A North Carolina woman died under mysterious circumstances on a Vodou retreat in Haiti — and her family is now demanding answers from the group’s leaders.
Dana Jackson, 51, traveled to Haiti on July 1 with a group that she met through the Vodou community, her son, Timothy Jackson, told USA Today.
Jackson had been practicing Vodou for a few years, and wanted to become a Manbo priestess, or a female ritual specialist, Timothy explained.
“Four years ago, my mom started to do a little bit of research on the African traditional spiritual belief systems and Vodou was a part of that,” he said.
“She had kind of been on this path of just kind of doing research and practicing, or at least, just doing her due diligence as far as research is concerned.”
Timothy was nervous about his mom’s trip, but was comforted by the fact that she knew the group she was traveling with.
“The people that she went down there with, their name is Sosyete and I believe that that means society in the Turkish language and Nago,” Timothy said.
“These weren’t strangers that she went down there with. These are people that she’s built a relationship with.”
During part of the Vodou ceremony, Jackson was not allowed to contact the outside world. Timothy said he heard from her on July 13 – thirteen days before she was supposed to return to the US.
“If you do any research about that part of the ceremony, even just on Google, it’ll tell you, that’s very sacred and things of that nature,” Timothy told USA Today.
“So she sent me one last message on the 13th, and she said, ‘we will talk on the 21st going to church tomorrow.‘”
When the 21st finally arrived, Timothy messaged Jackson on WhatsApp, but never heard back, he said.
“I woke up. I’m not gonna lie, I was in a little bit of a panic, because I felt like by now, she at least would have responded to my text,” the concerned son said of the first 24 hours that he could not reach his mom.
On the evening of July 22, Timothy’s grandmother broke the news that his mom had died in Haiti.
“The way she told me was, ‘your mom’s not coming back from Haiti,’” Timothy recalled.
“I called her back. I asked her, ‘what did she mean?’ She said, ‘she’s not coming back from Haiti. She passed away.’ I hung up the phone. I called her again.”
When Timothy reached out to one of the leaders of the Vodou group, the first thing they asked him was how much he already knew, he claimed.
“To be completely honest with you, my initial thought was my mom went down to Haiti, they did this last piece of the ceremony, and something sinister happened,” Timothy admitted to USA Today.
According to the person Timothy spoke with, Jackson became ill during the ceremony and fainted. When she came to, she thought she was in Virginia.
Jackson and her family had not lived in Virginia for over a year, Timothy noted.
The group claimed that they brought Jackson to the hospital, where she had seizures and then suffered a heart attack and a stroke.
“That was the initial story,” Timothy said.
“They said that my mom didn’t bring her medicine. So there was a red flag, because what medicine are you guys talking about? it sounds like they were trying to perpetuate a story.”
As of this week, Timothy also had no idea where his mother’s body was – even though the group promised him an update by Aug. 16.
“I haven’t heard anything, he lamented.
“I don’t even think the US Embassy got involved, or even received the necessary paperwork until about four days ago.”
The US Embassy in Port-au-Prince did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for a comment on Jackson’s death.
As of Tuesday morning, a GoFundMe for Dana Jackson’s funeral and related costs had raised over $11,300 of its $50,000 goal.
Her family is also hoping to have an autopsy performed to determine her official cause of death, Timothy Jackson said.
“We don’t know what happened in the last nine days, but whatever happened, my mom did not go to Haiti not to come back to the United States,” he insisted.
Haiti is currently under a Level 4 travel warning by the US State Department. As of July 2023, all non-emergency government personnel have been on ordered departure, meaning that there are a reduced number of experts available to help Americans who may run into trouble there.
