Overview:
A Haitian American podcaster travels to Benin seeking long-held questions about Vodou. Through family memories, historical truths and encounters with Vodou practitioners, Baudelaire Ceus explores how colonial narratives, trauma and misunderstanding shaped Haitian attitudes toward Vodou, and what reclaiming this tradition might mean today for Haitians across the diaspora seeking connection to Haiti.
“You think you see the truth.
You think you know what’s inside.
But when you look again — with open eyes — something entirely different appears.”
So declares podcaster Baudelaire Ceus in the first episode of The Vodou Project, an audio documentary three years in the making, so far. The pilot captures the impetus for the Boston-based audio producer’s deep look into Vodou and the journey toward answers that has taken him across continents and centuries to understand the religion.
At its core, the spiritual exploration focuses both on the external forces that have shaped perceptions of Vodou and on Ceus’ inward look at his Haitian American upbringing. That’s where the magic of the show lives.
Like many children of immigrants who begin to look into their heritage as adults, Ceus, 32, reaches the point where he must reconcile being brought up in a household and society that portrays Vodou as evil and his actual experiences with the religion. His work coincides with an apparent thirst among younger Haitians, at home and abroad, to reclaim and reposition Vodou in an affirmative light in their spiritual lives. For Ceus, the goal is to see Vodou accepted for its role in Haitian life without the demonization.
“We’ve been so intentionally miseducated, in a lot of ways, that has led us to being scared of ourselves,” Ceus said. “My goal for the show is to at least cause a decent-sized crack in that, for enough people to go down the journey that I’m on.
“It’s not necessarily about them becoming Vodouisants. It’s a respect thing,” he added. “It would also serve a purpose in our relationship with the rest of the diaspora. We’re misunderstood by them just like we misunderstood ourselves.”
Ceus uses the series as an open door to facilitate conversations with his family, and to unearth incredible stories and secrets long awaiting discovery. Now, he says, he’s in need of funds to continue.
Like many Haitian Americans, Ceus grew up steeped in the pride of being from the first Black republic, immersed in the markers of culture — soup joumou on New Year’s Day, speaking Creole at home and Haitian coffee. Yet Vodou existed behind a locked door. Relatives refused to discuss it, warning him away, describing it as dangerous or demonic.
Meanwhile, he absorbed distorted portrayals of “voodoo” through cartoons, horror films and jokes about curses. When the 2010 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people, including his half-sister, he watched right-wing Christian televangelist Pat Robertson claim that Haitians died because their enslaved ancestors had made “a pact with the devil.” Grief sharpened into anger, and anger into a question: If Vodou played a central role in Haiti’s liberation, why did so many Haitians reject it?
To begin answering that question, he turned to his mother — someone who had avoided the topic for decades. Sitting in their family home, she revealed the long-buried experiences with Vodou, the good and the bad. And in her retelling, her story reflects the inherited silence and fear borne of trauma, colonization, missionary influence and Hollywood stereotypes, not from firsthand knowledge.
Once pushed underground and demonized, Vodou is being reclaimed by scholars and young Haitians as a source of identity, pride and cultural resilience
A gripping listen
To listen to the pilot episode is to be transported by storytelling, much like the style children in Haiti grow up with “krik, krak” nighttime tales. Ceus’ evocative descriptions, enthusiasm and wide-eyed approach to discovery invite the listener throughout the journey. His segment about his first ceremony in Benin, for example, suggests that perhaps Ceus inherited the griot gene from the continent.
“It’s the day after Christmas. My family is fresh off celebrating the birth of Jesus, probably eating leftovers, bundled up against the Northeast cold, and I’m here—5,000 miles from home in Africa, in Benin, at a Vodou ceremony. I got a couple horns, a bottle of rum… It’s almost 100 degrees and already dehydrated and sweat is just pouring off me. My head is spinning. The Vodou drumming is loud.
I look around the dirt courtyard… That rustling sound you hear are these things called zangbetos. There’s four of them spinning around the courtyard. They’re 6 ft tall, shaped like little tents covered in overlapping layers of straw that have been dyed different colors…
The Vodou priest looks over at me. He lifts the entire zangbeto and tips it on its side in the dirt. Right at the center, there’s a turtle. Not a human, just a turtle. About the size of a small salad bowl. I freaked out.
My guide translated the priest’s words to me. He said, ‘This is the power of Africa. It’s a matter of spirituality, so science can’t explain that.’ ”
With the turtle reveal, Ceus offers the metaphor for the journey: what people think they see is not always what lies within.
Continuing the journey
Earlier this year, Ceus released the pilot on Apple Podcasts and Spotify in hopes of drawing interest—and financial support.
Ceus was able to research, write, record, host and edit the first episode on his own, around his schedule as a full-time producer with a podcast studio. He cobbled together funds to travel to Benin, Milwaukee and New Orleans. In December, he plans to travel to Cuba and then to Haiti next spring.
But now, as he finalizes episode 2—focused on the lwa of the Vodou pantheon—Ceus welcomes support to complete the project. His goal is to produce all eight episodes in time to launch around the Bwa Kayiman commemorations in August 2026.
So far, he has a promising distribution arrangement and has received a modest grant from the state of Massachusetts. He has been sharing the pilot in audio storytelling circles in hopes of raising about $200,000, ideally. The Haitian Times and WBUR, a Boston-based public radio station, are providing support as media partners.
Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, professor emeritus in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is among the authorities on Vodou featured in the podcast. The houngan asogwe, a senior Vodou priest, has written several books on the belief system and hopes to see more projects like Ceus’ come to fruition.
“For too long, for the last five centuries, we have learned from our slave masters as well as from their descendants in the present time to despise ourselves, our religions, our languages, our physical looks,” Bellegarde-Smith, a priest for 35 years, explains.
“It is high time for people of African descent to feel pride and show pride in the cultural achievements of yesteryear as well as in the present,” he added.
“All efforts to undo the psychological damage are to be welcomed. Ceus takes this task seriously. [It’s] a serious and noble effort.”
For information about supporting The Vodou Project, send a message to Baudelaire Ceus via his website, bauknows.com.
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