Foul play? Dana Jackson, Charlotte, North Carolina woman goes on Haiti vodou retreat to become a Vodou priestess only to end up dead, her body missing and no answer from Haiti officials as a son now desperately seeks answers.
A North Carolina man is seeking answers following his mom going on a Voodou retreat in Haiti only to end up dead.
Dana Jackson, 51, of Charlotte, N.C, wanted to become a Manbo priestess according to the woman’s son, Timothy Jackson, with the woman traveling to the impoverished politically volatile Caribbean nation on July 1 with a group that she met through the Vodou community according the son told USA Today.
A dream to become a Vodou Priestess
A Manbo priestess ‘is a female ritual specialist in the Haitian Vodou tradition. Like her male counterpart, the oungan (or houngan), she performs ceremonies, initiations, healings, and divinations,’ according to an article on the Harvard University website.
Vodou is an African religion and comes from the word Fon which means ‘God’ or ‘Spirit’ and ‘originated in the ancient kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Nigeria, Benin, and Togo)’, according to PBS.org. Alternative spellings of the religion include Vodun and Vodoun, but not Voodoo. The spelling Voodoo is considered ‘the sensationalist and derogatory Western creation,’ according to the PBS article.
Speaking to USA TODAY, Dana’s son explained this was something that his mom wanted to do and had been practicing for a few years prior to her fateful trip to Haiti.
‘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,’ the son told the outlet. ‘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.’
Jackson said that his mom left for Haiti on July 1 and was supposed to return to the United States on July 26.
The son said he was nervous about his mom’s trip, but was comforted by the fact that she knew the group she was traveling with and with whom she would participate the Vodou rituals with.
But what could possibly go wrong?
‘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,’ Jackson said. ‘These weren’t strangers that she went down there with. These are people that she’s built a relationship with.’
Jackson said the group recently went on a trip to Boston together in June.
During part of the Vodou ceremony, Jackson expected to not hear from his mom given the sacred nature of the upcoming rituals. The mom had been instructed not to make contact with the outside world.
Dana communicated with her son on the 13th, writing, ‘we will talk on the 21st going to church tomorrow.’
Jackson and his mom spoke every day. The no communication part was nerve-wrecking to him, but he wanted to respect his mother’s decision to participate in the ritual. In the last message he received from his mom on July 21, Dana asked her son to, ‘pray for her.’
The next day, Jackson still did not get a message from his mom, and he began to worry.
Around 5 p.m. on July 22, his grandmother broke the news that his mom had died.
Victim of foul play? Where’s Dana Jackson’s body?
In order to confirm his mother’s passing, Jackson reached out to one of the leaders of the Vodou group that went to Haiti with his mom. The first thing they asked him was, ‘how much did he know?’
‘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,’ the son told USA TODAY.
The person who spoke with him told him that his mom had gotten extremely sick during the ceremony. They told him that she kind of fainted. When she regained consciousness, she didn’t know where she was. When a member of the house asked her where she was, she said in Virginia, Jackson said.
However, Jackson said his family hadn’t lived in Virginia in over a year.
Jackson said they also told him that they brought her to a local hospital. At the hospital, Dana started to have seizures, before having a heart attack and a stroke.
‘That was the initial story,’ the son told the outlet. ‘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.’
Jackson also was supposed to get an update on where his mom’s body is located on Aug. 16 but that still hasn’t happened.
‘I haven’t heard anything,’ he said. ‘I don’t even think the U.S. Embassy got involved, or even received the necessary paperwork until about four days ago.’
Attempts to reach out to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, have to date not yielded an official response.
Dana’s son is hoping to have an autopsy performed to determine his mom’s official cause of death. A feat made impossible without the presence of her body.
The son now maintains the parent is a victim of foul play. A point of reference he can not verify without an independent autopsy. Let alone her missing body.
Jackson has since created a GoFundMe account for his mom’s funeral and additional costs that he will need in the future.
Dana Jackson was supposed to turn 52 on Sept. 13, 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,’ Timothy Jackson said.
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.
