this particular case, it seems to be that a guy named Kaiji Adam Lowe was reeling from a series of events in his family to include the seeming murder of his brother, to include deaths, to include a really gnarly financial situation and apparently a deteriorating mental state that sort of spun out into this awful moment where on April 26, 2025 at 814 p.m.

he drove a black SUV into the Lapu Lapu Day Festival, which is like, as Josie says, a Filipino cultural festival that was taking place on East 43rd Avenue, right outside John Oliver's Secondary, if you know where that is, Josie. Oh yeah, yeah. It was right out there and in the days since that area has become like surrounded with like wreaths and memorials and such, of course, and 11 people were killed of all ages. Oh my gosh. Very, very sad stuff.

I was obviously, you know, heartbroken about this because Vancouver has such like a warm and vibrant Filipino community, I think, that it really hurts me to see them hurting and it makes me quite sad. And so I thought, is there anything that I can do in terms of the podcast? And I should say, if you are interested in helping out in terms of donating or in terms of like understanding how best to support this community, you can check out FilipinoBC.com. They're handling the kind of charity effort of it along with the United Way. You can also check out Share Vancouver, S-H-E-R Vancouver, which you may recognize as the organization that January Lapus and

her friends were involved in back in episode 115, this Bud's Not For You. We told the story of kind of how this came to be and it was created by Alex Sanga and Ash Brar and Alex Sanga in particular is still at it. And folks from the Filipino community in Vancouver are able to access like, counseling and other resources through Share Vancouver, shervancouver.com. So check them out if that is something that you require. Aww, that's so cool. Independent of kind of spreading the word and spreading the resources, I wanted to like,

think of some way to kind of send like, a message of love and a message of like, vitality and empowerment to this community. And so in the end, what I settled on is if this happened at Lapu Lapu Day, then we should tell the story of Lapu Lapu, the central figure that this festival is named after. Because this festival was sort of done in the spirit of propagating the name of a certain figure who's a really important anti-colonial figure in Filipino history. Nice. Oh, dope Filipino history. Nice. Oh, dope.

Okay, yeah. So I thought I'd tell you a little bit. And admittedly, because this is something that is happening in the distant past, we're talking like late 1400s, early 1500s that this story takes place to sort of coincide with the height of European exploration and colonization of the entire world.

Because this happens so distantly in the past, and it happens in a culture of oral storytelling and oral record keeping, it's not like we have extensive records and drawings and depictions of this guy. He's sort of shrouded in mystery and legend. A lot of like, I would observe like Davey Crockett type legend of like who he was and what his powers were. Yeah. But I can kind of give you the version that we know to be true, and then a little bit I would observe like Davy Crockett type legend of like who he was and what his powers were.

Yeah. But I can kind of give you the version that we know to be true and then a little bit of extra sauce because you take a little bit of extra sauce at the buffet. I do enjoy ranch on my pizza. I have to say. Dig in.

Yeah. So Josie, have you ever heard of this person, Lapu Lapu? This sort of a, recognized as one of sort of like the great legends in Filipino history. I am unfamiliar. I'm a fresh slate, clean slate for this story. In the late 1400s, global exploration and colonization are hotter than labubus, led

by three European powers, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Italians. Big names from this era include Bartolomeu Diaz, Vasco da Gama, and of course, Christopher Columbus. In true colonial style, we must rape the land of its resources for European benefit, and so it is with the spice trade. Cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom are among the new hit spices tantalizing European taste buds,

and there is a great deal of money to be made in what are called the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia, now called the Maluku Islands of modern day Indonesia. During the time of this story, the late 1510s, early 1520s, the passage around Africa's Cape of Good Hope to the Spice Islands is dominated by Portugal. Spain wants its own route, so King Charles sends an experienced 38-year-old navigator named Ferdinand Magellan. I've heard of him.

Along with five ships and 270 crew to look into the possibility of a western passage around the Americas to the South China Sea. Josie, you said you've heard of Magellan, what do you know about him? He circumnavigated the world. Spoiler. Sorry, you asked. I was just thinking too, it's like, that's such a bummer that I like, oh yeah, Magellan and like Christopher Columbus 1492.

But that's what we got taught. Yeah. But it's like, then who's lapu lapu? And I'm like, I don't know. No, I know. Well, that's why we need important days like the lapu lapu day festival to like, not only for cultural unity and not only because Apple Diat from the Black Eyed Peas was the headliner apparently.

Oh, shit. But because it teaches us important things about like the historical figures who are either marginalized or who don't have the same historical cadence in a Western context because we're so stuck on valorizing the same group of white supremacist rapists forever. We really are. We really love to do it. It's really tedious shit. Yeah. Yeah. And so like you were saying, you know, this idea of circumnavigating the globe as a bonus to getting access, really we're here for the fucking nutmeg. But right.

Yeah. This will also confirm the stubborn theory that's been around for the past few centuries about the world being round. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We knew that more or less by that point, but it hadn't been formally. No one had done the 100% route. You know what I mean? No one had gotten all the trophies for their Xbox Live achievements. Yeah, I see. I see what you're saying. Many discoveries, and I want you to know I put like three quotes around discoveries. Many discoveries are made around the way, such as the strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. So it's sort of like our passage from the Atlantic over to the other side, which is a newly discovered quote, quote, quote, quote,

quote, big, beautiful, calm body of water, which Magellan calls the mar pacifico, the Pacific Ocean. Oh, huh, huh. I think he would be eating his hat about that calm bit in like 90 days or so, but you know, at the time, he was like, what a nice day. This whole thing must be like this. Ha ha ha, idiot.

Ha ha ha. By the time Magellan's crew arrives at the Philippine Islands, he's down many men and several ships to Mutiny, Marooning, Desertion, and Scurvy. Because of my focus on Lapu Lapu, I cut out a lot of the circumnavigation shit, but this is a clown show, like you wanna, you'll wanna learn more about the circumnavigation if it's of interest to you. He didn't take all those five ships with him all the way, put it to you that way. Thankfully for him, upon arrival in the Philippines, Magellan is able to use his Malay slave as a translator

in order to get into some nice bananas and coconuts for the creaky crew, as well as to secure some key alliances. Magellan convinces a local leader, Rajah Humabon, and his wife to be baptized into Catholicism. This is said to be the very moment in history when the Christian religion was introduced to the Philippines. I'm just wondering like how did that convincing quote unquote quote unquote quote go? Well he had guns so there's that. He had guns yes. And maybe it was like sure you want to like sprinkle some water on me?

Okay that's a custom. Sure bud. You got customs I got customs we'll custom up and then it's like. What's that lowercase t you're wearing? That looks cool. Yeah. My kids would like one of those. Magellan wants to keep the good times rolling and advance the cause of Catholicism to nearby

Cebu, but he has one big obstacle to face, our boy Lapu Lapu. So again, oral histories plus no images equals we don't know much about him. A lot of this is legend or passed down in ways that contradicts other things that have been passed down. But what we think we know, according to Roneka Valdaya-Via for the Culture Trip, is quote, although the exact date of his arrival is unknown, most historical counts state Lapu Lapu reach the shores of Sugbo, now referred to as Cebu, from the neighboring island of Borneo, which is now part of Malaysia. At this time, Raja Humabon ruled over Sugbo, and with my apologies for probably mispronouncing

that, and was recognized by natives as the island's king. Lapu Lapu asked Humabon for a place to settle in the archipelago. In response, the king offered him the region of Mandawili, known today as Mandawé, including the Opong area. He soon after became the chief of the region's people, referred to as Datu Lapu Lapu of Mactan Island. Okay, okay. So, Lapu Lapu is held in high regard by the locals as a military leader and for enriching

Cebu as a trade port. Eventually, he has a falling out with Rajahumaban and the two become rivals. And now that Humaban is best buds with Magellan, that rivalry extends to Magellan too, so if Magellan wants to cook in Cebu, he's gonna need to bring the heat. And frankly, I heard he doesn't have many spices behind himself. Kind of a bland guy. So time for the big fight at the schoolyard, aka the beach. While Magellan's 50 soldiers have muskets, they're no match for Lapu Lapu's

1500 strong army wielding bamboo spears and poisoned arrows. What becomes known as the Battle of Mactan is allegedly a lopsided massacre. We know that in this battle, Magellan dies in the shallows, like knee-high water kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, the lapping waves of that Pacific Ocean, he named. Most of our actual sources agree that it probably wasn't Lapu Lapu who personally cut him down. He might have been older. I saw one source kind of estimate

that he was in his 70s by then. Yeah. And so he probably watched from the beach in relative comfort as Magellan fell at an inopportune time and was hacked to death by a gang of motivated Mactan soldiers. Teamwork Josie does make the dream work. Truly. Regardless, Lapu Lapu has gone down in Filipino history as an iconic symbol of resistance who

notched among his kills one of the world's best known colonizers. The site of the Battle of Mactan now hosts an annual victory of Mactan celebration. And there are numerous shrines and statues to Lapu Lapu in the area, including a well-known 20 foot tall statue that now lives outside the Museum of the Philippines in Manila. Dislikeness and all the others are approximate, because again, we don't really know what this guy looked like.

But you do get a lot of like interesting, I guess, stories and superstitions that come with statues and depictions of Lapu Lapu. In Opan town in 1933, the government put up a life-size Lapu Lapu armed with a bow and arrow, which was aiming at the old municipal hall. And then it was said that three mayors of Opan died in office, one after another due to a heart attack. And then the next mayor who came in, Mariano de Mataga, he swapped out the bow and arrow with a bolo and then he served 30 years as mayor. Oh, goodness.

So he was able to kind of by switching out the bow and arrow, he was able to sort of dodge this curse, this alleged curse that had fallen these other three mayors. Same city Opan notably changed its name to Lapu Lapu City in 1961. Whoa. Some local islanders also say that Lapu Lapu didn't die, but he turned into stone and he's now guarding the waters off Mactan. So they'll give coins to a stone as tribute and the stone is kind of shaped like a man. And that's like, can we fish your territory kind of thing. Oh, do we have your blessing to be here? Yeah.

Exactly. Because if you killed Magellan, who knows what you'll do to us? And all those mayors too, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Not even a real bow and arrow. Just you know, a statue of one. Whoa. Yeah, but suffice it to say someone who people like to memorialize and people like to hail

as a local hero of the area for standing up to the fucking Europeans, who would then kind of go on to have their way with the Philippine Islands for many years afterwards. So it's no wonder that he's so popular because he told these people who need to fuck off to fuck off. Oh, one last thing I should say as for Magellan circumnavigation of the globe on September 8th, 1522, nearly three years after setting off his party limped back into Seville, Spain without its leader. Only one of the original ships and 18 of the original 270 men survived the entire journey.

Oh my gosh. But hey, we got some cloves and the earth is round. Hi, I'm Chris Gafford and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number, thousands of people try to call, I talk to one of them, they stay anonymous, I can't hang up, that's all the rules. I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers them, they stay anonymous, I can't hang up, that's all the rules. I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison.

I've talked to people who survived mass shootings. Crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's going to happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today, beautiful anonymous. It's another beautiful instance of stories coming together in a nice little kismet way. And it's the sun, the sand, the turquoise waves of the Caribbean lapping at the beautiful palmed beaches.

My story wasn't in the Caribbean but yours is. I know but it is this kind of beautiful way that the net is being like sewn together because there's echoes of the colonialism and that kind of thing but it's still it's like a complementary. Okay. So where's your story taking place? Montego Bay Jamaica. Have you ever been to Jamaica? I've never been to Jamaica. No, I haven't. Me neither. So despite, you know, the sun, the waves, the cute little crabs, there are still ghosts and horrors in paradise.

Sometimes more than most. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So slap on that sunscreen. Get ready for a little ghost tour, my dude. Oh, the ghost of Montego Bay. We're going to be taking a little peek at the promotional video for Rose Hall Great House. Some say you can feel the spirit of Jamaica as you enter the corridor that leads to the Rose Hall Great House, an

almost irreverent approach to this majestic 18th century authentic architectural restoration. More than a celebration of the grandeur of Jamaica's plantation era, Rose Hall is a testimony to the stories of courage and triumph which sit at the heart of the indomitable Jamaican spirit. Described as the greatest great house of them all, this beautiful restoration of love, which once dominated the vast 7,000 acre Rose Hall sugar plantation, now allows you to be transported in time. To an age when grand balls and banquets of Europe kissed the Caribbean shores, and the

brilliance of West Indies mahogany inspired the beautiful carvings and fretwork in furnishings which have come to define an era. Tales are told of the famed lady of the house, Annie Palmer. So she lived in this house for 11 years, within nine years, she married all three husbands along with countless slave lovers. Who enchanted all she encountered, but no one who crossed her path survived to tell the tale. Breathtaking vistas and authentic Jamaican experiences

will define your Rose Hall Great House Day Tour. But it's the spirit of the place that will truly take your breath away. At night, Rose Hall is not for the faint of heart. Na na na na na na Na na na na na na AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH h wow Wow. Book your tour now at www.rosehall.com. Took me through a journey that little spot there. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about your journey. My first thought was, so I have that like kind of like, once we start speaking in euphemism about plantation houses, you know what I mean? Your ear pricks go up and you're like, yes, they're beautiful mahogany carvings, but I

feel like you're not telling me the whole story here. And then we kind of get into this tour guide just sort of casually chucking down that the lady of the manor murdered all three of her husbands and countless, countless slaves, I believe, is the term. Did she say slaves there? Or am I crazy? Slave lovers, maybe. I think the slave lovers, right. Yes. And then, you know, things seem to be pretty on the up and up until we pivot into like, this is a haunted house slash a haunted house attraction also, where you can stay at the night and people will jump out and scream at you, man. Baby. Book your tour now at rose hall.com. I don't know if you can stay the night, but I think it's like a after sunset tour at night.

Interesting. Okay, so they have truly a thumb in every pie here. Yeah, wow. I've never heard of this. Okay, I hadn't either. I had not heard this either. So this is the story of, as you heard in the video, the White Witch of Rose Hall, a woman named Annie Palmer. So Rose Hall is a mansion. It's a plantation

home. A great house was the term they kept using. Yes, which from what I know of American culture, plantation homes have been called the big house, but I guess in Jamaica they're called the great house. And it's a huge, as you heard, 18th century Georgian mansion that is on a rolling hill that overlooks Montego Bay. It's a stunning sight. And that's the fuck of plantation houses is they're all fucking ten out of ten beautiful and so is this one.

So Montego Bay is on Jamaica's North Shore. It's the second largest city in the country today, second to Kingston. And Montego Bay was once the bustling center of the British Sugar Empire, which was created and maintained using almost exclusively slave labor. And Jamaica, the Caribbean, was one of the many stops in the Atlantic slave trade between 16th and 19th centuries. accounts for the forced migration of millions of Africans being stolen, bought out of central Africa and brought to the Americas from Virginia down to South America to Brazil, parts of

Brazil. And there were many elements to all of this, right? There's the bringing of enslaved people and then the transfer of goods back to Europe. It's known as triangular trade. It was like this movement between Europe and Africa and the Americas of enslaved peoples, raw materials and processed goods. And sugar was one of these raw materials that was very important, known as the white gold. It was a mainstay of the slavery economy, especially in the Caribbean and in the south of the US, like the very south. In the US context, there's a lot of understanding around slavery as it comes to cotton, but that's just kind of a mainstay of the story.

There's a lot of other crops, a lot of other things. Yes, exactly. Lots of them. In particular, especially in Jamaica, though, it was sugar. Don't be confused. Cotton is very prickly and hard to pick and an arduous crop to harvest, but so is sugar because you have to take the sugar cane and you have to process it as well. And it all has to happen very quickly. And it's not a sweet endeavor, the harvesting of sugar cane. But also note that the way that sugar worked within the triangular slave trade can be linked to our current day modern addiction to sugar and how corn syrup and sugar have worked its way into the

American diet and have created health concerns. Like check out the 1619 project. And I do want to quote this scholar, Ashil Imbembe's wording of slavery, because I think it's kind of important to keep this context in mind within this story. When he says the system of slavery that the slave is kept alive but in a state of injury and a phantom like world of horrors and intense cruelty The slave life in many ways is a form of death in life End quote. That's resonant for sure. That's very powerful way to put that and I and and something that's very easy to when we discuss things like this in summary, it's easy to gloss over the like, I guess like, yeah, constant ruinousness

and pain that this brought into so many lives. American history and the teaching of it is nowhere to pin something on the bulletin board too. But like, there's so many instances in modern tellings where it's like, oh, the workers or the, you know, the happy people who were working in these torturous conditions. Yeah. Do not lose light of the fact that slave life in many ways is a form of death in life. And we'll come to some points in this storytelling where like it is intense and it is harmful, hurtful, grotesque. It is not a fun history to look at. No.

And you know, trigger warning upfront, this is a story that involves slavery and the horrors of and I will kind of flag where things might be a little more graphic. If you want to skip forward, we won't go go deep deep into graphic stories for the sake of time, but also for the sake of like energies and- And it's intense work and it's not always the right time for every listener to be doing that work. So take care of yourselves as needed. Yeah. Though I do want to like kind of remember this death in life that is the life of the slave and two to recognize that sometimes you don't need the like very grotesque

details to keep that in mind. You just have to be, you know, remember and be a human and, you know, do that work. Knowing that, keeping this in mind and thinking about the Caribbean, not just as a tourist destination, but as a site of some of these past horrors, there's no surprise, no wonder that there are ghosts in paradise. Oh yeah. So let's talk about our white witch of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer. By all means. And I've seen her name, you know, the kind of regular Annie, A-N-N-I-E, little orphanage. Sun will come out tomorrow, yeah.

Yeah. And then I've also seen it spelled A-N-N-E-E-N-A-N-E. I like that. I like that too. We can give this horrible woman this story. In our heads, it'll be with two E's. Yes, exactly. So she is born of an English mom and an Irish father. Hence white witch.

Yes, hence, yeah, she's white. She's a white lady. Yeah, got it. Got it. When she's 10 years old, her and her parents move from England to Haiti. And Haiti is an island next door to Jamaica. It was known at the time as Santo Domingo. And they are another exporter of sugar,

major, major exporter of sugar, but also cotton, indigo and coffee. They have a very prosperous economy due to the slave trade at this time. So our girl, Annie. She can be your girl. She can be your girl. Okay. Okay. The girl she takes to Haitian culture. She apparently really likes it. She has a Haitian nanny who apparently teaches her, gives her some dabblings in the art of voodoo. That'll come in handy later, I'm sure. Exactly. Her parents, they contract yellow fever and die, and she is left in the care of her nanny, the voodoo teacher, and apparently her training intensifies having

only one guardian, this one guardian knowing voodoo. And so Annie learns at a very young age how to capitalize on her beauty and how to manipulate people and to practice these dark arts. Oh, she's hot and she has witchcraft. I don't know what we're going to do. Yeah. When she starts spelling her name with a second E, it's over. At the age of 17, she is moved to Jamaica. Some family, the exterior family decides that being in an English colony is going to be better for her. This is where

she meets the Englishman named John Palmer, and he is the owner of Rose Hall and its estate. They quickly marry and Annie becomes the mistress of this colossal estate. There's thousands of acres of sugarcane plantation. There are thousands of slaves who are working that sugarcane and a beautiful Georgian home on the crest of a rolling hill that overlooks the turquoise Caribbean. And carved mahogany. I don't know if you've heard. Yes, exactly. Yes. Yes. So she is in charge of the manor. The lady of the manor.

She's 17 when John Palmer and her marry. The young lady of the manor. Which was not uncommon at the time. No, that was the style, that was the style. It was in vogue, yeah. If anything, she was probably a little long in the tooth by that point, sadly. Yeah.

And she grew bored of her duties as the mistress of the manor, and so she started, depending on how you want to tell the story, where, you know, who the tour guide is, she's either starting love affairs with male slaves, or she is forcing male slaves to have sex with her, essentially raping them. So there we go. Her husband finds out and punishes her and as revenge, she poisons John Palmer with arsenic and he dies. Do you have any concept of whether there was any sort of inquiry as to this husband's suddenly dying like that or?

No. Was this just a time when people kind of died? Yeah. The average lifespan was like 40 years at this at this point. So so basically him having a nice house basically he had his run. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay, carry on.

Inheriting the entire state also means she inherits all of the slaves on the estate. Right. And as such, she is known as a very cruel slave mistress. She relished in torturing them or having slaves tortured. Yeah. She supposedly built a dungeon in the basement of Rose Hall to facilitate this. She is said to have stood out on the home's main balcony to watch as her slave overseers whipped and in some cases killed the slaves of Rose Hall Plantation. And she was known even among her own circles to be a cruel slave, mistress. She had two more husbands, both who ended

up dying in mysterious circumstances. Okay. And reportedly they were all buried, along with her first husband, under three palm trees on the close by beach. Okay. And as you'll remember, she was versed in the ways of voodoo. So voodoo was part of this. She used her voodoo magic to lure these husbands. And perhaps that was also why some of this could be left uninvestigated. Her magic with the dark arts. She was a conniving

voodoo queen. Yes, exactly. Known as the White Witch of Rose Hall. At a certain point, she fell in love with a young English bookkeeper who had in turn fallen in love with a young slave woman. Oh dang, okay. Named Millie. And Annie was jealous enough that she had Millie murdered without realizing that Millie was the granddaughter of one of Annie's slave lovers, a man named Taku. Oh, dang. And Taku was a very well-respected man on the estate among the other slaves. And Taku, avenging his granddaughter's death, went into Annie's red-walled bedroom and strangled her in her sleep. You fucking live by the sword, you die by the sword. Get her ass, Taku.

True enough. So this happens December 1831, which is the same month and year that the Baptist War, also known as the Christmas Rebellion occurred, which was a slave rebellion pivotal in the history of the British Empire. Taku, he buries Annie Palmer in a deep grave on the Rose Hall estate. Next to the fourth palm tree. Yes. And apparently some, with some help, he was able to enact some Voodoo rituals to keep her spirit in this deep grave so that her spirit would not be able to rise up. Okay sealed her off. Sealed her off and it should be noted in Haiti it's known as Voodoo but in Jamaica the same

practice the same spiritual belief is called Obeya. Okay. So these Obeya rituals though apparently they were not done correctly. And so her spirit still walks Rose Hall grounds. You gotta underline, make sure all the blanks, you gotta initial where it says to initial, you gotta make sure. Make sure that circle of salt is complete, every little grain is touching. Exactly. So she has continued her reign of terror over Rose Hall, even until today,

when visitors to Rose Hall dot com as we saw. Book now. Book now. They report seeing her image in a mirror that hangs in her sewing room. They feel her cold, clammy hands take hold of them as they walk through the grand halls of the great house. Annie Palmer, she is a fixture of Jamaican culture. She's known as this white witch of Rose Hall. She is known as, you know, in some stories people claim that she can remove her skin

and become invisible. That's part of her Obeah powers. Damn, she's so white that she just like goes invisible. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Shit. There's even a popular perfume in Jamaica that's named after her called White Witch Clone.

Wow. The ad copy for it is, Caribbean legend has it that the mistress of the great Jamaican plantation at Rose Hall held her husband and slaves enthralled to her powers. Or was it simply her fragrance? White Witch is a modern day legend, rich in spellbinding with a beautiful bouquet, a flowers, and a touch of mandarin. Yeah, oh nice.

Damn, that sounds like a nice, that sounds nice. Yeah, yeah, very nice. What is her cultural reputation? Is she a villain or is she like someone that we want to smell like? You know what I mean? And go see her house. I think it's a, it's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of both, right?

There's the sense of like a cruel slave mistress. Ew. Okay. Don't want to deal with that. That's where I, from my white guilt perspective, I'm like, I don't want to smell like this woman, although I love Mandarin. Yeah. Like these people in the ad, they're like, this is a come to like do a quintessential

Jamaican thing. Yeah. Take the Rose Hall tour, the tour of the Rose Hall Great House, part of your Jamaican experience. Right. Yeah. The Rose Hall tour is also like, it's a historical place. It's a museum. There's ropes that you cannot cross and you know, like little mats that you walk on so

you don't ruin the mahogany floors But she is such a part of the folklore and known as this yeah kind of it's exactly what you're saying This like strange dichotomy of being villainous, but also being so Fascinating and intriguing like a little hot Yeah so much so Johnny Cash who a little hot. Yeah. So much so, Johnny Cash, who lived in Jamaica, owned a home in Jamaica, wrote a song about her. And it's the story that I told you, but it's kind of told in the Johnny

Cash Americana, folky way. Yeah. There are plenty of reggae songs that are written about Annie Palmer. Oh, you'd hope so. Of course. Yeah. So she's kind of this local legend, right? This local myth. We love a local legend. Sometimes it's Sexkila, sometimes it's the White Witch. Yeah. It's usually some supernaturally tinged lady.

When I first started looking into this, I was like, okay, White Witch. And I guess I just read a lot of Narnia as a kid and I was like, White Witch, she's a good witch. Oh, or Wizard of Oz kind of has that same thought too. Yeah. Or like, Witchcraft writ general, like the idea of light magic and dark magic, kind of has that same thought too. Yeah. Or like witchcraft writ general, like the idea of light magic and dark magic kind of, but no, they're like this old white bitch who was also a witch.

Yeah, exactly. No, she's just like white lady, yeah. Yeah, good for her. To be clear on that, yeah. So as we know, folklore and storytelling gets passed through a few different hands. The game of telephone changes things a little bit. That's all. No.

Let's investigate a little further. Let's dig into the historical record and see what it says about this woman, Annie Palmer. She didn't even have a nanny, did she? In order to understand the historical record, let's give us a little more context about the very flyover of Jamaican history. Oh, always the best part of the Any Bittersweet Infamy episode. Yes, yes. Here's this entire country's history in less than seven minutes.

The indigenous folks who lived in Jamaica, the Arawak, they lived there for millennia before, you know, the quote unquote modern discovery of Jamaica. Before we decided that we wanted spice on our foods. Before we wanted a little sugar, a little rum. Yeah. Before the Europeans decided that flavor was a thing worth investigating. Yes. Christopher Columbus did land on Jamaica, and through that exposure, the indigenous population was decimated, not only by the fact

that like guns and murder, but exposure to diseases and pathogens that they never had before and had no immunities towards. 1511 marks the start of Spanish rule in Jamaica. Our stories did line up, you're right. Yeah, yeah. And the Spaniards were there primarily to use it as an outpost for shipping the gold and silver that they were finding in the Americas. So they weren't so interested in Jamaica as a place itself, but as like a way station.

Sure. The Spaniards were there until 1655 when it was taken over by English rule. The Spaniards and the English fought, the English won, they got a few things. Boom, one of them was Jamaica. So when the English came in, in 1655, that's when the sugar cane plantations started. That's when the focus on growing and harvesting in Jamaica started. So the English began using Jamaica as a place to harvest and particularly sugar. And we talked about sugar being this white gold of the slave trade in this era. And Jamaica is known particularly in the English Empire as being debauchress.

It's like the Vegas. Party school. It's, yeah, exactly, exactly. Which like love a party school, have a good time, you know, best four years of your life, blah, blah, blah. Best six years of your life. Yeah, exactly. When you are the party school of the slave trade, it's not.

That's not a cute gag. It's not a cute gag. There's particular cruelty that happens in any type of slavery setting, but Jamaica was kind of known even in the English Empire as like, oh, you're going to Jamaica or you have holdings in Jamaica. Like, oh, there's some, there's probably some stuff going on. Yeah. Wow. OK. And of course, that context is different because it's not so much like,

oh, those poor enslaved Africans. It's like, oh, you must be an improper white person because of that, you know. Right. Right. But it's not a light situation, even by the standards of slavery at this time. So in 1833, the British Empire abolishes slavery. In Jamaica, English landowners can no longer own slaves. In 1838, Jamaica fights and gets its emancipation from the British Empire. Woo!

Yeah, exactly. That's 1838. We're going to roll back just a little bit to get some history on Rose Hall itself. So in 1746, so almost 100 years earlier, an Englishman named Henry Fannin purchases 298 acres of land in preparation for his marriage to a woman named Rosa Kelly. Now the idea is he would buy this land, create the plantation, build the beautiful great house and they would live on it forever and always happily ever after. Right. A year later, Henry dies.

Well, fuck. Because he's a white man in the Caribbean, no sunscreen. You know, it's just,'s not it's not yeah brutal All right, so then the house is left to Rosa But under the way the English law works a woman could have Holdings in her name and a state slaves all that but she could not necessarily Operate them to think of it this way, it becomes part of her dowry. It becomes part of a way that she can attract a man

who can run these things. Man. So even though it's left to her. Every aspect of society has been so tedious for so long, huh? Right, yeah. What are we doing here? Fuck. I know, I know.

So Rosa marries a man named George Ash, who then takes her estate, takes on her holdings. The very beginnings of the building, the 298 acres, all of the slaves that come with it. George Ash is responsible for completing the building, and it is the building of the home of the great house And it's named after the Rose family that he was associated with so even though Rosa Kelly is The mistress of Rose Hall. It's just named after some fucking family that he's trying to kiss up to that's so tedious Another tedious thing. Yes, Rose Hall is built from limestone that came from Europe,

actually. We talked about that triangular trade. And this was a rare instance when a raw material came from Europe and went to the Americas in exchange for sugar and rum. But you know, George Ash really wanted this very particular limestone. So he got it for the building of Rose Hall, which is known as a calendar house. And a calendar house is a specific Georgian piece of architecture in which the home has three hundred and sixty five windows. Fuck off. Fifty two doors. Oh, my God. And 12 bedrooms. So three. So 365 days in a year to the windows.

I know, I know. 52 weeks. Yeah. What was your reaction to that piece of information upon presumably learning it while researching this? Did you feel like that spike of anger like I just did? Or was your delight as a storyteller to have such a bizarre and particular detail to report? Did it take it over?

There was also maybe some like in sixth grade, I had to do an architecture project where like you like did the little scale and you drew the house and that just it feels so much like a 12 year old building a house or something. I don't know. There's something like. But then to know that like it was built by slave labor is disgusting. Yeah. 365 windows and all installed by slave labor. And putting up the limestone that your silly ass needed to import from Europe and all of it, right?

It's how so many of these houses get to be so beautiful, right? They're houses of excess because they are built for and by people for whom limits do not exist because they outsource their limits to entire races of people. It sure looks good, but like no shit, they're all haunted. In 1752, just after the house is completed, George Ash dies. Welp. Yep.

Rosa is a widow yet again. Damn. Rosa is a widow yet again, which life expectancy is under 40. No antibiotics, no sunscreen. It's not uncommon. She then has to marry again. She marries a man the next year, Norwood Witter. An unhappy marriage. He spends all of her money and leaves her in debt.

Fuck yeah. He dies and she marries yet again. So this is husband number four. Yep. Husband number four. I do think that one year entire worth is either based in, like, like you say, having this wealth that is only accessible to you as dowry to effectively like angler fish in another white guy who's gonna die of not wearing sunscreen. Yeah.

Then I imagine your situation gets even worse when one of those guys spends all your money and now you really need a man to help. Yeah. And all you've got is this house. I'm sure that house by the way, is a money pit. Yeah. This is a tropical climate.

Yeah, and there's like silk wallpaper. It's like that's not sustainable. Doesn't limestone erode? Yes. So Rosa does find happiness in her fourth marriage to a man named John Palmer. I know the name. I know the name. I know the name. They are married for 22 years. Now she dies before he does in this case. She dies in 1790

and the house is left to John. We know that it's a happy marriage through the historical record, but one of the things that is very clear is John takes great pains to memorialize Rosa at the local church. There's a beautiful marble sculpture above her plaque in the church and then her tomb is beautiful. It's clear that he's taken a lot of care. Note though, in Rosa's story... She poisoned him. There's no murder. No? Yeah. Where's the arsenic? Where's the arsenic doughnuts in the style of flowers in the attic? Yes, exactly. So the story of Rose Hall continues

though, right? Because it falls to George. George remarries, so much remarriage, to a woman, Rebecca Ann James. George in turn dies. She moves back to England. The house does not fall to her, but she gets some revenue from the estate. George leaves it to his son, John Palmer, who dies and it's left to his two sons, but they don't have any children. So then the estate gets passed to a distant nephew. The bland machinations of who in the family gets the house is so no wonder we come up with such like fun and like scandalizing stories in lieu of stuff like this. Exactly. So finally the house is passed to a man named John Rose Palmer. So is this the one that I knew? This is the one you know. Okay. This is the one who owns Rose Hall

and marries a young 17 year old woman named Annie Mary Patterson. Okay. And when does this happen? They are married March 28th, 1820. Now, Annie is born in 1802. She was born in England and she moved to Jamaica at a young age. We're not quite certain exactly when, but she moved with both her parents.

Her father died shortly after that, but her mother lived and she was raised by her mother and her grandfather. She was not abandoned. She did not live with a Haitian nanny. She never lived in Haiti. There wasn't even a fucking nanny. There wasn't even Haiti. Yeah, there was no nanny.

God damn it. At a young age, she does marry at 17. She marries John Palmer in St. James, Jamaica, but then she marries him again in 1821 in Dorset, England. And it's an interesting thing and something to kind of note about Jamaica at this time and colonies at this time. It was deemed that a marriage in Jamaica or in these like kind of nascent colonies or kind of de-boxerous colonies might not count. So many times these married couples would go back to England

and get married again to kind of to make sure it was official. And again, marriage made up. Oh, totally. It's a totally, it's a commercial transaction. Yeah, yeah. I bring it back to society, Colin. What are we doing here? Yeah.

Society at large. A lot of hoops to jump through for this shit, isn doing here? Yeah. Society at large. A lot of hoops to jump through for this shit, innit? Exactly. Annie is the mistress of Rose Hall. She lives there for 11 years. According to the historical record, it is as large as I said it was. All this acreage. It was a huge sugar plantation.

It did not, however, have thousands of slaves. It had at its peak 600 slaves. Okay. Which is a lot. That's a lot of fucking people. But it's not like, it's not 6,000, which was kind of purported. That's still too many. How about zero?

One is too many. Yeah. So John, he did die of natural causes before Annie. Non-arsenic natural causes, are we sure? No sunscreen. That's what happened. Annie was left the widowed mistress of Rose Hall. But as you mentioned, it was a fucking money pit.

Taylor Basso knows from a money pit. You can say a lot about me, but I can eyeball a money pit from fucking 20 miles off. We mentioned it briefly earlier, the Baptist War or Christmas Rebellion. That was a real and pivotal occurrence in Jamaican, Caribbean, and English colonial history. I bring it up again to note it happened in 1831. So these issues that were happening in the country, the kind of social and economic unrest was a factor in the fact that Rose Hall was no longer a money making enterprise. For a young widow, it was kind of a double money pit. Things were not good. She didn't come up with the nighttime tours where the young Jamaican kids jump out at

you? No, she hadn't quite gotten there. And I'll take a little side journey into this Baptist War, the Christmas rebellion, because it is such an important part of Jamaica's history. So what happened was on Christmas day, the leaders of this uprising, which were the main guy was this enslaved leader. His name was Samuel Sharp, Sam Sharp, and he was a minister. So even though he was enslaved,

he was given kind of the liberty to move around the island. And using that and his understanding of Christianity that did not condone slavery, he preached and made connections with various people throughout the island, various enslaved people throughout the island and orchestrated this revolt such that on Christmas Day these key figures across the island refused to work. They went on strike. They said, we are not doing this. We need more free time and we need working wage

in order to do this. So essentially like slavery is done. Fuck you pay me. Fuck you pay me, exactly. Things escalated such that war, skirmish, revolt, whatever you wanna call it. It was a full out rebellion. Sugarcane fields were set on fire. Many of the great homes, great houses, these huge palatial, extravagant plantation homes

were burned to the ground and more than 300 enslaved men and women were executed at the end of it, including Samuel Sharpe, who was hanged. But it was a big push for Great Britain to work towards full emancipation of all the colonies. So the abolishment of slavery, which happened in 1838 in the British Empire. So a lot of people died. It was a very intense revolt, but there was already kind of inklings of abolition in Europe. And this proved to them that the people in the colonies needed and wanted it. This was going to happen one way or another. Yeah. And so it's pivotal in Jamaican history, but it's also pivotal in kind of world history because it really did push for the English Empire to get rid of slavery, which then, you know,

didn't affect the U.S. for another 30 plus years. But it's another story. We only got so much time. Yeah, so much time. This white woman didn't even poison anybody. Yeah, wild stuff happening here. Yeah. So Annie Palmer, she has left a widow. She still has some elements of the estate

that are in her name. So according to the historical record, she has four slaves with her, a family of two parents and two kids. And she and them are moved to another town in Jamaica called Bellevue. She, through distant relatives of John Palmer's, is financially taken care of. It is not a lavish lifestyle. She still has slaves until abolition of slavery in 1838. She never marries again. She does not have children. She dies in 1846. She's buried at a St. James

church. There is no headstone. Dang. Any leftover money that she has, she wills it to a niece who at the time is only like two years old. It's not a lot of money. Oh, give it to the slaves lady. Give it to the slaves. Right? Yeah. Emancipated or otherwise, you owe them. All of it. So she, you know, in the mythologized story, she dies in 1838 at the same time as

the Baptist War, the Christmas revolt. That's also kind of why I wanted to expound a little bit more on that because it is so pivotal to the story of slavery in Jamaica that the myth would tie Annie Palmer to it quite closely. It's symbolically resonant for obvious reasons. So when did she actually die? She died in 1846. So about 13 years after. Yeah.

Interesting, interesting. And so this woman has really, she's gotten a bit lucky or unlucky in terms of her lore because it all seems to have snowballed together with that first lady who had a bad run of, Rosa, who had a bad run of four husbands there that died, died, died, died, died. So she seems to have picked up some of that lore. Exactly. But also got turned into like a poison hungry rapist. Yes. Yeah. She got Voodoo queen. But I think part of that is that like, if we the people, I guess, are the ones who are making a legend of her, we infuse her with our own concepts of, okay, well, who must this wicked woman have been? Well, maybe she was a voodoo queen.

Well, how did a white lady get to be a voodoo queen when she had a Haitian nanny? You know, you can kind of just snowball it. You hit the nail on the head with the way that the Rosa Kelly's her story kind of gets like, you know, she is the mistress of Rose Hall as well. But her story kind of gets pushed in and then changed to because her three husbands died of natural causes. And, you know, that's no good. They need to have been killed. We need to have killed those. Yes, exactly. Yeah. With Obeya.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We need a little more spice. We need to like killed those. Yes, exactly. Yeah. With Obeya. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We need a little more spice. We need to like get this going. Let me go ahead and we'll bring Rose Hall up to speed as well, because Annie Palmer died, but Rose Hall continues. Rose Hall and its fine mahogany ornamentation live on. Well, after Annie Palmer, she had to sell it. It went through a few different hands. It was never the great estate, great home that it was in the early 1800s, you know,

when Annie Palmer first got there. And it was left abandoned by the mid 1900s. It never got burned, which is important because if it had, then it would have been totally gone. But it was in rough shape. There was no way that that mahogany in there was doing anything that wasn't rotting. Brutal. Brutal. Like, the whole roof had blown off and like a big chunk of the side of the main house had knocked off. There were these two big wings that came off of it.

Those were completely just like obliterated down to the ground. They didn't catch fire, but like... Tropical storms. Exactly. Human environment, scavengers. Yeah, exactly. Vegetation. I like this shabby phase of this home for its haunted house lore.

I think that like this is where the kids really start saying, well, you know, that old house over there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's where the white witch lived. And that's, you know, this that's how this spreads around. Yeah. Montego Bay, in my opinion, having not been there.

Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. You know, there's quite a few of these great homes throughout Jamaica and some of them did not last. Some of them were burned and some of them, you know, got blown down, but this one did. So I think you're right. There's probably a lot of like teenagers sneaking out at night going here getting spooked and yeah.

First kisses in the rotting mahogany hall. Yeah exactly. In 1965 an American couple, very wealthy, come down to Jamaica to rest, take a little relaxation. Uh, yes. Aren't we? John Rollins and his wife Michelle Rollins. John made his fortune doing various things. The thing that I recognized was he started and owned the pest control company Orkin. The Orkin Man? They were from Delaware and he ran he was like lieutenant governor of Delaware and He had just finished his race or something like that and he came down to Jamaica just to relax

He wasn't gonna do anything but then you know, it was just he just fell in love So he fell in love with the plentiful sugar and that alluring fragrance of is that a hint of mandarin? Yeah, exactly alluring fragrance of, is that a hint of mandarin? Yeah, exactly. So him and his wife, his wife Michelle Rollins, her maiden name was Metrinco, which you might recognize Taylor from 1964's Miss World USA. She won that Yes, yeah. Yes, that's where I remember her from. You're right, you're right, you're right. She won that competition, Michelle. She went on to get her law degree from Georgetown, and she also ran for, I think, a Senate seat

in Delaware much later in life. What happened there? She didn't win. She's a staunch Republican. She took a very hard platform on welfare. She thought that any assistance for the unemployed was a reckless use of tax paying dollars. Seems like someone who should live in a house built by slaves. Yeah, right?

Yeah. That makes sense. Exactly. So they bought the house at around the same time that Johnny Cash bought a similar plantation home called Cinnamon Hill. And this is how Johnny Cash came to be in this part of Jamaica and learned the story of Annie Palmer and wrote this song, The Ballad of Annie Palmer, that's perpetuates, again, the story of a voodoo queen. It's got voodoo queen. Oh yeah.

It's got Haitian nanny. Yeah, it's got the three palm trees. It's got like nine different murdered husbands, yeah. Exactly. Easily debunked dungeon. Yes. Come on now. Exactly. So Michelle and John renovate Rose Hall at extensive personal cost.

Like this this thing was really nasty. A money pit. A money pit. Exactly. They not only renovate the entire thing, but they reinstall all the mahogany furnishings. They locate not the original furnishings because those would not have been there, but they find era appropriate beds, tables, commode chairs, like the whole fucking thing. You know what I mean? Wow. Yeah. And they kid it out. They turn it into a museum where you can visit and you can learn about the great history of Rose Hall Plantation and you can learn about the history of its infamous mistress,

Annie Palmer. You can even on completion of the night tour, $35 a person, calm your nerves in the dungeon bar with their signature drink, which is brew. That's appalling. The dungeon bar? Mm-hmm. For the dungeon where she raped the slaves?

Mm-hmm. Oh my God. According to legend? That's very poor taste. Yes, it's not. Listen. Yeah. It didn't happen.

Good news. Right. It's still a very poor taste. Yes. Yeah. But I also think it's important to know the real history of Annie Palmer, which was no offense, any rather unremarkable life in colonial Jamaica for a woman, you know, an English woman living there, how that becomes, you know, the witches brew drink. She got yassified. She got yassified. How does that necessarily happen?

A book written in 1860s by a traveling missionary. His name is Hope Masterson Waddell. And he apparently preached at Rose Hall in his travels. And so he writes a book, 29 Years in the West Indies in Central Africa, about his missionary adventures. And Rose Hall gets a mention, Annie Palmer is mentioned. And so it enters the historical record that way. And then all of a sudden, after this, there's a pamphlet that's written about a strangling that happens at a nearby plantation. Mish mix those two together, baby! The name that gets used of the strangly is Annie Palmer. And then there's a newspaper article about Mrs. Palmer and the Jamaican daily gleaner.

And this makes reference to two Mrs. Palmer's, a Rosa who was the good Mrs. Palmer and Annie who was the bad Mrs. Palmer. Oh my God. See, this is very Twin Peaks now. Yes, yes, exactly. And then, and then we're getting to like 1911 and there's a, you know, a writer for the same newspaper, The Daily Gleaner. He's using old archives of the newspaper to kind of rehash the story. And then all of these strands of miscommunication and misinformation, they get braided together into a novel by a Jamaican author, Herbert G. DeLisser.

And the book is called The White Witch of Rose Hall. That sounds true. Let's fucking let's read that and like internalize it. That's very vivid stuff. Exactly. And this is the story of the bookkeeper. The novel starts and English bookkeeper arrives at Rose Hall. That sounds juicy as hell. It does actually kind of sound like a good book to be honest. Okay. That sounds very GC. Is it true? That's another issue. That's another issue.

But it was a novel where like it was reported that the author did a lot of research, right? And this is where the claim that she dies in 1831 happens. You know, in that book, Herbert G. DeLisser, that book gets written in like the 50s. Another novel rehashes the same story in the 60s. Johnny Cash writes the song in the mid 60s. And that, you know, and one of the lines he says is she was boss, her word was law. When you're up against the folk music memory making machine that is Johnny Cash, lights out, just give up. Yeah. The poet

laureate of American country who's like haunting words embed themselves in your soul in his husky old man voice. You're fucked. Yeah. Annie Palmer. Sorry about it. Yeah. Good thing you're dead because you're fucked. Another novel comes out of this in 2005. Author Mike Henry writes Rose Hall's White Witch, The Legend of Annie Palmer, which is supposed to have more research, but it's just regurgitating all the old stuff. Ghost Hunters International in 2010 visits Rose Hall. in 2019. Miss Jamaica has a photo shoot at Rose Hall and she wears an Annie Palmer white dress. That's like all these like voodoo feathers, but it's all white and lace and.

That sounds fabulous. Yeah. And then America's Next Top Models go to Rose Hall. It's at cycle 19, episode 12. So there is more scholarship that gets kind of trickled down to the tourism that questions the myth of Annie Palmer. 2011, the reggae wine festival, the brochure that they printed is clear that the Annie Palmer story is a fictional story. There's some things that are kind of starting to happen in terms

of like, you know what, is this really what was going on? Maybe not. But- Like definitely not. It was not what was going on at all. Absolutely not what was going on. Is it the folklore story? Yes. Yeah. It is. That's kind of it, huh? It now exists in a different context. Yeah.

The story, as trite as it is, the story has a life of its own. Yeah, it keeps kind of growing and mutating and mustasticizing as much as it will. Mm hmm. And it affects people's lives enough that Miss Jamaica is taking photos there and Tyra is bringing the girls down, et cetera, et cetera. And it's interacting with lives and it propagates and Johnny Cash wrote a hell of a song about it.

Right. Yeah. Now you might be wondering like, well, okay, Rose Hall, it's a historical site. It's been, you know, at great expense, refurbished, renovated. Why wouldn't they be interested in perpetuating the real story? Oh, no, no. One, they seem like pills, the two of them. And then two, it's the same reason that I was like, when you were rattling off like and so and so passed the house on to

so and so and then John too gave it to John three and did it. It's boring. Like when the fuck do the ghosts get here? You know? So of course, you do the sexy version that Johnny Cash already has been marketing for decades. You do that one. You're not going to go against Johnny. Yeah. I think there is something to the fact that it's called the Rose Hall Resort, you know, when Michelle

Rowlands and John Rowlands, who passed away in 2021. Oh, the Republican white couple who hate welfare. Yes, exactly. So when they started kind of marketing it, putting it on the map as a major tourist destination and all of this, they didn't really account for the enslaved people in any way other than to hush up that part of it. Or make it sexy in a way that you could stand under a painting and say that she banged and murdered them.

Exactly. It's this very weak sauce acknowledgement of the horrors and the torture and the pain and the human suffering that happened on this site. It points to Michelle and John Rollins just not being very good stewards of history that they're not even Jamaican, you know? And it's like, what the fuck? No, no.

But I also think that in some ways, this is like, it's a way to deal with a very dark history in a very ineffectual way. It's just kind of like very vaguely pointing at like, oh, it's scary. There's so many things that are damning about it, right? Like the capitalistic nature of it, how it's not historically accurate at all. Like there's all these. No, no, no. Yeah, no. And so there's all these ways that it like undermines...

Like, I think it's a very generous reading to say that like, this is a way that maybe they're trying to... And like a tourist industry is trying to grapple with a dark history. The harsher reading of that, I think, or not even harsher, I think the more truthful reading of that is why is it that this tourist industry is willing to kind of take this story and capitalize it. And I mean, it's not a question of why it's because it makes money and the like actually looking at the history will make people uncomfortable because we know we have records, real records from real slave owners of the time that lay out the specific and graphic horrors that slaves in Jamaica actually endured, as opposed to the false narratives that the Annie Palmer story and in particular, the Rose Hall plantation slash resort, quote unquote, resort, perpetuates as the true history. How do Jamaican people in and of themselves feel about and receive this character in terms of like, is there an affection? Is there a warmth to this character among the people of Jamaica?

The inklings that I got were more so regarding her as the folklore figure. She represented like this fear and she, but she also represented like that's a Jamaican story. I recognize that. I remember that. I remember my grandma telling me about this and that. And so that is why the folklore figure must exist. Yeah.

That is why I keep getting, I guess, like pulled back and interested in this character, even though as you say, I know it's wrong and I know exists in like the context of other despicable legacies, which must be told and spoken about much more forthrightly and often than they are compared to something like this. But also I think that the folklore white witch of Rose Hall character who's straight out of a novel, also kind of like needs to exist too, in her way. Yeah, yeah. She's in some way important

because she's someone that our grandma tells you about and she gives form to fear in a way that we can understand without spiraling into despair. Exactly, yeah, yeah. I think the whole situation points to the ways that, and I can't speak as a Jamaican, but I can speak as an American and like the history of slavery in America, but the ways that we are so unequipped to even begin to consider the history and the ways that we are encouraged to be unequipped and to not dig in.

And increasingly legislated. Exactly. Yeah. Increasingly legislated to turn away from the parts of history that make us uncomfortable because they speak honestly about people who look like us doing terrible things to people who do not. And if we look at that, then we have to consider that those folks and their descendants are right to feel aggrieved by that.

Right. And then where does that get us? Exactly. Then we got to start talking about slavery at the slavery house we own. That's no good. Yeah. And there's also extremely complicated when you're talking about descendants too, right? Because then it's like, well, you can be descended from both a slave owner and a slave.

Like that is not uncommon. Many people are, many people are. Yes. And so how do you reckon all of that? And I think the idea of like the ghost tour at the plantation does a disservice. In the kindest reading, it's, you know, pointing vaguely towards ooh is scary.

But I think in the pointing vaguely, we get to feel relief that, oh, yeah, we did the ghost tour, so we kind of know about slavery, but you're not knowing anything. Oh, that's sad. No, when you put it that way. Yeah. The Annie Palmer story is not teaching you anything about slavery and systems of history and because it's all made up. No, certainly not. Certainly not. Certainly not. Damn, damn, damn. Josie, Josie Mitchell,

yet again with an it's all made up story. Yeah. Oh yeah. To leave us on a happier note maybe, a more enlightened note, there is- A hint of Mandarin for the back note on the way out. A hint of Mandarin. Yes. Yes, exactly. So there is a museum in Louisiana on an old plantation and it should be noted as a sugar plantation, the same as Rose Hall. It's called the Whitney Plantation and it is the only museum of a former plantation where slavery was the main economic driver. It's the only one that is dedicated to the story of slavery. Many of these plantations, especially in the American South, are relabeled like Rose Hall as a resort. And you can get married there. There's an adjoining golf course. You know, you can take the historical tour and you can be the fine guest of the

Southern family that lived here and oh look, there's Scarlet O'Hara. You know, like, it perpetuates the story of the South. Your groomsmen can stay in the slave's quarters. Exactly. So, the narrative of the slave experience at the plantation is infinitely more informative and compelling than the knowledge of whatever shitty debutante lived upstairs. Exactly. And I suppose that while it is difficult but important to go and see sites of atrocities

in order to better understand them and to remind ourselves of both the human potential for suffering as well as like our responsibility to stop it. For some people, the guilt is too much, I guess, or the wanting, at worst the prejudice, at worst you still hold and propagate those types of values, which is unfortunately something that we're kind of seeing increasingly common as like white supremacy gains political foothold. For some people, I think probably it's a downer and they don't want to be reminded of that inconvenient part of history. They just want a nice place to play golf or for their wedding. And people can be pretty selfish, especially like white people with the blinders on.

Yeah. But the Whitney plantation. Let's just all go there Okay, I feel like the folks who run Rose Hall. Maybe they can do a little research trip exchange Louisiana and See what they're doing with their curtains see what they're doing with their coin boxes and maybe some other important things exactly Yes, and if you feel so inclined, go visit Whitney Plantation if you're close to it at any point. And if you're not and you still want to support, they have a lot of wonderful resources on their website. And you can also donate. Go to Whitney, W H I T N E plantation.org, and you can donate.

And it's gonna be really helpful to donate now because they're losing funding, like a lot of nonprofits in general, but in particular, I think this one won't be eligible for a lot of different types of government assistance and grants. Oh gosh, that's awful. So it's either poor Annie Palmer, her story was co-opted, or fuck her, she's a slave owner.

Or just go to the Whitney plantation. Annie Palmer got the glow up of all time, she got a hint of Mandarin appended to her name and now we all stand under portraits of her and talk about her and that's a great deal more legacy than most of us will ever get. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account

at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinthemy. But no pressure, bittersweetinthemy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. My sources for this episode include A Family in a Festival How Vancouver's Lapu Lapu Day Tragedy Unfolded by Brianna Charleboix, Chuck Chang, Darryl Greer, and Nono Shen via the Associated Press, May 3rd, 2025. Ferdinand Magellan, first circumnavigation of the Earth on the YouTube channel Simple History. 2.3 million viewers, can't be wrong. I read the story of Lapu Lapu, the legendary

Filipino hero by Ronika Valdaya-Villa for the Culture Trip, October 16th, 2024. Lapu Lapu, hero behind the myth by Adore Vincent Maillol for Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 25th, 2021. Lapu Lapu Statue Implicated in Deaths of Opan Mayors by Max Limpug for Discover Cebu. And lastly, if the Lapu Lapu Day Festival Killings have moved you to donate, you can go to FilipinoBC.com. The sources that I used for this episode include Rosehall.com, Rosehall Great House's website. In particular, you heard the audio from their YouTube video Rosehall Great House Tours Jamaica. You can find that on their main page. I looked at an article in CNN Travel, a murderous ghost haunted an

exclusive Jamaican resort for centuries. Could she survive a paranormal investigation? Written by Jack Bantok, published August 7, 2024. I've written an article in Zocalo Public Square, the uprising of 60,000 Jamaicans that changed the very nature of revolt. Written by Tom Zolliner, published May 28, 2020. I wrote an article in Black Past, blackpast.org, The Baptist War, 1831 to 1832. It was contributed by Samuel Momodu, published July 22, 2017. I listened to a lecture on YouTube given by Dr. Louise Fenton posted April 27th, 2021. It was entitled The Legend of Annie Palmer and Rose Hall,

Witchcraft, voodoo, ghosts, murder and Jamaican plantation from the University Center, Telford. I watched a video from Jamaica Uncut, The White Witch of Rose Hall, The Story of Annie Palmer posted May 11th, 2021. It was essentially the tour that they give you inside Rose Hall. I watched the dark and disturbing tale of the White Witch of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer on Forgotten Lives page and it was posted to YouTube September 7th, 2021. I watched Ghost Hunters International Season 2, Episode 13, The Legend of Rose Hall. I just watched that on YouTube. I read an academic article by Natalie Zakek in the Journal of Global Slavery titled, Holding the Whip Hand, the Female Slave Holder in Myths

and Reality, and it was published 2021. I read an article in Mother Jones about Michelle Rollins and her campaign for congressional candidacy in Delaware. The article was entitled, Let Them Eat Want Ads and was written by Andy Kroll, published July 29th, 2010. I looked at the website for the Whitney plantation, that's a Whitney plantation.org to find more information about what they are doing to preserve the history of slavery. If you would like to hear that Johnny Cash song, it is called the Ballad of Annie Palmer. And you can find it on YouTube

pretty easily. The song you will hear in a little bit here, Papa Richie and the Supersonics Annie Palmer, the 1979 high note version, was posted to YouTube by Mighty Dr. Bird, February 16, 2014. If you would like to have access to the Bittersweet Film Club, go on and head over to coffee.com slash bittersweetinfamy and become a subscriber. This month we'll be watching the film The Dressmaker, starring Kate Winslet, as recommended by our dear and lovable subscriber Erica Jo Brown. You too can be like Erica Jo Brown and all these other wonderful monthly subscribers, Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie Dee, Soph, Dylan, and Sacsula Cat.

Bitter Sweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was lovingly edited by Alex McCarthy with help from Alexi Johnson. Our cover photo was taken by Luke Bentley. The interstitial music you heard earlier is by Mitchell Collins. And the song you hear now is T Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for watching!