A North Carolina woman sent her son a chilling final message before she died during a Vodou retreat.
Dana Jackson, 51, had traveled to Haiti back in July where she hoped to become a Manbo priestess, specialising in traditional Haitian Vodou rituals . But she never returned from the trip and her son Timothy Jackson is now desperately seeking answers about what happened to his mother.
Timothy explained that his mother had left for Haiti on July 1 accompanied by a group of acquaintances all hoping to take part in Vodou rituals. Dana was due to return to the US on July 26 and would have limited time for communication because of the nature of the Vodou practice.
However, things soon took a worrying turn as Timothy explained to USA Today . He said: “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.
“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. 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, these weren't strangers that she went down there with. These are people that she's built a relationship with.”
Timothy then described how he became increasingly concerned as he received what would be his final messages from his mom. He said: “So she sent me one last message on the 13th, and she said, ‘We will talk on the 21st going to church tomorrow.‘” Then on the 21st he had a final text from Dana where she asked him to “pray for her.”
Timothy admitted the anxiety he experienced as he waited for communication from Dana that would never come. He continued: “That whole entire week just kind of low key, [I was] having anxiety because I'm not able to hear from her, and I know that this is a very important part of the ceremony. On the 21st, I didn't hear anything from her. I did reach out to her at about 5 p.m. on WhatsApp. I didn't get any response.”
Timothy then described how a few days later his grandmother told him that Dana was dead. He explained: “The way she told me was, ‘Your mom's not coming back from Haiti.’ So I hung up the phone with her. 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.”
Timothy contacted the group leader to try and establish what had happened to his mum. He said: “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.”
They told him that Dana had gotten sick and fainted during the ceremony and that when she woke up she allegedly didn't know where she was. The leader told Timothy that Dana was then taken to hospital, where she began having seizures before experiencing a heart attack and a stroke.
However, he was unconvinced as something about the story didn't add up to him. He explained: “That was the initial story. 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.”
Timothy is now hoping to raise money via a GoFundMe page to bring Dana's body back to the US for an autopsy. He 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.”
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