good dark tourism

20 Unique Dark Tourism Sites Around The World

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One of the most unique tourism trends in recent years might have to be the fascination with so-called dark tourism sites. There’s always been a curiosity when it comes to places that might have a historic connection with tragic events. But while there are many reasons for people wanting to visit such sites, dark tourism is not a bad thing.

You might argue that visiting these dark tourism sites is a way of preserving the past. Or making sure the same horrific things don’t happen again . And while you might get some mixed reactions from people about your travel plans, they are fascinating places. And I believe they are places that the world should know about.

Disclaimer: The following article has travel suggestions in both Russia and Ukraine, however was written before the current events unfolded. I have chosen to leave them in this article in the spirit of the original topic covered here, however I am in no way recommending visiting either Russia or Ukraine at this time . Please check current travel conditions for any country you plan on visiting and travel safely.

What is Dark Tourism?

Dark tourism sites are places which we can associate with death, destruction or some kind of disaster. While some might see them as morbid, you’d be surprised at how many places you’ve visited with such connotations. For example, have you ever been to the Tower of London? Full of torture chambers and stories of gruesome events. What about the Colosseum in Rome? The deadly gladiator events here were some of the most bloody spectator sports in history.

We think of them as historical sites in a way we don’t think of some of the following places in the same way. Is it because that was so long ago? Does the length of time before we start exploring these sites really make a difference in how our visiting them should be perceived?

How should I behave at dark tourism sites?

Societal rules about museums are ingrained in us from an early age. But a lot of people worry about what to do while visiting somewhere with such a dark past. How do you behave? What if you do the wrong thing?

Respect is key . Remember that these sites, while open for you to enjoy, learn and experience, are the sites of some pretty bad and horrific things . Be aware of those around you as you never know if they might have a connection to where you are.

While it’s unfair to say you shouldn’t talk or show enthusiasm, use common sense and read the room . A concentration camp is nowhere to be giggling with your friends, a memorial park is not somewhere to be shouting…you get the idea.

Unique Dark Tourism Sites To Visit

Whether you’re a big history buff or just curious in anything a little macabre, these are some dark tourism sites around the world you likely don’t want to miss. From recent tragic events to centuries-old historical happenings, you can’t deny how incredibly interesting these places are.

Alcatraz Prison – San Francisco, USA

Possibly one of the most eerie and fascinating dark tourism sites you will ever visit is Alcatraz . A prison so notorious that it still receives millions of visitors a year. Located on an island in San Francisco ‘s bay area, you now get to experience seeing it from the inside like a prisoner. So close to land but so far away.

The only way to reach Alcatraz island is by a pre-booked boat tour . The tour is popular and often sells out months in advance. There are no food or drinks allowed except at the boat dock area, so plan your day accordingly. You also have a steep walk to the prison at the top of the hill, but there are motorized vehicle transfers for those with mobility issues.

Explore the prison and the grounds with an impeccably narrated audio tour by former guards and inmates. You’ll be led through cells, the recreation areas, the kitchen and more. Learn about the riots, the escapes and the deaths that happened here, and the most famous prisoners to ever call Alcatraz home.

Gravensteen Castle – Ghent, Belgium

Contributed by Cecilie from Worldwide Walkers

Gravensteen Castle in Ghent  is a classic example of dark tourism sites in Europe. The castle was built back in 1180 and housed the Count of Flanders for many centuries until it became a court, a prison, and even a cotton factory.

It’s the dark horror stories of torture that really attract visitors to Gravensteen castle. While visiting, you’ll walk through torture rooms and see all the different tools used to punish criminals back in the Middle Ages.

Many people have died within the castle walls in the most horrific ways, which creates a dark haunted feeling to the place. It’s this uncomfortable feeling that leaves you both intrigued and distressed after your visit.

While it might sound very disturbing, the free audio guide does a wonderful job carrying out all the stories in an interesting way with respect to history. It’s a great place to learn about the history of Belgium’s city Ghent . You can even get one of the greatest city views from the castle roof.

Silver Mines – Potosi, Bolivia

Contributed by Deb from The Visa Project

While there are many landmarks to see in Potosi , a unique attraction is to visit one of these working mines. A guided tour let’s you witness the working conditions of the miners.

If you  live in Bolivia , you would come across many extreme tourist offerings but this one would probably be one of the darkest. The  Cerro Rico  mountains silver mines made Potosi a major economic center of the Spanish empire back in the colonial times.

Mining is more or less still done in 18th century style – using old tools, hand and dynamite. No modern safety equipment or protocols. Although you would be introduced to  El Diablo,  the mountain’s devil-god to who the miners offer cigarettes, liquor as well as blood of an animal slaughtered on the spot for their protection. Child labor is pretty common and you can buy dynamite in the local market!

You will be advised to chew on coca leaves to help with breathlessness if taking a tour through the mines . The miners work in really harsh and dangerous conditions and many get lung diseases afterwards. If you visit, definitely leave a generous tip for the miners.

Port Arthur Penal Colony – Tasmania, Australia

Contributed by Mark from Wyld Family Travel

Port Arthur lies at the bottom of the world in southern Tasmania Australia . Port Arthur was a British penal colony set up in Australia, designed to break prisoners both mentally and physically. To be sent here from England was being sent as far away from your home as possible.

The youngest prisoner was 11 years old and around 70,000 prisoners called Port Arthur home. Prisoners at Port Arthur endured harsh working gangs that built much of Tasmania. The Asylum at the site pays testament to the mental torture these convicts were put through with many slowly losing their minds. Prisoners were regularly flogged to break them into submission.

Port Arthur prison was opened 20 years from 1833-1853 and 7,000 convicts died there. In modern times Port Arthur is also the location for the largest mass shooting in Australian history. This was the catalyst for the strict gun rules Australia lives by now. 

Port Arthur  is today one of the most interesting places to visit when in Tasmania. The prison site has been preserved with original building and tours explaining the history of the location.

Museum of the Occupation of Latvia – Riga, Latvia

As a former Soviet occupied country, Latvia still has many historic sites linked to the KGB. One of the most interesting activities you can do in Riga is visit the Corner House. This was the old headquarters of the Soviet KGB in Latvia.

True KGB style, if you didn’t know this museum existed you might not be able to find it. A inconspicuous doorway leads into a building straight out of the 50s. Here you can find out about the KGB in the city at that time.

The museum is free or you can pay 10 EUR for a guided tour. The tour might be worth it to see parts of the museum you wouldn’t otherwise get to. Walk through the rooms where the KGB worked and to areas of the building where the prisoners would have been taken.

The storyboards depict historical stories of the KGB in Riga, Latvia , and the “criminals” they arrested, tortured and killed here. This is really one of the most unique dark tourism sites in the Baltic states.

Jallianwala Bagh Memorial Park – India

Contributed by Neha from Travelmelodies

Etched in the history of India as a dark moment, is the incident of Jallianwala Bagh. Located in the holy city of Amritsar in Punjab, it remains one of the most popular  places to visit in Amritsar . Jallianwala Bagh is a memorial park in the honor the people that were wounded and lost lives on the fateful day of 13 April, 1919.

Back in 1919, India was under the rule of British and the people of India were protesting for Independence. Over a thousand people had gathered in the Jallianwala park on the festive day of Baisakhi to silently protest the arrest of few national leaders. But General Dyer opened fire unannounced on these people killing and injuring many.

The Jallianwala Bagh now houses a museum with pictures and documents related to the event and some memorial structures in honor of the martyrs.  There is a ‘Martyrs Well’ in which some people jumped to save themselves from the bullets. There’s even a wall with bullet markings on it. 

Every evening there is a light and sound show that throws light on the unfolding of the event. It is a must visit place and is located next to the Golden temple.

Gori, Georgia

Contributed by Emily from Wander-Lush

The small city of Gori,Georgia has a rather dark claim to fame. It’s the birthplace of Ioseb Jughashvili, better known as former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

An  easy day trip from Tbilisi , Gori has become one of the most-visited places in Georgia because of its Stalin connection. The main attraction is the Stalin State Museum, a grandiose sandstone building in the center of the city.

In the yard is one of few remaining Stalin statues still standing in Georgia today. Also the small wooden house where Stalin was born in 1878, and the armored railway carriage he used to travel around the USSR.

The museum opened in 1957 and exhibits remain much the same – that is to say, very Soviet-style. It has a very selective curatorial approach with most artefacts relating to Stalin’s early years and some pretty glaring gaps. With limited information in English it’s recommended to take the guided tour for a few extra dollars.

Visiting the museum is a totally bizarre experience, but it gives an interesting insight into how Stalin’s memory is treated in Georgia today. Some people in Gori (and elsewhere in Georgia) still venerate the dictator, but the younger generations less so.

There are plenty of things to do in Gori that have nothing to do with Stalin. The magnificent Gori Castle, the old town, and the hilltop Gori Jvari church. It’s these attractions that most residents would prefer you remember Gori for.

Tham Piew Cave – Laos

Contributed by Marie from A Life Without Borders

Laos holds the unfortunate title of the most heavily bombed country on Earth. It bore the brunt of clandestine bombing campaigns waged by the USA on Laos during the 1960s and 1970s. Phonsavan  in the province of Xieng Khouang, was particularly decimated. In fact, unexploded ordnance still affects local communities to this day.

Many visitors to the region enjoy Phonsavan’s major tourist sights such as the UNESCO site Plain of Jars. But few venture off the beaten track to discover the site of one of the worst days in Lao history.

On 24 November 1968, just one single missile fired from a US fighter plane killing 374 innocent villagers taking refuge in Tham Piew Cave. Just 60 kilometers from Phonsavan city, the cave is a somber and emotional place to visit. But it is important in the turbulent history of Laos, even if little known throughout the rest of the world.

The site’s information center holds extremely confronting photographs of the immediate aftermath of that fateful day, together with the history of the Secret War in Laos. A moving statue of a man carrying a lifeless child marks the entrance to the memorial park. Walk through a peaceful forest to the mouth of the charred cave. Here visitors can leave offerings of incense at the small shrine for those who perished within.

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine

Contributed by Kami from My Wanderlust

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is a well-known place all over the world. On April 26th, 1986 the biggest nuclear disaster in the world took place here, changing people’s lives forever. As a result of the catastrophe, the whole area around the power plant became a closed zone. Inhabitants of numerous towns and villages had to move away.

Today you can visit the Exclusion Zone but you need to do it with an official  Chernobyl tour . There are plenty of them departing from Kyiv daily and you can choose between day trips and multiday tours. Now, all these years after the disaster the area is safe to visit and the radiation is low.

During your trip, you will see numerous places in the zone, including the power plant itself. But the biggest highlight is the abandoned town of Pripyat. When the disaster happened it was one of the most modern cities in the former USSR, but now nature has taken over the place.

Keep in mind that even if the Chernobyl zone is a very touristy and popular place, it is also a place of great tragedy. Make sure to visit the place with respect and follow your guide’s instructions. Still, this is a fascinating place to visit and everyone visiting Ukraine should include a Chernobyl tour in their itinerary .

Catacombs – Paris, France

Contributed by Debbie from World Adventurists

Even the City of Light and Love has a dark history. One of the most fascinating places to visit is the  Catacombs of Paris . The Catacombs have a sad history, full of bones of the unknown. In the 17th century, Paris cemeteries were overflowing so badly that there was no longer space to properly bury their dead. Overflowing graves led to the solution of using the underground tunnels to house the bones.

Approximately six million people have been laid to rest underground. Today the bones are neatly stacked, including some designs made from the bones. At some points there are femurs arranged from the floor almost to the ceiling, with rows of skulls in between, or formed into shapes like a cross.

Visiting the Catacombs, it will make you really wonder what their lives were like back then, who they were, and the cause of each death. It is very humbling.

The Catacombs of Paris are extremely popular. It is more expensive, but to skip the line, you will want to buy your ticket in advance . It can also get chilly down there, so bring a light sweater with you. Allow for at least an hour and a half to wander the Catacombs once you are inside.

Lenin Mausoleum – Moscow, Russia

Contributed by De Wet & Jin, Museum of Wander

In the center of the Red Square in Moscow is a somewhat inconspicuous structure which reminds somewhat of a pyramid. But the long line of Russians and tourists is a giveaway that it is one of the most popular  things to do in Moscow .

Inside this step pyramid is where the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin is on display. Everyone is welcome to visit and pay their respects, or simply come and look at the former Soviet leader for bragging rights.

Visitors to Lenin’s Mausoleum visitors are first searched by military personnel, and bags (and cameras) have to be deposited. There are also a few strictly enforced rules while inside the mausoleum: no talking, hands out of your pockets, no hats and the line must keep moving at all times. Disobey, and a Russian soldier will reprimand you.

The atmosphere as well as the temperature inside the mausoleum is chilling. The line moves quite slowly, so you’ll get a good look at Lenin’s body, which has been on display here for almost a hundred years.

The mausoleum is free to enter and open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 10:00–13:00. Behind the mausoleum is the gravesite of former Soviet ruler, Joseph Stalin, another interesting place to see.

Tianenmen Square – Beijing, China

Dark tourism sites don’t come more secretive than that of one of the world’s biggest massacres in recent history. Tianenmen Square, the public square in China’s capital, Beijing . While most visitors to China will have heard of the Tianenmen Square Massacre, the event is so censored within China that many people don’t know the full extent of it.

In 1989 students led a 6 week long protest after the death of a pro-reform official from the Communist Party of China. The fear was that the country would fall into economic decline and that the corruption in place would become worse. As the protests continued the military were brought in and things quickly got out of hand.

There are varying reports of anywhere from 300-3000 deaths of the tens of thousands of people who protested. While the square is peaceful now, there is always a high security presence as well as airport-style check points.

The square is used for many important national celebrations and Chairman Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China here in 1949. His embalmed body is now on display in a mausoleum there.

Other than that there’s not a lot happening in the square now. However, the Imperial Palace (also known as the Forbidden City) is across from Tianenmen and is an impressive place to visit.

Bodie ghost town, California USA

Contributed by Olivia from Girl With Blue Sails

Bodie State Historic Park, once a booming California gold town, is now a notorious ghost town. It sits in a memorialized state of “arrested decay” with dilapidated buildings preserved in their state of abandonment from the late 1800’s. Walking down the dusty, dirt roads of Bodie invokes a bit of a dark appreciation and wonder about what happened to the people that lived here. 

Visitors can walk through the main streets of the town, seeing the various houses, stores, and saloons. Canned goods still on store shelves, original newspapers in the buildings, and old wooden pews still in the church. There are old forgotten cars in the grass, rusting and being overgrown by nature.  

Bodie is most popular with history buffs, photographers, and those who love to visit dark tourism sites. Plan your trip to Bodie in the morning to avoid the peak desert heat. While walking through Bodie can be a grim experience, it also provides a unique and realistic glimpse of 1800s California mining life.  

Choeung Ek Killing Fields – Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Contributed by Tasha Amy from Backpackers Wanderlust

The Killing Fields, also known as Choeung Ek Geocidal Centre, is located just a short 17 kilometer journey from Phnom Penh city center . This closeness is important considering the horrible events which occurred here between 1975 and 1979.

During this period, Cambodia was run by the Khmer Rouge Regime communist party who arrested and executed anyone they saw as a threat. This included people with education, opposing beliefs, or anyone who stood up for what was right.

Quite a few foreigners even got executed after accidentally stumbling upon Cambodia during this period. Children were trained as soldiers and those who were disobedient were killed. For a greater understanding of life under the direction of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot watch the film First They Killed My Father .

The Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh is just one of many locations across the country. Though this one is the most known due to the fact of the horrible acts performed here.

You can book a tour or visit by tuk tuk. The tuk tuk ride for the day should cost you around $12.00. Once at the Killing Fields make sure you hire the audio guide for the stories of those who lived through these events.

Nazi Rally Grounds – Nuremberg, Germany

Contributed by LeAnna from Wander In Germany

It’s no secret that Germany is riddled with a dark, difficult, and oppressing past.  However, decades after WWII, the country does a phenomenal job of walking the fine line between erasing the atrocities and showing respect as well as raising awareness of exactly just what happened. 

One such place is the unfinished Nazi Rally Grounds in  Nuremberg . These huge grounds were Hitler’s vision for an enormous epi-center and headquarters for the Third Reich. 

Walking around the lake at the site, it’s almost easy to not realize exactly what you are standing on. However, on the grounds is the Nazi Dokumentation Zentrum. Here you can see all the blueprints and plans for the grand scheme Hitler envisioned. It makes walking the grounds that much more realistic. 

The museum does an exceptional job of showing exactly how a man with such polarizing, disgusting, racist views could enchant not only an entire nation, but take over much of Europe.  

While in Germany, doing any sort of Nazi salute or tribute in public is illegal.  Therefore, this site is not flocked to by Neo Nazis, but instead is seen as a place of learning from the past. 

Guanajuato Mummy Museum – Mexico

Contributed by Shelley from Travel Mexico Solo

The Museo de las Momias (Museum of the Mummies) is one of the most popular places to visit, and  best things to do in Guanajuato City, Mexico . 

One of the most famous of Mexico’s dark tourism sites has about 100 mummified human bodies on display, in both glass cases and in the open. Most of the bodies are from older adults, but the museum also claims to have the “world’s smallest mummy” of an approximately nine-month-old child.

While not for everyone, it is the most visited place in Guanajuato City . When visiting, you’ll notice Mexican families with children of all ages. In Mexico, death is a much less taboo subject than in other countries — evidenced by annual festivals like Día de Muretos (Day of the Dead).

The story of the mummies is as fascinating (and bizarre) as seeing them in person. Between 1865-1958, Guanajuato’s government decided to start collecting a “grave tax” on buried bodies. If left unpaid by the living relatives for three years, the body was exhumed.

Located in arid Central Mexico, Guanajuato has extremely dry soil and the bodies came out of the ground incredibly well preserved. When the government ended the grave tax in 1958, they had so many mummified bodies that they created this museum.

House of Terror – Budapest, Hungary

Contributed by Marco from Nomadic Fire

Budapest is popular with both tourists and expats for stunning architecture, gorgeous scenery along the Danube river, and affordable cost of living . The city is also home to the infamous museum: the House of Terror.

This museum juxtaposes two of the cruelest regimes of the 20th century: Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Fittingly located in a building that was once the headquarters of both the Nazi and Communist secret police, the museum is an important reminder of both the crimes perpetrated by those regimes and their victims’ courage and resistance. 

Stepping into the House of Terror transports visitors back to a terrifying time in Europe’s history. The museum’s artifacts include personal items confiscated by the secret police. It also tells stories such as a family’s desperate attempt to hide a young boy and baby girl from the Nazis during the Holocaust. Although now a museum, many rooms remain exactly as they were when the headquarters were operational. This includes prison cells, rooms filled with torture devices, and a guillotine scale model.

You can spend anywhere from 45 minutes to a few hours wandering around this well-curated museum. Through exhibits of movie posters, photos, and re-created scenes.

9/11 Memorial and Museum – New York City, USA

One of the most emotional activities on a trip to New York is visiting the 9/11 museum. Built below the original location of the Twin Towers, the World Trade Center site of the 2001 disaster. Entering the museum from the street level, you descend past the twisted metal remains of the massive steel beams that once held the tower up.

The museum is a somber place which stirs up a lot of raw feelings from anyone who visits. It guides you on a journey from the history of the WTC towers to a timeline of the events of that morning.

With witness testimonials, photographs and messages left by those who didn’t make it, the museum is very hard to experience. But the exhibits also talk about what has happened since, what they have learned and why this site is so important. Outdoors, the footprints of the original towers have now been turned into two giant pools. The name of every single victim is engraved around them.

Did you know that white roses are placed at the name of any victim whose birthday it would have been that day? As dark tourism sites go, this one is especially somber given how recently the event took place. But it’s well worth a visit if you’re in New York .

Imperial Crypt – Vienna, Austria

Contributed by Martina & Jürgen from PlacesofJuma

A really cool spot and interesting dark tourism site not to be missed on any visit to Vienna is the Imperial Crypt. It is a real insider tip among  Vienna’s best attractions  and a visit is an eerie experience.

The Imperial Crypt is the final resting place of many of the most famous Habsburgs from Europe. Hidden under the Capuchin Church, it can be visited on a guided tour daily from 10:00 to 18:00.

The crypt is the final resting place of 150 members of the Habsburgs. Among the most famous are Emperor Franz Joseph I, Empress Sisi and Crown Prince Rudolf and Maria Theresa. Walking through the ten dark rooms of the imperial crypt, you travel through a 400-year-long stylistic epoch. You’ll see richly decorated coffins are sometimes even adorned with skulls.

The Habsburgs were preoccupied with their death and therefore had the sarcophagus made according to their wishes. Why not take a tour where you will get lots of information about the funeral rituals?

Auschwitz Concentration Camp – Poland

Contributed by Sean from LivingOutLau

Auschwitz is arguably one of the most tragic sites in the entire world. It was the largest of many German Nazi concentration camp and extermination center in World War II. Over 1.1 million men, women, and children, mostly Jews, lost their lives here. The collective genocide of WWII, known as the Holocaust, is one of the most horrific events in human history.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is now a site where visitors can learn more about how the events unfolded, living conditions, defenses that were set up to prevent the captives from escaping and more.

Auschwitz is more than just a popular attraction in Poland; it is a place where visitors can understand human nature. Auschwitz is the standing testimony of the terror that humans can do to each other. It warns out what happens when an ethnic group is dehumanized. A visit to Auschwitz is solemn and eye-opening.

The best way to visit Auschwitz is to take a tour from Krakow , the nearest touristy city from Auschwitz. As part of your Krakow itinerary , don’t forget to book your tour as early as possible. There are multiple languages you can choose to have the tour in and the English-speaking tours are always the first ones to run out!

Visiting popular dark tourism sites

There’s no denying that visiting many of these dark tourism sites around the world is uncomfortable. The atrocities that happened there or the stories they tell are often unfathomable. But dark tourism sites are just as important as any museum or regular attraction.

Whether or not you want to visit any (or all) of the sites on this post, you have to agree that they are truly fascinating. As long as you have good reasons for wanting to visit, and a respectful attitude towards them you will be welcomed.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this post leave a comment or share using the social media buttons below. Which of these dark tourism sites are you most interested in visiting to learn more about?

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37 thoughts on “20 Unique Dark Tourism Sites Around The World”

I really appreciate this post and how you emphasized that respect is key. I so agree! I think visiting these places can be very powerful and very educational. I’ve visited four on this list, as well as a few others not mentioned, and am so grateful for those experiences to learn more and witness humanity’s dark history.

Absolutely love the unique concept of this post. I especially appreciated how you included the section on mindfulness and respect. Hope to pay many of these places a visit.

this was a great post… and while these sites aren’t for everyone, i think it’s important to connect with ‘dark’ parts of the past, so we don’t repeat those same mistakes.

It is very rare to come across such posts. I absolutely loved the concept. Keep up the awesome work.

This is such an interesting guide! I have been to a few of these places and I’ve also visited some older prisons around the world that have a dark past to them. I definitely have to visit some of these in the future. Especially the ones in Europe!

This is one of the most unique posts I’ve seen in a while! I honestly haven’t been to most of the places on this list, but I’m bookmarking it for later.

I have visited a number if these sites but never heard of the them, ‘dark tourism’ before. I can understand how the term has come about. I always leave these sites very reflective. There’s no denying they have an enormous impact on me. I have pinned the post because, in my opinion, ‘dark tourisn’ is an important aspect of world travel.

I have been to a few of them and wrote about the profound realizations I went through. Thanks for sharing a thought-provoking post.

I love how you mentioned the importance of respect when visiting these places. These places really make you think! It’s important to not forget the ‘dark’ parts of history so it doesn’t happen again.

I definitely find places that would class as ‘dark tourism’ interesting. Although to be fair, we very rarely remember the ‘good’ and ‘peaceful parts of history so I think most places could be considered ‘dark’ in one way or another! I’ve only visited Alcatraz from the places on this list but it was definitely a fascinating place and I’d love to go back. I’d like to visit the catacombs in Paris too. There’s also a lot on this list that I haven’t heard of before but I’d definitely love to check them out. Thanks for the great guide!

This list is very important given the history of these places! It’s also interesting to note the different feelings at each of them. I haven’t been to every single one, but Auschwitz, Alcatraz, 9/11, the House of Terror, Catacombs, and Gravensteen Castle (wow, I didn’t realize how many I had been to) but all of them were so uniquely dark. I think Auschwitz was my most striking and moving, though.

This is such an interesting post. It’s so heartbreaking to read through some of the dark things that have happened around the world. I believe it’s important that we visit these places to pay our respects and remember the people whose lives were drastically impacted by these places. I appreciated how you emphasized the importance of showing respect at these places. Thank you for sharing this post!

You can learn so much at these dark tourism sites. The 911 memorial has moved me to tears. I’m not sure I could visit the mummy museum.

I’ve been to Alcatraz and the Catacombs, but it was interesting to discover some new ideas from this list. And yes, mindfulness and respect are so important, particularly for several entries on the list.

As a historian I’m interested in visiting these sites, although we’ve skipped them the last years, since we found our son to young for them. I’ve been to 2 of the sites mentioned.

What a great list of dark tourism places to visit! I’ve been to many of these such as Alcatraz, Bodie, Ghent and 9/11 memorial. I’d love to visit Chernobyl and the catacombs in Paris.

What an interesting article and list of places to visit. I’ve visited a few on this list and I agree with you, visiting these places can be very educational, but we need to be respectful.

What a great post. Yes, I have been to a few of these dark tourist sites and am now adding a few more to my bucket list.

What an utterly informative and sobering post. I visited the Killing Fields in Cambodia back in 2013 but today still hold it so close to my heart.

Lenin’s Mausoleum was a surreal experience to say the least. No stopping, no taking photos, only getting a quick glance at Lenin before being ushered out. Auschwitz was another one that was really eye opening for me and a unique although sad experience.

What a fascinating post! I have never visited any of those sites other than the World Trade Center site in NYC. I would be interested in seeing several of them. sites like that are so educational and bring history to the forefront.

Thank you for this important post. I think sites of dark tourism are important for exposing atrocities of the past for many reasons. They allow us to pay tribute to those who have suffered, but more importantly, hopefully they instil in visitors the importance of playing a role in ensuring that history isn’t repeated.

I’m not sure that ‘penal tourism’ (sites such as Alcatraz and Eastern State Penitentiary) need to be included in the category of ‘dark tourism.’ My visits to S-21 and Cheoung Ek in Cambodia can’t be equated to the failings of a penal system. My visits to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Dachau in Germany, or Auschwitz in Poland can’t be compared to Alcatraz.

‘Dark tourism’ and ‘penal tourism’ are important, but… separate.

Thank you for bringing attention to this issue.

that’s a fair point, and I’m in no way comparing one of these places to another, but understand that many people also have different levels of comfort in where they might want to visit so wanted to include a wide range of places. There are certain sites (like the ones you mentioned) that are always going to be the worst of the worst with regards to history. Thanks for reading

Very cool article! Haven’t seen many like this one. I’m actually in Tasmania right now!!

I have not done a lot of tourist type things alone, but one was Alcatraz. Fascinating experience walking that prison by myself and the audio tour.

I love this! I really want to try dark tourism after I saw “Dark Tourist” on Netflix! I totally agree with you, visiting these sites is very educational and an eye opener. And yes, respect is the key. It applies to everywhere we go! I will definitely save this for my future travels! 🙂

This is an interesting list. We’ve visited some already – like the catacombs in Paris. And some – like Tschernobyl are on our bucketlist!

Great compilation! There are so many places to go for dark tourism. And I know I can’t brave to most of them. I guess I can do it with museums. Opss how I missed the Crypt museum in Vienna!

What an interesting and informative article. I’ve been to a few of these sites, as well as a few more that didn’t make your list. I think that travelling is learning- and it’s important to visit places such as these to honour, respect and learn from our past.

In a way, I am really into some aspects of dark tourism, I love things that are creepy or have a ghost story behind it. I did find a few spots on this list that interest me such as the castle in Belgium. Looks beautiful and with an interesting story!

Dark tourism is no doubt not everyone’s cuppa tea. Travel ushers understanding and these sites may serve as monuments that will remind humanity about life itself and not taking the same dark path twice.

Great post Emma, I love visiting places like these (or, in some cases, “love” would definitely not be the appropriate word, but I think they’re important to visit). The hardest place I’ve ever visited is the Killing Fields in Cambodia. Horrendous. The genocide museum in Sarajevo in Bosnia was hard-hitting too. I’d be really interested to visit that KGB museum in Latvia!

Very good topic and original. i agree in most of the places listed, indeed most of them are scenario of some of the darkest moments of humanitty. I have only one thing that I don’t understand by you choose to put Lenin Mausoleum? Independently of the personal believes of rach one, Lenin led the biggest and most sucessul revolution in history . Poeple can like it more or less but I don’t how his resting place is part of dark tourist places….If would be Stalin inside ok, but this one i don’t get it. Great work overall, I am argentinian and I really appreciate that you brought-up the story of Potosi…. Well done! Looking forward for your next post!

Thanks for reading. For this one it’s also more about the fact that you can visit the body of Lenin and that it is on display as dark tourism is focused around often morbid places. There are a few countries that have former leaders on display – Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Chairman Mao in China – and I think the idea of visiting one of these places to see an embalmed body on display is a little dark in itself

Got your point! You know that is the same guy who embalmed Lenin and Ho Chi Minh? 😁

Great post! Especially seeing these are all easily accessible, no trespassing required. I have only been to a few, but I really recommend the Nuremberg Ralley Ground and the adjacent museum. Few people visit, and it is quite eerie. Also, the 1936 Olympic Village in Berlin which is similar architecture to Nuremberg rallye grounds, it was really abandoned a few years ago, I think more touristic now.

Have definitely been to a few dark tourist sites but Chernobyl has been on my list for ages now!

One of the most eye opening museums was the Anne Frank in Amsterdam but definitely want to keep visiting some new ones.

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Beaches? Cruises? ‘Dark’ Tourists Prefer the Gloomy and Macabre

Travelers who use their off time to visit places like the Chernobyl nuclear plant or current conflict zones say they no longer want a sanitized version of a troubled world.

By Maria Cramer

North Korea. East Timor. Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that for decades has been a tinderbox for ethnic conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

They’re not your typical top tourist destinations.

But don’t tell that to Erik Faarlund, the editor of a photography website from Norway, who has visited all three. His next “dream” trip is to tour San Fernando in the Philippines around Easter , when people volunteer to be nailed to a cross to commemorate the suffering of Jesus Christ, a practice discouraged by the Catholic Church.

Mr. Faarlund, whose wife prefers sunning on Mediterranean beaches, said he often travels alone.

“She wonders why on earth I want to go to these places, and I wonder why on earth she goes to the places she goes to,” he said.

Mr. Faarlund, 52, has visited places that fall under a category of travel known as dark tourism , an all-encompassing term that boils down to visiting places associated with death, tragedy and the macabre.

As travel opens up, most people are using their vacation time for the typical goals: to escape reality, relax and recharge. Not so dark tourists, who use their vacation time to plunge deeper into the bleak, even violent corners of the world.

They say going to abandoned nuclear plants or countries where genocides took place is a way to understand the harsh realities of current political turmoil, climate calamities, war and the growing threat of authoritarianism.

“When the whole world is on fire and flooded and no one can afford their energy bills, lying on a beach at a five-star resort feels embarrassing,” said Jodie Joyce, who handles contracts for a genome sequencing company in England and has visited Chernobyl and North Korea .

Mr. Faarlund, who does not see his travels as dark tourism, said he wants to visit places “that function totally differently from the way things are run at home.”

Whatever their motivations, Mr. Faarlund and Ms. Joyce are hardly alone.

Eighty-two percent of American travelers said they have visited at least one dark tourism destination in their lifetime, according to a study published in September by Passport-photo.online, which surveyed more than 900 people. More than half of those surveyed said they preferred visiting “active” or former war zones. About 30 percent said that once the war in Ukraine ends, they wanted to visit the Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian soldiers resisted Russian forces for months .

The growing popularity of dark tourism suggests more and more people are resisting vacations that promise escapism, choosing instead to witness firsthand the sites of suffering they have only read about, said Gareth Johnson, a founder of Young Pioneer Tours , which organized trips for Ms. Joyce and Mr. Faarlund.

Tourists, he said, are tired of “getting a sanitized version of the world.”

A pastime that goes back to Gladiator Days

The term “dark tourism” was coined in 1996, by two academics from Scotland, J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, who wrote “Dark Tourism: The Attraction to Death and Disaster.”

But people have used their leisure time to witness horror for hundreds of years, said Craig Wight, associate professor of tourism management at Edinburgh Napier University.

“It goes back to the gladiator battles” of ancient Rome, he said. “People coming to watch public hangings. You had tourists sitting comfortably in carriages watching the Battle of Waterloo.”

Professor Wight said the modern dark tourist usually goes to a site defined by tragedy to make a connection to the place, a feeling that is difficult to achieve by just reading about it.

By that definition, anyone can be a dark tourist. A tourist who takes a weekend trip to New York City may visit Ground Zero. Visitors to Boston may drive north to Salem to learn more about the persecution of people accused of witchcraft in the 17th century. Travelers to Germany or Poland might visit a concentration camp. They might have any number of motivations, from honoring victims of genocide to getting a better understanding of history. But in general, a dark tourist is someone who makes a habit of seeking out places that are either tragic, morbid or even dangerous, whether the destinations are local or as far away as Chernobyl.

In recent years, as tour operators have sprung up worldwide promising deep dives into places known for recent tragedy, media attention has followed and so have questions about the intentions of visitors, said Dorina-Maria Buda, a professor of tourism studies at Nottingham Trent University .

Stories of people gawking at neighborhoods in New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina or posing for selfies at Dachau led to disgust and outrage .

Were people driven to visit these sites out of a “sense of voyeurism or is it a sense of sharing in the pain and showing support?” Professor Buda said.

Most dark tourists are not voyeurs who pose for photos at Auschwitz, said Sian Staudinger, who runs the Austria-based Dark Tourist Trips , which organizes itineraries in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe and instructs travelers to follow rules like “NO SELFIES!”

“Dark tourists in general ask meaningful questions,” Ms. Staudinger said. “They don’t talk too loud. They don’t laugh. They’re not taking photos at a concentration camp.”

‘Ethically murky territory’

David Farrier , a journalist from New Zealand, spent a year documenting travels to places like Aokigahara , the so-called suicide forest in Japan, the luxury prison Pablo Escobar built for himself in Colombia and McKamey Manor in Tennessee, a notorious haunted house tour where people sign up to be buried alive, submerged in cold water until they feel like they will drown and beaten.

The journey was turned into a show, “Dark Tourist,” that streamed on Netflix in 2018 and was derided by some critics as ghoulish and “sordid.”

Mr. Farrier, 39, said he often questioned the moral implications of his trips.

“It’s very ethically murky territory,” Mr. Farrier said.

But it felt worthwhile to “roll the cameras” on places and rituals that most people want to know about but will never experience, he said.

Visiting places where terrible events unfolded was humbling and helped him confront his fear of death.

He said he felt privileged to have visited most of the places he saw, except McKamey Manor.

“That was deranged,” Mr. Farrier said.

Professor Buda said dark tourists she has interviewed have described feelings of shock and fear at seeing armed soldiers on streets of countries where there is ongoing conflict or that are run by dictatorships.

“When you’re part of a society that is by and large stable and you’ve gotten into an established routine, travel to these places leads you to sort of feel alive,” she said.

But that travel can present real danger.

In 2015, Otto Warmbier , a 21-year-old student from Ohio who traveled with Young Pioneer Tours, was arrested in North Korea after he was accused of stealing a poster off a hotel wall. He was detained for 17 months and was comatose when he was released. He died in 2017, six days after he was brought back to the United States.

The North Korean government said Mr. Warmbier died of botulism but his family said his brain was damaged after he was tortured.

Americans can no longer travel to North Korea unless their passports are validated by the State Department.

A chance to reflect

Even ghost tours — the lighter side of dark tourism — can present dilemmas for tour operators, said Andrea Janes, the owner and founder of Boroughs of the Dead: Macabre New York City Walking Tours.

In 2021, she and her staff questioned whether to restart tours so soon after the pandemic in a city where refrigerated trucks serving as makeshift morgues sat in a marine terminal for months.

They reopened and were surprised when tours booked up fast. People were particularly eager to hear the ghost stories of Roosevelt Island, the site of a shuttered 19th-century hospital where smallpox patients were treated .

“We should have seen as historians that people would want to talk about death in a time of plague,” Ms. Janes said.

Kathy Biehl, who lives in Jefferson Township, N.J., and has gone on a dozen ghost tours with Ms. Janes’s company, recalled taking the tour “Ghosts of the Titanic” along the Hudson River. It was around 2017, when headlines were dominated by President Trump’s tough stance on refugees and immigrants coming into the United States.

Those stories seemed to dovetail with the 100-year-old tales of immigrants trying to make it to New York on a doomed ship, Ms. Biehl said.

It led to “a catharsis” for many on the tour, she said. “People were on the verge of tears over immigration.”

Part of the appeal of dark tourism is its ability to help people process what is happening “as the world gets darker and gloomier,” said Jeffrey S. Podoshen , a professor of marketing at Franklin and Marshall College, who specializes in dark tourism.

“People are trying to understand dark things, trying to understand things like the realities of death, dying and violence,” he said. “They look at this type of tourism as a way to prepare themselves.”

Mr. Faarlund, the photo editor, recalled one trip with his wife and twin sons: a private tour of Cambodia that included a visit to the Killing Fields , where between 1975 and 1979 more than 2 million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation and disease under the Khmer Rouge regime.

His boys, then 14, listened intently to unsparing and brutal stories of the torture center run by the Khmer Rouge. At one point, the boys had to go outside, where they sat quietly for a long time.

“They needed a break,” Mr. Faarlund said. “It was quite mature of them.”

Afterward, they met two of the survivors of the Khmer Rouge, fragile men in their 80s and 90s. The teenagers asked if they could hug them and the men obliged, Mr. Faarlund said.

It was a moving trip that also included visits to temples, among them Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, and meals of frog, oysters and squid at a roadside restaurant.

“They loved it,” Mr. Faarlund said of his family.

Still, he can’t see them coming with him to see people re-enact the crucifixion in the Philippines.

“I don’t think they want to go with me on that one,” Mr. Faarlund said.

52 Places for a Changed World

The 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022.

Maria Cramer is a reporter on the Travel desk. Please send her tips, questions and complaints about traveling, especially on cruises. More about Maria Cramer

Open Up Your World

Considering a trip, or just some armchair traveling here are some ideas..

52 Places:  Why do we travel? For food, culture, adventure, natural beauty? Our 2024 list has all those elements, and more .

Mumbai:  Spend 36 hours in this fast-changing Indian city  by exploring ancient caves, catching a concert in a former textile mill and feasting on mangoes.

Kyoto:  The Japanese city’s dry gardens offer spots for quiet contemplation  in an increasingly overtouristed destination.

Iceland:  The country markets itself as a destination to see the northern lights. But they can be elusive, as one writer recently found .

Texas:  Canoeing the Rio Grande near Big Bend National Park can be magical. But as the river dries, it’s getting harder to find where a boat will actually float .

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Dark tourism, explained

Why visitors flock to sites of tragedy.

Every year, millions of tourists around the world venture to some of the unhappiest places on Earth: sites of atrocities, accidents, natural disasters or infamous death. From Auschwitz to Chernobyl, Gettysburg, the site of the Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 Memorial in New York, visitors are making the worst parts of history a piece of their vacation, if not the entire point.

Experts call the phenomenon dark tourism, and they say it has a long tradition. Dark tourism refers to visiting places where some of the darkest events of human history have unfolded. That can include genocide, assassination, incarceration, ethnic cleansing, war or disaster — either natural or accidental. Some might associate the idea with ghost stories and scares, but those who study the practice say it’s unrelated to fear or supernatural elements.

“It’s not a new phenomenon,” says J. John Lennon, a professor of tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland, who coined the term with a colleague in 1996. “There’s evidence that dark tourism goes back to the Battle of Waterloo where people watched from their carriages the battle taking place.”

The hit US drama "Chernobyl" brought a new generation of tourists to the nuclear disaster zone. (Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)

That was in 1815, but he cites an even longer-ago example: crowds gathering to watch public hangings in London in the 16th century. Those are relatively modern compared with the bloody spectacles that unfolded in the Colosseum in Rome.

There aren’t official statistics on how many people participate in dark tourism every year or whether that number is on the rise. An online travel guide run by an enthusiast, Dark-Tourism.com , includes almost 900 places in 112 countries.

But there’s no question the phenomenon is becoming more visible, in part thanks to the Netflix series “Dark Tourist” that was released last year. And popular culture is fueling more visitation to some well-known sites: After the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” about the 1986 power plant explosion, came out this spring, travel companies that bring people to the area said they saw a visitor increase of 30 to 40 percent. Ukraine’s government has since declared its intention to make the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone an official tourist spot, despite lingering radiation.

[How to navigate the etiquette of dark tourism]

Philip Stone, executive director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire, in England, says anecdotally that he sees the appetite for such destinations growing.

“I think, for political reasons or cultural reasons, we are turning to the visitor economy to remember aspects of death and dying, disaster,” he says. “There is a kind of memorial mania going on. You could call that growth in dark tourism.”

(Illustrations by Laura Perez for The Washington Post)

Why are tourists so enamored with places that are, as Lennon puts it, “synonymous with the darkest periods of human history?” Academics who study the practice say it’s human nature.

[Ukraine wants Chernobyl to be a tourist trap. But scientists warn: Don’t kick up dust.]

“We’ve just got this cultural fascination with the darker side of history; most history is dark,” Stone says. “I think when we go to these places, we see not strangers, but often we see ourselves and perhaps what we might do in those circumstances.”

“When we go to these places, we see not strangers, but often we see ourselves and perhaps what we might do in those circumstances.”

Philip Stone, executive director, Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire

There is no one type of traveler who engages in dark tourism: It could be a history buff who takes the family on a road trip to Civil War battlefields, a backpacker who treks to the Colosseum in Rome, or a tourist who seeks out the near-abandoned areas near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, in 2011, in Japan.

Visitors walk between barbed wire fences at the Auschwitz I memorial concentration camp site in Oswiecim, Poland. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Those who are most familiar with the phenomenon do not condemn it. In fact, they argue that the most meaningful dark-tourism sites can help visitors understand the present and be more thoughtful about the future.

“These are important sites that tell us a lot about what it is to be human,” says Lennon, the tourism professor. “I think they’re important places for us to reflect on and try to better understand the evil that we’re capable of.”

There are even efforts underway to research the way children experience dark tourism, a joint project between the Institute for Dark Tourism Research and the University of Pittsburgh.

Mary Margaret Kerr, a professor of education and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, says the idea came about when the National Park Service asked her to help create a team to design children’s materials for families who visit the memorial to United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Her research team now includes middle-school students who have studied how their peers interact with the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, in Washington, or the site of the Johnstown flood, in Pennsylvania, which killed more than 2,200 in 1889.

(Illustration by Laura Perez for The Washington Post)

“We wouldn’t want families to stop traveling, and adults want to see these places for very good reasons,” Kerr says. “It’s not so much making the decision for parents whether you take the children or not, but what are the appropriate safeguards."

She said the goal is to provide appropriate safeguards and ways to experience a site, even for children too young to grasp the history, “so the family can be there together, but each member of the family can take meaning that works out for them at their age and stage.”

As more sites with dark histories become popular spots — even part of organized tour packages — experts say there is a risk that they could become exploited, used to sell tchotchkes or placed as backdrops for unseemly photos.

“It does kind of invite that passive behavior — let’s call it that touristy behavior — that might be out of place,” Stone says.

Visitors look at the bodies of eruption victims exposed in the ruins of ancient Pompeii. (Mario Laporta/AFP via Getty Images)

Bad conduct by tourists at sensitive sites — smiling selfies at concentration camps, for example — has been widely shunned on social media. The online Dark-Tourism.com travel guide cautions against such behavior, as well as the ethically questionable “voyeurism” of visiting an ongoing or very recent tragedy to gape.

“These are important sites that tell us a lot about what it is to be human. I think they’re important places for us to reflect on and try to better understand the evil that we’re capable of.”

J. John Lennon, tourism professor at Glasgow Caledonian University

“What IS endorsed here is respectful and enlightened touristic engagement with contemporary history, and its dark sites/sides, in a sober, educational and non-sensationalist manner,” the site says .

Lennon says he’s sometimes “dumbfounded” by some of the behavior that gets publicized, but he declines to say what the right or wrong way is for tourists to behave. Overall, he says, he still hopes that by visiting places with dark histories, people are becoming better informed about atrocities like racial and ethnic cleansing.

“I’m heartened by the fact that they choose to try to understand this difficult past,” Lennon says.

Berlin’s Holocaust memorial is ‘not a place for fun selfies’

Will gun violence lead to a growing ‘dark tourism’ industry?

A selfie ban in the Czech Republic is the latest effort to combat bad tourist behavior

Hannah Sampson

Hannah Sampson is a staff writer at The Washington Post for By The Way, where she reports on travel news.

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Dark Tourism: Why People Travel to Sites of Death and Tragedy

Droves of tourists frequent concentration camps, sites of famous battles or even places where mass atrocities occurred. what draws us to this dark tourism.

If you've ever traveled somewhere new, there's a good chance you've planned your itinerary around popular destinations to make the most of your trip. That’s why famous museums, parks, restaurants and beaches are commonly filled with people trying to experience what makes a particular location so great. But some of us have a penchant for places that are historically associated with death and tragedy. All around the world, these tourists visit concentration camps, historical grounds of famous battles or even places related to mass atrocities.  

Today, this practice — fittingly called "dark tourism" — is a multi-billion dollar industry. But it's also far from a new phenomenon. Some people have always been drawn to death, and two of the earliest examples are the displays of public executions and the Roman gladiatorial games. The Colosseum in Rome may very well be one of the first dark tourism attractions. But what is it about these locations that make them so engaging? According to experts, there are plenty of factors that help draw us to these lurid locales. 

The Appeal of Death and Tragedy

The motivations of tourists in visiting dark tourist locations often come down to four common themes, according to a 2021 study published in International Hospitality Review . Curiosity appears to be the biggest factor, but personal connection also matters. Many tourists take part because they feel connected — or want to feel a connection — to the events that transpired at a particular location, says Heather Lewis, assistant professor at Troy University who was involved in the 2021 study.  

Others visit for educational purposes, while some just happen to be in the same place and decide to participate after seeing something that might be of interest, she adds. For some people, visiting the graves of celebrities they like is a way to celebrate their lives, and it’s not about focusing on the difficulty of their life, or the tragic circumstances behind their death.

“Dark tourism does not need 'dark' tourists — only people who are socially engaged in the cultural and political fabric of their own life world,” says Philip Stone, executive director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research. “[It] is the commodification of places of pain and shame and, consequently, shines a mirror on contemporary society of how we memorialize, and who we remember.”  

The concept of dark tourism is culturally nuanced and means different things to different people. It can mediate our sense of mortality through the fatality of others where the dead act as warnings from the history of our own fights, follies, and misfortunes, says Stone. In short, a fascination with death in itself might not be the primary motive for visiting dark tourism sites; it likely has more to do with an individual's interest in cultural heritage and education. 

A Complex Legacy

Still, despite that nuance, dark tourism is often frowned upon. For tourists and travelers, it can seem like a minefield mired in “ moral ambiguities and managerial dilemmas,” says Stone. In many ways, the industry is all about managing our collective memory and providing a memorialized afterlife to those who died tragically or untimely. At the same time, it allows contemporary visitors to consume narratives of death that have been streamlined for their consumption. In other words, the practice can be considered a "touristification" of the places and people steeped in death and tragedy.

“Remembrance is a political process that is selective of what, who, and where is memorialized — and, perhaps more importantly, forgotten,” he adds. “As such, dark tourism showcases our significant dead as spectacular in a society of spectacle where commercialism ensures everything is 'packaged up' and sold, even tragic or calamitous death.” At its core, there is an element of dark tourism that knowingly exploits our fascination with the macabre, stirring up complicated ethical and moral issues about our own behavior.  

For Lewis, dark tourism isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as it’s properly managed. The increase in tourism can be used to restore or maintain facilities in dark tourism locations, but it should not destroy or diminish the integrity of the location over time. For instance, there are Hurricane Katrina tours that will not visit certain parts of the city out of respect for the individuals living there, she adds.  

People must always be respectful of those who have experienced loss and hardship at dark tourism locations. Traveling responsibly and minimizing its impact on residents remain highly important because old suffering may be reopened, intensified, and prolonged by tourists. 

“The overall concern that we should have with dark tourism is making sure that we are being ethically and morally upright in the marketing and use of these locations as a dark tourism destinations,” says Lewis. “We should never seek economic gain by exploiting others’ suffering and loss.” 

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This story was published before war came to Ukraine and suspended all travel there.

An abandoned Ferris wheel stands on a public space that has become overgrown with trees since the city of Pripyat was evacuated in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. 

Is 'Dark Tourism' OK?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with visiting Chernobyl's fallout zone or other sites of past tragedy. It’s all about intention.

These days it seems you can't go more than a few weeks without hearing about some unfortunate selfie faux pas on the Internet.

Tourists posting   photos of themselves   giving the thumbs up in   Auschwitz , for example, or   smiling from a rusted-out bumper car in Pripyat , the Ukrainian city that was evacuated after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown .

The offending images are seen and blasted around to social media circles. Disparaging comments are made and the shares continue, rippling out to create a full-blown meme about travelers' growing predilection for “dark tourism.”

The truth is, visiting places associated with death and suffering has been popular a lot longer than the selfie stick.

Mark Twain devoted a full chapter to Pompeii in   Innocents Abroad . Tourists flocked to the still-smoking fields of Gettysburg in 1863 to see the aftermath of one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War. Anton Chekhov left his successful playwriting career in 1890 to become   the world’s first “gulag tourist.”   And then there’s the Taj Mahal—a selfie-central icon that's actually a tomb—which has been a staple of the world-travel circuit for half a millennium.

From the September 11 Memorial   and the   Roman Colosseum   to Rwanda's   Murambi Technical School , there is no shortage of   “tourist sites of death, disaster, or the seemingly macabre,” as the U.K.-based   Institute for Dark Tourism Research   puts it.

But while so-called "dark tourism" isn't new, what   is   new is how some of these sites and experiences are being marketed.

Visitors to the Cu Chi tunnels near Ho Chi Minh City   are promised a chance to shoot AK-47s in the famous Viet Cong guerrilla maze ... for a price. Certain tours to Israel's   Golan Heights   come with expectations of witnessing real-time missiles in an active war zone. You get the idea.

To me, the problem lies not with the choice of destination, but with the intention behind the choice.   After all, why should we avoid the   Anne Frank House   just because   Justin Bieber left an insensitive message in the guest book ?

The first thing we should ask ourselves: Are we traveling to a place to heighten our understanding, or simply to show off or indulge some morbid curiosity?

Of course, intention can be a two-way street. There is a difference, obviously, between the people who go on tours and the people who develop, run, and profit from them.  

While some tour operators seem to have no qualms about skewing—and even fabricating—facts or ratcheting up the gore factor for dramatic effect, others approach sensitive subjects such as genocide, terrorism, and nuclear disaster with the care and gravitas they deserve.  

Confronting the most chilling examples of what poet Robert Burns termed “man's inhumanity to man” can be a profoundly moving experience,   bringing war, oppression, violence, and injustice to gut-wrenching life and deepening our capacity for compassion and empathy.  

As I was thinking about this story, I did a lot of reflecting on my most memorable travel experiences. Many of the places that made my list—concentration camps, the sites of massacres and political assassinations, and battlefields—could be described as “dark.”

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What I remember most about the time I spent in Warsaw's WWII-era Jewish ghetto   is a fellow visitor, a white-haired man who, when I noticed the number tattooed on his arm, acknowledged my silent inquiry with a nod. The   experience made history more real for me.  

Some critics bemoan the commodification of such sites, but I believe well-meaning attractions—despite whatever snacks their visitor center café may stock—can   be catalysts for healing and change.

Many Americans, for example, have chided Russia for its reluctance to memorialize its millions of gulag victims (there is actually a   Mask of Sorrow monument   in remote Magadan; I’ve been). Yet in the U.S. the   first   real site dedicated to exploring the history of human slavery   from the perspective of the enslaved opened only in 2014 (and through private funding). I think it's a positive thing when a past wrong is addressed, even if wildly overdue.

Another standout memory from my travel past involves a visit to the Tower of London in 2014. To mark one hundred years since Britain became involved in WWI,   888,246 flame red poppies progressively filled the Tower’s famous moat   throughout the summer, one for every British military fatality. I spent an hour walking by them all. The physical representation of each life lost was easily the most powerful anti-war message I’ve ever seen.  

Of course, nearly every destination in the world is “dark” in some way. Even places we describe as “to die for” often have been scenes of natural disaster, violence, and displacement. Turning your back on that reality   can be the ugliest travel of all.

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How to visit dark tourism destinations in an ethical way

Jan 28, 2021 • 6 min read

Abandoned ferris wheel in amusement park in Pripyat, Chernobyl area © Hellen Sergeyeva / Shutterstock

Even if you don’t consider yourself a dark tourist, it’s natural to be intrigued by sites associated with death and tragedy. Concentration camps, disaster memorials and other dark tourism sites preserve the evidence of humankind’s worst cruelty. They also offer stories of hope and solidarity from the bleakest chapters of world history. 

Although dark tourism is often motivated by a desire to learn or pay respects, it can still be controversial. Some visitors can cause offense by taking ill-conceived photos, or by treating a site of tragedy like a theme park. After all, dark tourism sites don’t exist in a vacuum: lives unfold nearby, and local people tread a tightrope between honoring the memory of past horrors and stepping out from their shadow. 

These five dark tourism destinations memorialize terrible events, and each one requires a thoughtful approach from visitors. Touring these sites can be perspective-altering, even life-changing, provided you go with kindness and care – here’s our guide to being an ethical dark tourist.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum, Poland 

During WWII, more than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau . Now preserved as a memorial, these notorious concentration camps bring in enormous numbers of tourists (more than 2.32 million people in 2019). 

Many tourists arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau on day trips from charming Kraków , 65km east. There’s a similar day-trip effect at other sites of former concentration camps, such as Terezín (north of Prague ) and Dachau (outside Munich ). The challenge is transitioning between holiday mode – selfie stick aloft, picnic packed, sunhat and novelty T-shirt – to a mindset appropriate to seeing the place where Jewish and Roma people, as well as prisoners of war and LGBTIQ+ people, were tortured, starved and murdered.

Respectful photography sounds obvious, but officials at the site need to repeatedly remind visitors . Don’t strike an enigmatic pose on the railway lines that brought hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths. Reconsider whether selfies are appropriate: by their nature they center on you rather than those who suffered here.  

Killing Fields and S-21, Cambodia

More than 1.7 million people were murdered in the Cambodian genocide of 1975–79. The S-21 prison and interrogation cells in Phnom Penh are where the Khmer Rouge tortured thousands. If they weren’t murdered on-site, victims would be taken to Choeung Ek’s Killing Fields , 15km south. The Killing Fields are now a memorial site and S-21 is conserved as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum . 

Up to 800 people visit the Killing Fields each day, most also paying a visit to S-21 where guides – some survivors of the genocide – lead visitors between rusty bedframes and bare-walled cells. Though there are concerns that the site cannot handle the increasing volume of tourists, locals are generally pleased to see visitors. Tourism represents more than 15% of Cambodia’s GDP. As well as boosting the economy, visitation of Khmer Rouge–era sites ensures their preservation and encourages confrontation of the country’s history. 

Although most are respectful, it’s not unusual to see tourists ignoring signs prohibiting photography or walking directly across mass graves. Bone fragments have been stolen, while graffiti has been left in Tuol Sleng. Visit with environmental and emotional sensitivity: observe signs, watch where you’re treading, refrain from photography at sensitive locations and hire a local guide to ensure your tourists dollars go straight into Cambodians’ pockets. 

A-Bomb Dome and Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima, Japan

After US Army Air Forces bombed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the Japanese city became forever associated with death on an apocalyptic scale. Hiroshima was flattened by the atomic blast. More than 70,000 people were killed instantly, and a similar number died later from terrible burns and radiation-related illnesses. 

The A-bomb dome , the only major structure to have survived, stands as a witness to that day. Nearby, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum displays harrowing reconstructions of what the victims endured, as well as thoughtful messages of optimism for world peace. 

This history is a heavy burden for Hiroshima. While it’s important to devote time to Hiroshima’s dark tourism sites, it’s equally worthwhile to learn about the city beyond the bombing. Understand hundreds of years of history at Hiroshima-jō , the faithful rebuild of a 16th-century castle. Take a ferry to Miyajima Island to admire temples and spot miniature deer. Talk to local people about their town, if you can. Above all, leave with memories of Hiroshima as a living town, rather than a by-word for wartime horror.

Kigali Genocide Memorial, Rwanda

Tourists need to be especially considerate when visiting a place associated with a very recent tragedy. The Kigali Genocide Memorial remembers the victims of 1994’s 100-day genocide of the Tutsi people. One-quarter of a million people are buried in mass graves, killed by the Hutu extremists and their supporters. Video testimony by survivors of Rwanda ’s genocide, accompanied by heart-rending descriptions of children who were murdered, make this a confronting place to visit.

Thoughtful conduct is paramount, and this extends to giving your full attention to displays that you read. Ideally, do some research before arriving and be attentive to what you see and read. People who lost their loved ones in the genocide come to the memorial to remember those who were killed. The least that visitors can do is give their undivided attention.  

Chernobyl, Ukraine

The 1986 explosion at Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant has gone down in infamy. The accident caused dozens of deaths, innumerable radiation-related illnesses, thousands of evacuations and a toll on wildlife that is still being debated and calculated. 

In 2019, HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl beamed a blow-by-blow account of the disaster onto screens across the world. Local tour guides received heightened interest in trips around the "exclusion zone," the badly contaminated 2600-sq-km area that was evacuated after the blast. 

A TV series can have a dangerous distancing effect, but despite the occasional influencer using the site as staging for photoshoots, the exclusion zone is no movie set. Tour guides urge visitors to protect themselves by wearing long-sleeved clothing and refraining from touching anything. Custodians of the carefully guarded area scan visitors after their visit, to make sure radioactive dust isn’t clinging to their clothing. 

It’s painful for a country when land is poisoned and people displaced; it’s even more unsettling when a place becomes a macabre curiosity around the world. But be prepared to challenge your preconceptions about Soviet-era wreckage and wildlife-free wastelands. Against advice, as many as 200 people still live in the exclusion zone. Younger Ukrainians eager to build something positive from Chernobyl’s grim legacy offer photography and educational tours, and have even hosted a music festival in the zone. As with so many other dark tourism sites, an ethical visit to Chernobyl requires an open mind.

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A Traveler's Guide to Dark Tourism

Exploring the world's dark & unusual travel destinations.

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Fleury-devant-douaumont – A Village that Died for France

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Kadykchan – Abandoned Soviet Mining Town

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Inside Saint Elmo, Colorado’s Best Preserved Ghost Town

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The Ruins of Villa Epecuén, Argentina – A Resort Town Submerged

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The Buried Village of Te Wairoa – Dark Tourism in New Zealand

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Dark Tourism: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

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Well, we’ve had this dark tourism blog for a little over a year now, so it seemed like a good idea to finally write a post addressing what dark tourism is, why it’s important, and why we’ve dedicated a blog to it.

What is Dark Tourism?

It’s difficult to discuss why dark tourism is important without first providing a definition.

There is a lot of misinformation about what dark tourism is. We’re even guilty of this, as we tend to sweep anything macabre under the dark tourism umbrella. And we’re not the only ones. The popular Netflix show Dark Tourist introduced many new people to the term. Which is great, but he didn’t get it all right.

Don’t get me wrong, Dark Tourist does cover some dark tourism, but he also visits several sites that have a tenuous connection at best.

For example, the racist nationalists in Africa? Not dark tourism. McKamey Manor , the terrifying horror house in Tennessee? Not dark tourism. Disturbing and macabre, for sure, but not dark tourism.

I’m not here to discuss the general merits of the show. If you like it, I honestly think that’s okay. I enjoyed quite a bit of it. However, it is important to know what is and isn’t dark tourism. And also to understand that a lot of it is sensationalist.

RELATED: The Best Historical TV Series for Dark Tourists

Defining Dark Tourism

Since I actually did my university dissertation on the effect of dark tourism on cultural heritage in Cambodia, this definition of dark tourism is almost word for word what I wrote in said dissertation:

The term ‘Dark Tourism’ was first coined in 1996 by professors John Lennon and Malcolm Foley. Dark tourism, or Thanatourism as it is sometimes referred to in academia, refers to sites associated with death, disaster and destruction.

In recent years, interest in these sites has increased; although death, suffering and tourism have been linked for centuries, specifically in the context of warfare, with sites such as the Waterloo battlefield drawing in visitors from the early 1800’s onwards. Thanatourism sites can be found around the world in varying size and scope. 

In his 1996 paper Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism , Professor A. V. Seaton outlined five different forms of dark tourism: 

• museums that showcase death or symbols of death in some way, such as the popular Dungeon museums (i.e London Dungeon, Paris Dungeon) that allow visitors to “relive” the horrors of a city throughout its history; 
• participation or observation of death simulation, such as the re-enactments of famous battles; 
• witnessing of public deaths (though this form is less common as public executions occur in very few countries today), this would also include activities like gladiatorial combat; 
• visits to memorial sites – this encompasses graveyards, crypts, internment sites; and lastly
• travel to sites of individual or mass death and/or tragedy; this includes the sites of famous dead people and the homes of mass murderers, as well as the sites of battlefields (Waterloo, Gettysburg), and genocide (Rwandan genocide memorial sites, Holocaust memorials sites and extermination camps, i.e. Auschwitz, Dachau).

Hope that clears things up…

What Dark Tourism Isn’t

Essentially, haunted houses, abandoned places or just mean people aren’t necessarily dark tourism unless some kind of tragedy is attached to them. For example, we visited an abandoned amusement park in Elektrėnai, Lithuania and while it was wonderful and somewhat reminiscent of Chernobyl with the large, decaying ferris wheel and bumper cars, it was not dark tourism. Whereas Chernobyl, which suffered a devastating nuclear disaster in 1986 is very much dark tourism.

Likewise, we’ve written a few posts on haunted places and some of them are probably closer to dark tourism than others. The little girl who was locked in her home with her dead parents and was forced to succumb to cannibalism before choking on the flesh of her parents? Definitely closer to the definition of dark tourism than the residential home that may or may not have a poltergeist, but no one really knows why. In case you’re curious, those can both be found in this article .

So to reiterate, all dark tourism is macabre, but not all macabre tourism is dark tourism.

Why Dark Tourism Is Important To Me

I’ve always been a weird kid. I have a dark sense of humour, I find serial killers fascinating, and   Schindler’s List was my favourite film when I was 7. You get the idea.

There are more of us ‘weirdos’ than you think. Some people, like Caitlin Doughty, of Ask a Mortician fame, become morticians (and write darkly humourous books about it) and co-found death positivity movements like The Order of the Good Death . Others, like Tori Telfer, write books about history’s deadliest women and host podcasts on the same topic.

But I travel; it’s always been a big part of who I am. So it should come as no surprise that I became a dark tourist.

For a long time, I didn’t realise that’s what I was. It’s not just that I didn’t know the term – because let’s be fair, the term ‘dark tourism’ only entered into popular lexicon within the last few years, and while I did know the term before that, it’s irrelevant. What I mean is that I never connected my interests as a tourist with anything out of the ordinary.

I knew I was weird, I knew I liked macabre stuff and most people didn’t, but whenever we went to a ‘dark tourism’ site, it was normally pretty busy.

People thought I was weird, but travelling made me realise I wasn’t all that different from the world as a whole – just from small town America.

So yes, on a totally selfish level, dark tourism is important to me because it made me feel a little bit more normal. And as a kid that was important to me because I wasn’t like other kids, and kids care about that.

But dark tourism is also important to me for the same reasons it should be important to everyone. History matters. Those who lost their lives to genocide or trying to enact positive  change matter. Remembering matters.

RELATED: The Best Dark History Podcasts

How I Became a Dark Tourist

Honestly, I’ve always been one. 

I have always made it a point to visit sites that would be classified as dark tourism sites; I went to a former slave plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, paid my respects at several concentration camps, and looked out at the ocean that swallowed so many slaves on their way to North America at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. Museums that showcase a dark period in history are often a highlight of my trips. And that’s just the beginning.

Truthfully, I don’t even remember the first place I went that could be classified as dark tourism, especially if we’re including museums. And I am, because museums make for excellent historical records concerning difficult history and heritage. Plus, technically speaking, today often sites like Auschwitz and the Killing Fields are also considered museums.

I don’t remember when I first heard the term dark tourism, but I remember how I felt when I heard it; I was relieved to know there were other people like me. It made sense; I had a box to tick on ‘type of travel’ all of a sudden.

Although I don’t remember where or when I heard it, dark tourism has definitely been in my vocabulary since at least the early 2010s. And in 2015, I really sealed the deal when I moved to Cambodia to do research on my dissertation.

What I can say for certain is that being a dark tourist has made me a better person. Learning about past atrocities from a young age (I was seven when I first learned about the Holocaust) taught me a lot about empathy, compassion and tolerance.

RELATED: Eye-Opening Books About Racism from Around the World

Dark Tourism Gets You Out of Your Comfort Zone

Visiting dark tourism sites can be quite shocking and upsetting for many people. Even as a seasoned dark tourist, our trip to Lidice in the Czech Republic had a profound effect on me.

This isn’t a bad thing. Learning about the bad parts of history are just as much a part of the travel experience as seeing beautiful buildings. It helps us grow as people, and it allows us to better understand and appreciate where we are.

I truly believe it is impossible to fully appreciate places like Poland and Cambodia without first learning about their tragic pasts. Horrific as they may be, these events are a part of a country’s history – oftentimes their very recent history – and have shaped them into the places they are today. To fully understand a place, we need to acknowledge and learn about its history.

In fact, it wasn’t until I lived in Cambodia and met so many people directly affected by the Khmer Rouge that I truly understood how vital it was to share these histories.

Genocide education didn’t become mandatory in Cambodia schools until 2010. Prior to that, there were thousands of young Cambodian children who didn’t know about their own past . Many Cambodians who lived through the war couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about what happened to them. In some stronghold areas they didn’t know the war was over. I met children who didn’t even know the Khmer Rouge had happened, let alone that their own parents and grandparents lived through it.

While doing dark tourism research in Cambodia, I found that the more I learned, the less I really knew.

This is because dark tourism forces you out of your comfort zone. It makes you confront harsh truths about humanity and society.

I think it is vital to visit well known and popular sites like Auschwitz, Chernobyl, the Killing Fields, Ground Zero or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

But I also think it is important to go deeper than that. These sites are a tiny piece of the puzzle. If you can handle delving deeper, you should. This can take on many forms, from visiting some of the lesser known WWII sites in Krakow to aid your understanding of Auschwitz, but also by visiting places not often on the tourist trail at all. Places such as Bosnia & Herzegovina, which witnessed its own genocide in the 1990s, or Gorée Island in Senegal, where you can learn more about the African slave trade.

But Isn’t Dark Tourism Unethical?

Dark tourism is often in the news when something bad happens. Auschwitz and Chernobyl have both seen a rise in problematic selfies. Most recently, Syria has expressed concern over the rise in dark tourism.

However, the problem is not dark tourism. The problem is people.

Dark tourism itself is not unethical. How people choose to conduct themselves at dark tourism sites can be unethical. Equally, not everywhere should be visited. Syria is an active war zone , not a tourist destination for adrenaline junkies.

Sometimes it comes down to personal feelings. Many people feel a certain amount of time should pass between the event and visiting, while others are happy to visit shortly afterwards. I do not think either approach is inherently wrong, but your motivations matter. 

Tourists flocked to Grenfell Tower in the UK almost immediately after the tragedy that killed 79 people in 2017. And while many were there to pay their respects, a lot of people were condemned for taking selfies . Either way, days after an event is too soon to show up if you don’t have a personal connection to a site.

And selfies are almost never okay.

But sometimes it is impossible to tell how soon is too soon. You might be surprised how long it took for some dark tourism sites to open.

The Rwandan Genocide Memorial opened its doors in 2004, only ten years after the massacre that forever changed the country.

The Ground Zero Memorial was completed in March 2006, not even five years after the tragedy that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City.

And Auschwitz was converted into a museum on July 2, 1947, just over 2.5 years after the camp was liberated.

Why so soon? Because ultimately, these stories matter. They must be told, and they need to be remembered. The longer we ignore tragedy, the more chance the mistakes of our past will be forgotten and repeated.

Wait, Did You Say Selfies Are Okay?

Yes. And no.

Are you a black American reclaiming your tragic heritage by posing and smiling in front of a former slave plantation ? You’re probably okay.

Are you a Jewish kid whose family was murdered during WWII and now you’re giving a big fuck you to Hitler’s failed final solution? Also okay.

Do you have to take a selfie in those instances? Definitely not. Can you still feel those are inappropriate? Yeah, that’s totally valid. But there are nuances and complicated histories behind that.

Additionally, just because something at first seems problematic, doesn’t mean that it is and it’s important to understand the context behind a site, as well.

The Argument For Chernobyl

Following Chernobyl’s recent rise in popularity due to the HBO show, people were outraged about mass selfies at the site. I won’t lie, I’m still outraged about it. Darmon Richter, who runs ExUtopia and has spent a lot of time in the Ukraine, tweeted that the residents of Chernobyl don’t want people to be sad all the time because they live there and it’s nice to see people happy and smiling.

I completely agree with Darmon. Chernobyl is unique because people live there. What I don’t think is okay about the selfie culture coming out of Chernobyl right now is that the people taking those selfies don’t necessarily seem aware of that distinction.

There is also a huge difference between taking a group selfie with your tour guides or locals that you meet and befriend, and taking ‘sexy’ selfies in front of the abandoned ferris wheel.

If you want to take selfies at Chernobyl, there should be context. You should be explaining everything I just said to give reasons for why it is okay in this instance. The photos should also show the wonderful people you met while there and tell their stories, not yours!

Dark Tourism Should Not Be Controversial

People have been visiting sites of tragedy for centuries. People flocked to places like Pompeii and the Battle of Waterloo not long after the events had passed. But social media didn’t exist back then. Since there is now an academic term for people who are drawn to these sites, and with the increased popularity of sites like Instagram, it has become seemingly controversial. 

The main controversy surrounding dark tourism comes from three things: 

• a) the selfie culture and everyone’s need to ‘prove’ they were there and make themselves a part of something. This is highly problematic as it moves the focus from the tragedy and the victims onto the person visiting. Once someone makes themselves the focus of the photo, they are taking agency away from victims – often victims who can no longer speak for themselves. 
• b) people who visit sites, such as active war zones like Syria, as tourists rather than humanitarians, politicians or journalists. To me, this isn’t dark tourism, this is irresponsible tourism and thrill chasing.
• c) the idea that dark tourists derive some kind of pleasure from these sites. This is a complicated thing to explain. Many dark tourists do derive a sense of satisfaction from visiting dark tourism sites. But it is not because they are vicariously playing out a sick, twisted fantasy. It is about education; it is about being able to see a place they have read about their whole lives in person. It is also about paying their respects. 

But let me be clear: most dark tourists believe that sites like Chernobyl, Auschwitz, the Killing fields, and so on are paramount because we never want them to be forgotten. If they are forgotten, it will happen again and again and again. Even with the wounds of the Holocaust and WWII still relatively fresh, we have already witnessed many new genocides since. 

Essentially, dark tourism is important because in an ideal world, no new dark tourism sites will ever be added to our dark tourism “bucket lists.”

If you want to know more about dark tourism, you can check out our dark tourism page . There you will find a brief overview along with book recommendations and every article we’ve ever written about dark tourism. HERE ARE SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE DARK TOURISM ARTICLES – A Haunting Visit to the Lidice Museum and Memorial – Revisiting the Terezin Propaganda Camp in the Era of Fake News – East Grinstead Museum and the History of Queen Victoria Hispital – The Katyn Museum: Remembering a Forgotten Massacre – Beating Hearts: Visiting the Salaspils Memorial Park

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Dagney McKinney

American by birth, miniature by design. I moved for the first time when I was 18 months old, and I haven't stopped since. If I'm not wandering the planet, you can find me seeking out the hottest food possible or reading a good book and/or listening to a podcast in some quiet, remote alcove. I'm a classic introvert with a penchant for Camelidae, salt and underground spaces.

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What is dark tourism?

Travelers' fascination with the macabre is not new

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If you've ever wanted to visit — or actually visited — locations where disasters or tragedies occurred, you're not alone. This style of travel even has its own name: dark tourism. While dark tourism isn't new, it has become more conspicuous, especially as its uptick dovetailed with the debut of Netflix's "Dark Tourist" a few years ago. Climate-related disasters and political unrest are also creating more sites of tragedy, some of which are being used for economic gain. As such, travel to these troubled locations has raised ethical questions. Some believe this kind of tourism is inherently disrespectful; others support dark tourism, claiming it provides funds for rebuilding and aid. 

Dark tourism refers to visiting places where "some of the darkest events of human history have unfolded," which can include "genocide, assassination, incarceration, ethnic cleansing, war or disaster — either natural or accidental," The Washington Post reported. Some popular examples of dark tourism are Chernobyl, the 9/11 memorial and the concentration camp Auschwitz. J. John Lennon, a professor of tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University, who coined the term "dark tourism" with a colleague in 1996, told the Post that dark tourism is not a new phenomenon and "there's evidence that dark tourism goes back to the Battle of Waterloo where people watched from their carriages the battle taking place."

Dark tourism has become popular because "when you're part of a society that is by and large stable and you've gotten into an established routine, travel to these places leads you to sort of feel alive," Dorina-Maria Buda, a professor of tourism studies at Nottingham Trent University, told The New York Times . Travelers have been drawn to these gloomy locales more in recent years, and as the effects of climate change accelerate and global conflicts like those in Ukraine and Israel unfold, there are an increasing number of such locations to visit. "There is an inherent fascination with ruination," Philip Stone, who runs the Institute for Dark Tourism Research, told CNN . 

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What exactly are the ethics of dark tourism?

"It's very ethically murky territory," New Zealand journalist David Farrier, told the Times about dark tourism. Gawking at a location where disaster happened can be disrespectful. For example, World Crunch reported, a Ukraine travel agency faced controversy after offering tours to the scene of large-scale civilian massacres resulting from Russia's attacks on Ukraine. Many claimed it was "too soon" for tourism to the region, given that destruction is ongoing. "Bad conduct by tourists at sensitive sites — smiling selfies at concentration camps, for example — has been widely shunned on social media," said The Washington Post , adding that "the ethically questionable 'voyeurism' of visiting an ongoing or very recent tragedy to gape" is also largely considered taboo. 

Still, there can be a lot to learn from visiting dark-tourism sites. Climate change is causing more natural disasters and destruction, and "the visual impact of climate change-induced landscapes serves as a warning of our industrialization," said Stone. "Visiting such places now can shine a critical light on the effects of climate change." A considered visit can also help provide fiscal resources to affected areas, like the Spanish island of La Palma which experienced a volcanic eruption in 2021 and Morocco which suffered a powerful earthquake in September. However, some locations, like Lahaina, Hawaii , which was nearly razed by devastating wildfires over the summer, have discouraged tourism to allow locals to recover and mourn the losses of their loved ones.  

Many popular dark-tourism locations are sites with extensive, complicated histories. And thoughtful visitors often leave with newfound knowledge. "I think they're important places for us to reflect on and try to better understand the evil that we're capable of," remarked Lennon of Glasgow Caledonian University. According to Dark-tourism.com , a website dedicated to the phenomenon, there is indeed an optimal way to participate in dark tourism. "What is endorsed here is respectful and enlightened touristic engagement with contemporary history and its dark sites/sides in a sober, educational and non-sensationalist manner."

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 Devika Rao has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022, covering science, the environment, climate and business. She previously worked as a policy associate for a nonprofit organization advocating for environmental action from a business perspective.  

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What is dark tourism and why is it so popular?

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Dark tourism is a type of tourism that has received increasing attention in recent years. TV shows, such as Chernobyl and The Dark Tourist, have introduced the concept of dark tourism to the minds of motives of many tourists around the world. But what is dark tourism? Is dark tourism ethical? How can you be a ‘good’ dark tourist?

In this post I will define the concept of dark tourism, explain why dark tourism is so popular and provide a few examples of dark tourism sites. I will also discuss the ethics of dark tourism, which are somewhat controversial.

What is dark tourism?

Dark tourism definitions

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Dark tourism, also known as black tourism, thanatourism or grief tourism, is tourism that is associated with death or tragedy.

The act of dark tourism is somewhat controversial, with some viewing it as an act of respect and others as unethical practice.

Popular dark tourism attractions include Auschwitz, Chernobyl and Ground Zero. Lesser known dark tourism attractions might include cemeteries, zombie-themed events or historical museums.

Dark Tourism started to gain academic attention in the early 90s, but it is only recently that it has sparked the interest of the media and the general public.

An early definition defined by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley , define dark tourism as “the representation of inhuman acts, and how these are interpreted for visitors”.

In a more recent publication, Kevin Fox Gotham defines dark tourism as “the circulation of people to places characterized by distress, atrocity, or sadness and pain. As a more specific component of dark tourism, “disaster tourism” denotes situations where the tourism product is generated within, and from, the aftermath of a major disaster or traumatic event”.

Dark tourism has become the subject of academic debate more and more in recent years, most notably for its critiques and assessment of associated impacts.

Dark tourism encompasses many different ‘dark’ activities. These can range from visiting an attraction such as the London Dungeons, where people are seen laughing and joking (did you know it finishes with a height-restricted ride that imitates people being hung!?), to tourists racing to the scenes of a disaster to provide help and relief. Naturally these are two very different ends of the dark tourism spectrum.

To help us understand the dark tourism sector better, we can organise activities according to the dark tourism spectrum.

On one end of the spectrum (the darkest end) we have extreme or serious dark tourism activities. These are activities which often involve an educational element, such as learning about a Nuclear disaster or a ship wreck. Activities on this end of the scale are associated with an authentic experience, whereby the tourist visits an actual historical site or speaks with people who were involved. Examples might include visiting the Berlin Wall or Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

On the other end of the spectrum, activities tend to be of a more commercial nature. A Jack the Ripper themed funfair ride or a comical play based around the Black Plague are effectively romanticised versions of dark events or times in history. The intention is for the tourist to have fun and enjoy themselves, rather than to be educated about said historical reference.

The question is, why is dark tourism so popular? Why do we choose to visit places of death and tragedy? What is it that attracts us to such sorrow?

For many, it is purely the possibility of being able to emotionally absorb oneself in a place of tragedy. It is important for people to engage and immerse themselves in past history and culture . By visiting dark tourism sites, we are able to give ourselves time to reflect on history.

Dark tourism has close ties with educational tourism. Particularly in cases of darkest/darker tourism. For many people, this is a dominant, if not their main, motivation for being a dark tourist. Whilst dark tourism may not be a happy leisure experience, many people enjoy the educational aspect that comes with it. I know that I have certainly enjoyed visiting famous cemeteries and learning more about WW2 during my travels to Berlin and Poland .

Visitors of dark tourism sites are from a wide socio-demographic group. Motivations stem from educational purposes, the desire to understand past affairs, etc. Whilst other motivations stem from the desire to experience something different or new.

I recently watched a series on Netflix called The Dark Tourist. In this show, journalist David Farrier focuses on dark tourism and tourist behaviour towards popular dark tourism sites that are historically associated with death and/or tragedy.

In each episode, David travels to a different dark tourism destination. Some of these sites I have visited before and others I have now added to my bucket list. If you’re interested in learning more about dark tourism attractions around the world then this is a great show to watch!

If reading is more your thing, there are also a couple of really great books on dark tourism. Two of my favourites are Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places and The Dark Tourist: Sightseeing in the world’s most unlikely holiday destinations. Both books are comical repertoires of the authors’ adventures and mishaps when visiting dark tourism attractions around the world. This makes for some great like, leisurely reading over a glass of wine or a cup of tea!

Types of dark tourism

According to Stone (2006), there are seven main types of dark tourism sites.

Fun factories are essentially play centres. Whilst these are usually associated with children, they can also be aimed at adults. There are, for example, escape rooms which evolve around a dark theme, zombie chases or theatrical activities that all take place in dark fun factories.

There are many different dark exhibitions throughout the world. I visited several during my travels to Berlin that were focussed on the Holocaust. I visited exhibitions on the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia. I have been to exhibitions about the Vietnam War and many more.

Dark exhibitions are a good opportunity for tourists to learn about the dark histories or events of a destination in a respectful way.

Many destinations open their historical dungeons for public viewing. These may be in their original state or they may have been altered for tours. The London Dungeons, for example, have become rather ‘Disneyfied’, in the way that they encompass live actors, sensory activities and rides.

There are some really interesting cemeteries that I have visited throughout the world. Whilst visiting a graveyard might not be at the top of every tourists list, you might be surprised at just how busy these places can be! Some famous cemeteries that I have visited include the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the Recoleta Cemetery in Argentina and Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow. Did you know the Taj Mahal is also a dark resting place? Yep, I’ve been there too.  

There are many shrines throughout the world which are popular tourist attractions, perhaps the most famous being the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Shrines are especially popular in Asian countries.

Sites of conflict often become dark tourism sites once peace has been restored and a reasonable period of time has passed. One of the most interesting conflict sites that I have visited was Vietnam, where I learned all about the Vietnam War. The D-Day Beaches in France were also very interesting.

There are several areas of genocide which are popular with tourists. Whilst this is obviously a sad history, many people choose to visit sites such as Auschwitz or Karaganda, Kazakhstan to learn more about the history.

I think that Stone has missed out a key type of dark tourism in his list- disaster sites- so I will add this in below.

Disaster sites, whether in the immediate aftermath or after some time has passed, are popular with dark tourists. A subset of dark tourism, disaster tourism has increased in popularity in recent years. The recent documentary on Chernobyl, which was ranked the most highly user rated TV series ever, has helped raise awareness of disaster tourism amongst the public and tourism to this area has since increased significantly. I have written a detailed post on this topic, you can click here to read it: Disaster tourism: What, why and where .

There are a variety of types of disaster tourism that falls under the pillar of dark tourism, which include:

• Holocaust tourism
• Disaster tourism
• Grave tourism
• Cold war tourism
• Nuclear tourism
• Prison and persecution site tourism

Whilst each of these concepts are a type of tourism in their own right, they do share many similarities and are therefore classified together under the umbrella term of dark tourism.

So, is it really ethical to visit sites of death and tragedy? Or to photograph those who continue to sorrow for all that is lost? Or to take a selfie in a site of sadness? Many people do indeed question the ethics of taking part in dark tourism.

Take the response to the recent influx of Instagram photos taken in Chernobyl, for instance. There has been outrage, as shown in this newspaper article , at so-called ‘influencers’ and their inappropriate photographs taken at the historical nuclear site, where people have dressed up as scientists or posed in their underwear.

Whilst I think that most of us would agree that this is not sustainable tourist behaviour , there are a range of views as to what is appropriate and what is not when taking part in dark tourism.

As a general guide, however, here is a list of some of the behaviours demonstrated by dark tourists, which have been deemed offensive or inappropriate:

• Photographing people in moments of sorrow
• Smiling and laughing around those experiencing hardship
• Treating people as if they are museum exhibits
• Making inappropriate remarks
• Wearing disrespectful clothes
• Using inappropriate language
• Committing to disaster tourism for personal gain (e.g. personal satisfaction, to enhance CV etc)
• Making money from others’ hardships
• Talking loudly about unrelated issues
• Showing general signs of disrespect

Dark tourism destinations

There are a wide range of disaster tourism destinations (more than one would have imagined!), many of which would be overlooked as a dark tourism destination.

Below I have listed a few examples of dark tourism destinations, all of which demonstrate the different types of dark tourism as listed above.

Following the largest and most deadly Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz was turned into a memorial after the end of WWII. Auschwitz has been deemed the very epitome of all dark tourism.

Today, the memorial site is estimated to have welcomed almost 50 million tourists over its time. The tourist numbers have, in fact, become so high in recent years that the government have limited how many tickets to the area can be sold to tourists each day. I was caught out by this on my trip there a couple of years ago so my tip is to book ahead!

Chernobyl has been regarded as one of the worst nuclear disasters in History and I learnt a lot about this when I watched the recent documentary that was shown on TV.

Chernobyl is a very popular destination for dark tourism, however unlike Auschwitz, this destination remains a hazard and is to date a dangerous site to visit due to the radiation levels still pertinent.

It is interesting to read in a recent article published this month that booking numbers have increased by 30% in the last 3 months following the recent tv series on the disaster.

Hiroshima preserves the memory of the worlds first nuclear attack. An atomic bomb at Hiroshima killed more people in one instant than any other killing in history.

Hiroshima continues to promote itself as a symbol of peace rather than that of a devastated city.

In 2016, the number of visitors reached over 12 million. Over 11 million were domestic tourists , 323,000 were students on school trips, and 1,176,000 were international visitors.

Following one of the worlds worst terrorist attacks, the 9/11 memorial site is one of the world’s top dark tourism attractions and is one of the most visited sites of any kind.

Within the first 2 years of the memorial opening, over 10 million visitors arrived and a couple years later the total figure rose to over 23 million.

The Killing Fields are a collection of (more than 300) sites in Cambodia where over a million people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime.

This is a popular tourism attractions and often considered a ‘right of passage’ when backpacking around South East Asia. It is an educational and sorrowful site, highlighting an important time in Cambodia’s history.

One recent article has expressed the issues faced with the high volume of tourists visiting the Killing Fields. This is due to the number of tourists ‘leaving their mark’ and graffiting on prison walls.

Bikini Atoll is associated mainly with the nuclear testing programme that the United States of America conducted.

Unlike natural disasters, tourists could not flock to Bikini Atoll immediately after, and even to this day, Bikini Atoll remains an extremely hazardous place to visit despite the US granting its safety in 1997.

It is argued that disaster tourists are putting themselves at risk by travelling to Bikini Atoll. There is still a significant level of radiation in the area and the extent of the damage caused below sea level has not been determined.

This particular disaster is categorised as nuclear tourism under the umbrella of dark tourism.

Berlin was the capital of the socialist single party regime of the former GDR. Now it is referred to the as ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’.

Berlin is home to a number of Holocaust and WW2 exhibitions and is popular with educational tourists. I took a student group there a few years ago and I would definitely recommend it for anybody studying tourism or history.

There are other countries that similar experiences too, including dark tourism in Vienna .

Robben Island can be observed as a form of Prison and persecution site tourism. In fact the prison has been recognised and preserved as a UNWTO World Heritage Site.

Prior to its conservation, the Island was a standing prison during the colonial wars, particularly dominante by successive colonial powers (Dutch and British).

Nowadays, the prison is a tourist site welcoming thousands of tourists each year. The tour guides are mostly ex-inmates, providing the tourist with an authentic account of what the prison was like when it was in operation as well as a much needed source of employment for the staff member.

We visited during our trip to South Africa and found it very interesting and educational. I learnt a lot about Nelson Mandela and the history of Apartheid.

Rwanda is a small country in Central Africa and the place where one of the most tragic and largest genocides took place in 1994.

This is now a dark tourism site which is visited by many tourists each year.

One of the most interesting and unusual dark tourism sites that I have visited is Oradur Sur Glane .

In 1944, 642 villagers were massacred in Oradur Sur Glane. Shortly after the war, General Charles de Gaulle declared Oradour should never be rebuilt and instead it should remain a stark memorial to Nazi cruelty. It is fascinating (and eerie) because everything remains untouched to this day.

Have you ever watched the film Pompeii’?, If so then you will know exactly the history behind the city and what happened.

Pompeii has received an enormous amount of visitors and this may be the result of its publicity following its recent film. Before the film was released, Pompeii was attracted on average 2 million visitors annually, a number that remained very steady from 2002 onwards. However, following the release of the film, tourist numbers staggered upwards reaching over 3.5 million.

Another place that I have visited that was particularly memorable was the bone church known as Sedlec Ossuary.

We took a day trip from Prague to visit this unusual attraction, which was eerie and fascinating at the same time!

You can find out a bit more about the bone church in this video.

South of Mexico City, Don Julian Santana begun to hang dolls from treess and buildings as a protection against evil spirits. Today, the Island is known as ‘Island of the Dolls’. Dubbed as the ‘scariest place in Mexico’, it has now become a popular attraction with thrill-seeking dark tourists.

However, it has come to recent attention that the Island has been duplicated to fool tourists into believing they are visiting the original Island.

Now that we know a bit more about the concept of dark tourism, lets summarise the key points:

• Dark tourism involves visiting places associated with death, tragedy, and suffering.
• Dark tourism is a controversial form of tourism that raises ethical concerns.

Dark tourism has been around for centuries, but the term “dark tourism” was only coined in the 1990s.

• Some of the most popular dark tourism destinations include Auschwitz, Ground Zero, and the Killing Fields in Cambodia.
• Dark tourism can be educational and help people understand and appreciate history.
• Dark tourism can also be seen as exploitative and disrespectful to the victims and their families.
• Responsible tourism practices should be followed when engaging in dark tourism.
• The motivations for engaging in dark tourism vary, including curiosity, historical interest, and a desire to pay respects to the victims.
• Dark tourism can have positive economic impacts on local communities.
• Overall, dark tourism is a complex and nuanced form of tourism that requires careful consideration and reflection.

Lastly, lets finish off this article by answering some of the most commonly asked questions on this topic.

Dark tourism refers to travel to places that are associated with death, tragedy, and suffering.

What are some examples of dark tourism destinations?

Examples of dark tourism destinations include Auschwitz, Ground Zero, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Is dark tourism ethical?

The ethics of dark tourism are debated. Some people argue that it can be educational and help preserve historical memory, while others believe that it can be exploitative and disrespectful to the victims and their families.

What are some of the motivations for engaging in dark tourism?

Some people are motivated by curiosity, historical interest, a desire to pay respects to the victims, or a desire to challenge their own perceptions and beliefs.

Are there any risks associated with dark tourism?

Some dark tourism destinations may have physical or psychological risks, such as exposure to radiation or disturbing images.

How can I engage in responsible dark tourism?

Responsible dark tourism involves being respectful of the victims and their families, supporting local communities, and being aware of the impact of your visit.

Is dark tourism a new phenomenon?

Can dark tourism be beneficial for local economies?

Yes, dark tourism can bring economic benefits to local communities through increased tourism and job opportunities.

Can dark tourism be educational?

Yes, dark tourism can be educational and help people understand and appreciate history and its impact on society.

Should children be allowed to engage in dark tourism?

Whether children should be allowed to engage in dark tourism depends on the age of the child and the destination being visited. Parents should carefully consider the potential risks and impact on the child’s emotional well-being.

Dark tourism is an interesting concept that has reaped increased attention from both academics and the public in recent years. Whether you are visiting a cemetery, taking part in a zombie race or providing relief after a natural disaster, the opportunities to take part in dark tourism activities are far ranging.

It is fairly clear that there are a number of different types of tourism that all fall under the umbrella of dark tourism. And with the different types of dark tourism, comes a variety of different tourist motivations to visit.

However, despite the different motivations, there are still unresolved ethical concerns that need addressing. From inappropriate selfies to taking photos of people who are grieving, there are differing opinions on whether dark tourism is right or wrong.

If you enjoyed this article, I am sure you will love these too:

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Dark tourism can be voyeuristic and exploitative – or if handled correctly, do a world of good

Lecturer in Criminology, Queen's University Belfast

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Dark tourism is in vogue. It involves travel to sites associated with death, suffering and the seemingly macabre. Trips to former concentrations camps, sites of genocide, places of mass destruction, prisons and former battlefields are all part of the dark tourist’s controversial itinerary.

While not a new phenomenon – the Roman catacombs have been considered a “respectable” tourist spot for centuries – dark tourism has been increasingly popularised by glossy travel blogs and newspaper articles citing “must see” dark destinations. Key sites for visitors include Auschwitz-Birkenau, Tuol Sleng in Phenom Phen Cambodia, Ground Zero, Alcatraz and Robben Island. War kitsch sells.

My own dark tourism, which I undertook in a research capacity, was based in Northern Ireland, which has been no exception to the dark tourism trend. There, visitors can avail of multiple opportunities to delve into the sights, sounds and spaces of conflict.

A tourist in Belfast today will very likely opt to go on a “black taxi” tour around the city’s most troubled spots, a walking tour related to a specific atrocity such as Bloody Sunday, visit graves of republican volunteers in Milltown Cemetery or go to the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Memorial Garden. The presence of the Titanic museum – a multi-million pound “experience” commemorating the construction and maiden voyage of the ship – further underscores the city and its visitors’ fascination with death and disaster.

I am very much alive to ethical concerns about voyeuristic attitudes to places of trauma and the commodification of suffering . But I also think that undertaking such tours offers an opportunity to honour the dead, to remember victims from all communities and to demonstrate a commitment to “never again”. Indeed, in a time of intense cultural, religious and political difference, it is hard to argue against the importance of learning lessons from past conflicts.

Yet, if dark tourism is to have a function beyond the macabre – and as it becomes an increasingly popular leisure activity and academic subject – there are some issues that demand our attention.

Victims and perpetrators

Dedicated tours or sites of dark tourism tend to concentrate on “the victims” and “the perpetrators” as distinct and exclusive categories. There are of course good reasons for doing so. For example, many victims and survivors feel that it is insensitive and a challenge to their sense of loss and victimhood to house or represent the accounts of both victims and perpetrators in the same space.

This debate has been well rehearsed in Northern Ireland, where in 2013, planning permission was granted to transform the site of the former Maze prison into an “International Centre for Conflict Transformation”. Amid political controversy and claims that allowing visitors access to former prison buildings, including the infamous “H-blocks” and prison hospital, would act as a shrine to and platform for the glorification of terrorism, the plans collapsed in late summer 2013.

In other cases, it would be inappropriate and wrong to feature the experience of those who committed violence at a site of mass atrocity.

Yet violent conflict is not black and white and the categories of victim and perpetrator are neither static or mutually exclusive. Packaging dark tourism around binary conceptualisations of victims and perpetrators is to take the easy exit route. It does little to complicate our understanding of the past or the messy reality of violent conflict.

Honesty about the past demands challenging easy and uncritical assumptions of innocence and guilt and the role that blame plays in political claims making. But handled sensitively, the architecture of dark tourism – the use of images, narrative trails and the physical landscape – provides an ideal medium through which to begin to address these thorniest of questions.

Whose voices?

Equally, there is an element of choice regarding which voices are articulated, which atrocities are highlighted and which particular spaces become key stops along the way.

Having participated in one tour which recounted the events of the Ballymurphy massacre in West Belfast and another which focused on the experience of members of the Protestant community who lived along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland during the conflict, this point was starkly brought home to me.

In part, such tours serve as a potent reminder of the contest over space and the geographical intimacy of the Northern Ireland conflict. But there are inevitable tensions concerning which community memories are represented – and thereby legitimised – and which are marginalised or erased altogether. Competing and multi-layered memories are often reduced to one experience of history, one experience of victimhood and one interpretation of social memory.

Similar tensions exist regarding which particular victims’ voices are highlighted and which are silenced in the recounting of the past. In making that choice, it is frequently those voices which fit into and reinforce the underpinning politics of the tour and the relevant organisations’ broader perspective on the past which are highlighted. It is important to guard against the fetishisation of particular narratives and the use of victims’ voices for political gain.

We should not forget the past or let its horrors overwhelm the present. Rather, we must be alive to its complexities and contradictions. That means challenging our understanding of what victimhood and perpetratorhood mean, recognising the complexity of conflict, empowering victims and seeking to reflect on the reasons why individuals become involved in conflict.

Handled correctly, Northern Ireland’s sites of dark tourism can play a vital role in doing precisely this.

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What you should know about the rise of dark tourism

(Hint: It’s not all bad)

From the Roman Colosseum, where death was a spectator sport, to Halloween’s ancient origins in a Celtic festival of the dead, people have been drawn to death and tragedy for centuries.

But it wasn’t until the 1990s that a group of academics who were studying sites associated with the assassination of JFK gave this fascination with the macabre a name: dark tourism.

In more recent years, so-called dark tourism sites such as the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City and Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi death camp in southern Poland, have noticed an increase in visitors. And since HBO aired its popular miniseries about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, tour operators have reported an uptick in the number of visitors to the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

So what exactly is dark tourism?

According to IUPUI associate professor of tourism Suosheng Wang, the term dark tourism describes the phenomenon of people traveling to sites of death and disaster, whether man-made or natural. It is also known as “milking the macabre,” the “dark side of tourism,” “thanatourism” and “tragedy tourism.”

Though dark tourism can seem like a particularly irksome form of voyeurism, it’s not that straightforward, Wang said.

“We cannot simply say dark tourism is a good or bad thing, which wholly depends on how dark tourism is organized and how the local communities think of developing dark tourism at dark sites,” Wang said. “On one hand, the original purpose of dark tourism sites is for visitors to memorialize the victims and receive education to ensure the ‘never again’ hope. This is why most of these sites are presented as sites of remembrance for heritage, education or history.”

On the other hand, after a disaster, dark tourism can put local people in a painful or uncomfortable situation, he said. When one’s hometown is turned into a site of tragic disaster, it serves as a constant reminder of the tragedy and can prevent one from moving beyond the disaster.

“In the transition from a place of past disaster to a place as a dark tourism destination, death is presented as entertainment,” Wang said. “Such dissonance is an integral and unavoidable characteristic of dark tourism, and the stigma of death and tragedy may be distasteful to the local residents.”

One reason Wang said we’ve seen a rise in dark tourism is because the number of disasters in the world is increasing too.

This means that developing a better understanding of dark tourism has become increasingly important as well, because it can play a crucial role in disaster recovery efforts – particularly in developing countries, where dark tourism can stimulate and empower a community in mourning, he said.

It’s complicated, however, because although dark tourism can be a much-needed driver of economic recovery for sites of past disasters, there’s a fine line to walk between memorializing the dead and exploiting human suffering for financial gain.

Wang said there are typically two kinds of dark tourism sites – commercialized and noncommercialized – and two kinds of dark tourists: schadenfreude tourists, who glean a secret pleasure from seeing others’ misfortune, and thanatopsis tourists, who are interested in contemplating the meaning of the loss of life. The schadenfreude tourists tend to be criticized for snapping selfies, staying in luxurious hotels and eating fine food near the places of past suffering, while the thanatopsis tourists tend to care more about preserving the dark tourism site as sacred and reject attempts to develop commercial activities on the site.

It is this convergence of the opposing motivations of dark tourists, mixed with the needs and cultures of the communities where the dark sites reside, that creates such an interesting backdrop for the moral quandaries raised by dark tourism.

“Critics argue that dark tourism is commodifying the sufferings of the past for the financial gains of the present,” Wang said. “The onsite interpretation of a dark site can be overshadowed by commercialized representations, and the past tragedy becomes a site of commodity consumption.”

For example, the dark attraction Auschwitz has swelled with tourist numbers and catalyzed economic activity in the region. But the souvenirs sold around the 9/11 Memorial in New York risk the kitschification of dark tourism, he said.

“Dark tourism provides a significant tourism experience while at the same time raising new anxieties and ethical dilemmas,” Wang said. “Doubtlessly, it is a challenging issue for tourism management organizations or local communities to develop dark tourism at dark sites.”

Andrea Zeek

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Dark tourism: motivations and visit intentions of tourists

International Hospitality Review

ISSN : 2516-8142

Article publication date: 8 July 2021

Issue publication date: 14 June 2022

The overall purpose of this study is to utilize the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in combination with four dark tourism constructs (dark experience, engaging entertainment, unique learning experience, and casual interest) to gain a better understanding of behaviors and intentions of tourists who have visited or plan to visit a dark tourism location.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 1,068 useable questionnaires was collected via Qualtrics Panels for analysis purposes. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to verify satisfactory reliability and validity regarding the measurement of model fit. With adequate model fit, structural equation modeling was employed to determine positive and negative relationships between TPB and dark tourism constructs. In all, 11 hypotheses statements were tested within this study.

Results of this study indicate that tourists are curious, interested, and intrigued by dark experiences with paranormal activity, resulting in travel choices made for themselves based on personal beliefs and preferences, with minimal outside influence from others. It was determined that dark experience was the most influential of the dark tourism constructs tested in relationship to attitudes and subjective norm.

Research limitations/implications

The data collected for this study were collected using Qualtrics Panels with self-reporting participants. The actual destination visited by survey participants was also not factored into the results of this research study.

Originality/value

This study provides a new theoretical research model that merges TPB and dark tourism constructs and established that there is a relationship between TPB constructs and dark tourism.

Dark tourism

• Thanatourism
• Motivations
• Theory of planned behaviour

Lewis, H. , Schrier, T. and Xu, S. (2022), "Dark tourism: motivations and visit intentions of tourists", International Hospitality Review , Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 107-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/IHR-01-2021-0004

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Heather Lewis, Thomas Schrier and Shuangyu Xu

Published in International Hospitality Review . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Dark tourism is defined as the act of tourists traveling to sites of death, tragedy, and suffering ( Foley and Lennon, 1996 ). This past decade marks a significant growth of dark tourism with increasing number of dark tourists ( Lennon and Foley, 2000 ; Martini and Buda, 2018 ). More than 2.1 million tourists visited Auschwitz Memorial in 2018 (visitor numbers, 2019), and 3.2 million tourists visited the Ground Zero 9/11 Memorial annually (a year in review, 2017). Despite of the increasing popularity, there is still limited understanding of dark tourism as a multi-faceted phenomenon ( Biran et al. , 2011 ) . Some research has looked into the motivations and experience of dark tourists ( Poria et al. , 2004 ; Poria et al. , 2006 ). However, most were based on conceptual frameworks and arguments with little empirical data, even less have examined tourist visit intentions to dark tourism sites ( Zhang et al. , 2016 ), let alone the association between dark tourists' motivations and visit intentions. Many scholars suggested the pressing needs for empirical research into dark tourism from tourist perspectives to understand their motivations and experiences ( Seaton and Lennon, 2004 ; Sharpley and Stone, 2009 ; Zhang et al. , 2016 ). Of the limited empirical dark tourism studies, most were case studies with historical battlefields and concentration camps being the hot spots ( Le and Pearce, 2011 ; Lennon and Foley, 1999 ; Miles, 2002 ). Still, a comprehensive understanding of dark tourists' motivations and their intentions to visit is lacking.

As such, this study was conducted to understand both the motivations and visit intentions of tourists to dark tourism destinations. Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) constructs ( attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control) and the four dark tourism dimensions (i.e. dark experience, engaging entertainment, unique learning experience, and casual interest ) were utilized to address the following objectives: (1) examine the motivations of dark tourists; (2) investigate the intentions of the dark tourists to visit a dark tourism destination in the next 12 months; and (3) explore the association between the motivations and visit intentions of dark tourists. The dark tourism dimensions utilized for this study were adapted supported by previous dark tourism studies ( Biran et al. , 2014 ; Bissell, 2009 ; Lam and Hsu, 2006 ; Molle and Bader, 2014 ). While many studies have utilized TPB in the past, this study will utilize the TPB to focus attention on why travelers are motivated to visit dark tourism locations specifically.

Literature review

Travels associated with death dates back for centuries ( Dale and Robinson, 2011 ). Early examples of dark tourism include Roman gladiator games, guided tours to watch hangings in England, and pilgrimages to medieval executions ( Stone, 2006 ). Even today, many tourists are fascinated with and thus visited sites of death and tragedy such as the John F. Kennedy's death site in Dallas, Texas, and the Ground Zero 9/11 Memorial in New York ( Foley and Lennon, 1996 ; Strange and Kempa, 2003 ). Abandoned prisons and sites of punishment and incarcerations are also popular attractions among dark tourists (e.g., Pentridge in Melbourne, Australia; Foley and Lennon, 1996 ). However, the term dark tourism did not get introduced to the research community until 1996 which ignited many later research efforts on this topic ( Light, 2017 ).

Dark tourism is defined as the act of tourists traveling to sites of death, tragedy, and suffering ( Foley and Lennon, 1996 ). Many scholars also came up with other terms and labels to describe such phenomenon including thanatourism ( Seaton, 1996 ), disaster tourism ( Rojek, 1993 ), black spot tourism ( Rojek, 1993 ), morbid tourism ( Blom, 2000 ) and even phoenix tourism ( Powell et al. , 2018 ). Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) suggested that despite of different names, at the heart of the concept is travel to places of death that are often linked to violence ( Robb, 2009 ). Many researchers use the term dark tourism and thanatourism interchangeably, while more tend to use dark tourism as an umbrella term for any form of tourism that is somehow related to death, suffering, atrocity, tragedy or crime ( Light, 2017 ). Given the standard use of the term dark tourism in the practice and scholarship of tourism, such a term will be used throughout this manuscript.

Dark tourism research in this past two decades mainly covers six themes including the discussion on definition, concepts, and typologies; the associated ethical issues; the political and ideological dimensions; the nature of demand for dark tourism locations; site management; and the methods used for research ( Light, 2017 ). The area of terminology and definitions undoubtedly dominates in the dark tourism literature ( Zhang et al. , 2016 ). While in the area of exploring the nature of demand for dark tourism locations, the relatively limited research concentrated in four aspects – both the motivations and experiences of dark tourists, the relationship between visiting and sense of identity, and new approaches to theorizing the consumption of dark tourism ( Light, 2017 ).

Research addressing dark tourists' motivations were relatively slow. Many early studies simply postulate and propose tourists' motivations to visit dark tourism sites, with a lack of empirical research to support ( Light, 2017 ). As such, many studies in the past decade examined dark tourists' motivations through different case studies, with concentration camps or historical battlefields being the hot spots ( Lennon and Foley, 1999 ; Miles, 2002 ). Research reveals that tourists visit dark tourism destinations for a wide variety of reasons, such as curiosity ( Biran et al. , 2014 ; Isaac and Cakmak, 2014 ), desire for education and learning about what happened at the site ( Kamber et al. , 2016 ; Yan et al. , 2016 ), interest in history or death ( Yankholmes and McKercher, 2015 ; Raine, 2013 ), connecting with one's personal or family heritage ( Mowatt and Chancellor, 2011 ; Le and Pearce, 2011 ). Drawing from literature, four common themes (i.e. dark experience, engaging entertainment, unique learning experience, casual interest) emerged, served as the foundational pillars for this study, and were discussed below.

The motivation construct

Dark experience.

Raine's (2013) dark tourist spectrum study of tourists visiting burial grounds and graveyards concluded that mourners and pilgrims had personal and spiritual connections to the different sites being studied. Mourners visited specific gravesites and usually would perform meditations for the dead. Pilgrims had a personal connection to specific burial sites in some way, whether it is a religious connection to the individual or they served as a personal hero ( Raine, 2013 ). Death rites are often performed as a ritual not necessarily to mark the passing of the deceased but rather to heal the wounds of families, communities, societies, and/or nations by the deceased's passing ( Bowman and Pezzullo, 2009 ).

Additionally, Raine's (2013) study discovered another subset of tourists—the morbidly curious and thrill seekers. Those classified as morbidly curious or thrill seekers were visiting burial sites to confront and experience death. Whether a mourner or pilgrim or the morbidly curious thrill seeker, the tourists had a strong connection to the dead they were there to visit which could categorize them as seeking a dark experience.

To take dark tourism to the extreme, Miller and Gonzalez (2013) completed a study on death tourism. Death tourism occurs when individuals travel to a location to end their lives, often through a means of assisted medical suicide. It was determined that this is still a taboo topic for some countries where it is not legalized, however it is gaining more publicity. It was determined that death tourism is typically the result of one of four reasons; the primary reason death tourism is planned is because of assisted suicide being illegal in the traveler's home country ( Miller and Gonzalez, 2013 ). While death tourism does not directly apply to this particular study, it is an offspring of dark tourism and is a tourist activity that is related to dark experience.

Dark Experience will have a positive relationship with Attitudes

Dark Experience will have a positive relationship with Subjective Norm

Engaging Entertainment

Engaging Entertainment will have a positive relationship with Attitudes

Engaging Entertainment will have a positive relationship with Subjective Norm

Unique learning experience

Unique Learning Experience will have a positive relationship with Attitudes

Unique Learning Experience will have a positive relationship with Subjective Norm

Casual interest

Casual Interest will have a positive relationship with Attitudes

Casual Interest will have a positive relationship with Subjective Norm

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

Behavioral intention, defined as an individual's anticipated or planned future behavior ( Swan, 1981 ), has been suggested as a central factor that correlates strongly with observed behavior ( Baloglu, 2000 ). Many believed that intentions serve as an immediate antecedent to actual behavior ( Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 ; Konu and Laukkanen, 2010 ). Fishbein and Ajzen developed the Theory of planned behavior (TPB) base on three constructs: attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) has been widely used in tourism research ( Ajzen and Driver, 1992 ; Han et al. , 2010 ; Han and Kim, 2010 ; Lam and Hsu, 2004 , 2006 ). TPB suggests that individuals are more likely to engage in behaviors that are believed to be achievable ( Armitage and Conner, 2001 ). Ajzen (1991) suggested that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control are important to predict intention. Perceived behavioral control is what influences the tourists' intentions and their perception of their ability to perform a specific behavior.

Lam and Hsu (2004) utilized the TPB to examine motivations of travelers from mainland China to Hong Kong and found that attitude, perceived behavioral control, and past behaviors were directly related to travel intentions. In another study examining the visit intentions of Taiwanese travelers to Hong Kong, Lam and Hsu (2006) found that a positive association between visit frequency and re-visit intention.

Cheng et al. (2006) used the TPB to examine the negative word-of-mouth communication on visit intentions of Chinese consumers to high-class Chinese restaurants. It was determined from their study that the TPB constructs were positively impacted by negative word-of-mouth indicating that the TPB effectively measured consumer communication intention. Similarly, Han and Kim (2010) modified the TPB in the investigation of customers' intention to revisit environmentally friendly hotels and found that past behavior was a significant predictor of intention–the more customers stay at a green hotel, the more likely they intend to revisit. It can be concluded from previous research efforts that the TPB can be utilized to effectively measure behavioral intentions of tourists successfully.

Motivation and intentions

Attitudes will have a positive relationship with Intention

Subjective Norm will have a negative relationship with Intention

Perceived Behavioral Control will have a positive relationship with Intention

Methodology

Survey instrument.

A survey questionnaire was developed to collect information on the socio-demographic background, motivation construct, and planned behavior construct from tourists. Socio-demographic data queried were age in years (continuous), gender (3 categories, male, female and prefer not to answer), level of education (9 categories, from less than high school degree to doctoral degree), marital status (5 categories, from single to widow/widower), personal annual income (12 categories, from less than $20,000 to more than $200,000). Tourists' home residence state and country were also collected.

A dark tourism motivation construct was developed based on previous studies ( Biran et al. , 2014 ; Bissell, 2009 ; Lam and Hsu, 2006 ; Molle and Bader, 2014 ), and used to query previous visit and potential visit separately using a five-point Likert scale (“1 = extremely unimportant”; “5 = extremely important”). This motivation construct consists of 33 item statements from four dimensions ( Table 1 ) which include engaging entertainment, dark experience , unique learning experience , and casual interest . Dark experience consisted of nine statements, related to death, fascination with abnormal and/or bizarre events and destinations, and emotional experiences with a connection to death (e.g., “to travel”, “to have some entertainment”). Engaging entertainment was measured using ten statements that inquire about the personal or emotional connection to the destination they have visited or wish to visit in the future (e.g., “to witness the act of death and dying”, “to experience paranormal activity”). Unique learning experience focused on learning about the history of the destination being visited or trying something that is different and out of the ordinary (eight items, e.g., “to try something new”, “to increase knowledge”). Casual interest focuses on individuals who want to visit a dark tourism destination for the entertainment value but want to have a relaxing time while doing so (six items, “special tour promotions”, “natural scenery”).

The planned behavior construct queried on four dimensions (i.e., attitudes , subjective norms , perceived behavioral control , and behavioral intentions ) associated with visiting dark tourism destinations, with a total of 16 item statements ( Table 2 ). Five item statements were used to measure dark tourists' attitudes (e.g., “visiting a dark tourism destination is enjoyable”, “visiting a dark tourism destination is pleasant”) and behavioral intentions (e.g., “I will visit a dark tourism destination in the next 12 months”, “I would revisit the most recent dark tourism destination I visited again in the future”) respectively, using a five-point Likert scale (“1 = Strongly disagree”; “5 = Strongly agree”). Dark tourists' perceived behavioral control was measured by three item statements (e.g., “I am in control of whether or not I visit a dark tourism destination”, “If wanted, I could easily afford to visit a dark tourism destination”), using the same five-point Likert scale (“1 = Strongly disagree”; “5 = Strongly agree”). For subjective norms dimension, each of the three item statements was measured by a different five-point Likert scale. The statement that “most people I know would choose a dark tourism destination for vacation purposes” uses the scale in which “1 = strongly disagree”, “5 = strongly agree”. One item statement asks individuals to rate on whether “people who are important to me think I ____ choose a dark tourism destination to visit” “1 = definitely should not”, “5 = definitely should”). Another statement asks individuals to rate whether “people who are important to me would ___ of my visit to a dark tourism destination” “1 = definitely disapprove”, “5 = definitely approve”).

Sampling and procedure

To increase the reliability and validity of the survey, a pilot study was conducted. A small group of industry professionals from all over the country currently working at dark tourism destinations and other academic researchers were invited to critique the initial draft of the survey. Forty-one individuals took the survey instrument and provided feedback (e.g., some wording issues). After revisions from the pilot study were completed, the survey was launched, and data was collected.

Qualtrics, a web-based survey software company with access to an electronic database of survey candidates, was used to administer this questionnaire to participants. A total of 44,270 invitations were randomly sent to Qualtrics panel participants requesting participation in this study. Qualification of participants was completed by requesting all survey recipients answer the following questions: (1) Have you visited a dark tourism location within the past 24 months? and (2) Do you plan to visit a dark tourism location within the next 12 months? A statement was provided to all participants explaining what consisted of a dark tourism location to ensure participants were not taking the survey based on experiences of activities like haunted houses or haunted hayrides. Only 3,907 individuals were eligible to complete the survey, and a total of 1,068 participants did complete the survey, which yields a response rate of 27.3%. Altogether 651 out of 1,068 individuals had previously visited a dark tourism destination within the last 24 months while the remaining 417 individuals plan to visit a dark tourism destination within the next 12 months.

Data analysis included descriptive statistics, reliability tests, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modeling (SEM). Descriptive statistics were used to outline respondents' characteristics (e.g., demographic composition). CFA was utilized to evaluate the measurement model, demonstrate adequate model fit, and ensure satisfactory levels of reliability and validity of underlying variables and their respective factors. Factor loadings greater than 0.70 indicated that the constructs are appropriately represented and considered acceptable ( Hair et al. , 2010 ). Cronbach's alphas were computed to test the internal reliability of items comprising each dimension of the dark tourism motivation construct ( dark experience , engaging entertainment , unique learning experience , casual interest ) and the planned behavior construct ( attitudes , subjective norm , perceived behavioral control ), respectively. A cutoff value of 0.7 was utilized to determine “good” reliability ( Peterson, 1994 , p. 381).

To confirm measurement model validity, the chi-squared ( x 2 ) statistic, Root-Mean-Square-Error of Approximation (RMSEA), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) values were reviewed. Cutoff criteria used to determine “good fit” were RMSEA score < 0.08 ( Byrne, 1998 ), CFI scores > 0.90 ( Kline, 2005 ), SRMR < 0.08 to indicate a good fit ( Hu and Bentler, 1999 ).

Overwhelmingly, many tourists who had either visited a dark tourism location or plan to visit a dark tourism destination were female (65.4%). Additionally, the majority of participants were 25–34 years of age (44.2%) with the next largest age groups being 35–44 years (21%) and 18–24 years (20.9%). Most had either a 4-years Bachelor's degree from college (30.5%) or at least some college education but did not finish their degree (25.3%). 54.5% of the survey participants were married and 37.6% were single. As for income, the largest percentage (19.5%) had an individual annual income ranging from $20,001-$40,000. A full table of demographic characteristics of the participants can be seen in Table 3 .

Partial disaggregation of measurement model

SEM was utilized to investigate the relationships among dark tourism construct, the planned behavior construct and behavioral intentions. Like the CFA testing, the SEM also uses the chi-squared ( x 2 ) , RMSEA, SRMR, and CFI to determine overall model fit and relationships for this study. After further testing for convergent and discriminant validity, it was determined that all constructs met the composite reliability 0.70 or greater standard regarding the 3-parcel hypothesized model ( Table 4 ) ( Hair et al. , 2010 ).

There are several ways to parcel variables into groupings. For purposes of this study, the variables were parceled using the item-to-construct method since the SEM model was large in size and the goal was to have parcels balanced in terms of difficulty and discrimination ( Little et al. , 2002 ). To develop the parcels, standardized regression weights were evaluated, and the three highest scores served as anchors to each of the three parcels with the highest values associated to parcel 1, next highest to parcel 2, and then the next highest to parcel 3. The remainder of variables were placed into the parcels continuing with the 4th highest value placed into the 3rd parcel and repeating the process in inverted order until all variables were assigned into parcels. Once the variables for each construct were placed into appropriate parcel groupings, averages of the questions associated to the new parceled variables were calculated prior to the CFA and SEM analysis. The attitude and behavioral intention constructs had five variable questions, while subjective norm and perceived behavioral control only had three questions. In those situations, one individual variable question served as the parcel item. Table 2 shows the variables and the parcels in which they were grouped.

Additionally, the average variance extracted was calculated and proved to be less than the composite reliability for each construct indicating convergent reliability of the constructs. The average variance extracted was greater than the 0.50 standard for Dark Experience, Engaging Entertainment, Unique Learning Experience, Attitude, and Subjective Norm constructs. Behavioral Intention (0.49) and Casual Interest (0.48) had values that were borderline acceptable regarding convergent validity. The only construct that did not meet the standards of convergent validity testing was Perceived Behavioral Control (0.23). When testing for divergent validity, all square-root of average variance extracted calculations were greater than the inter-construct correlations indicating divergent validity was present in this study. Partial disaggregation of the variables resulted in a much stronger overall model fit. The RMSEA value was 0.08 indicating a strong model fit and the CFI (0.891) value was acceptable indicating a good model fit. The SRMR value (0.06, Table 4 ) also showed a strong model fit.

Hypothesis testing

Overall, most of the relationships between the dark tourism construct and the TPB constructs were significant. Results show that dark experience has a positive significant relationship with both attitudes (0.434) regarding tourists visiting a dark tourism destination and subjective norms (0.242, Table 5 ). Casual interest has a positive significant relationship with both attitudes (0.404) and subjective norm (0.330). Both engaging entertainment (−0.080; −0.217) and unique learning experience (0.152; −0.247) are not significantly associated with neither attitudes nor subjective norms . Results show that both attitudes (0.396) and perceived behavioral control (0.716) have a significant positive relationship with behavioral intention .

SEM testing was completed on the data. In addition to the significant and insignificant relationships indicated by the SEM testing, to answer some of the specific research questions asked by this study one must review the distinct question factor loadings to get those answers. A full set of the factor loadings of survey questions asked regarding dark tourism and TPB constructs are in Table 1 . A visualization of all hypothesis testing results is in Table 5 as well as on Figure 1 .

It can be concluded from the findings of this research that dark experience has a positive relationship with attitudes regarding tourists visiting a dark tourism location, indicating that Hypothesis 1 was fully supported. Tourists seek specific characteristics when choosing to visit a dark tourism destination. Akin to findings from Bissell (2009) , the reasons for visiting: I want to try something new and out of the ordinary as well as I am fascinated with abnormal and bizarre events were strong. Alone these two variables do not constitute wanting to experience dark tourism but suggest a curiosity about dark tourism and a desire for new experiences ( Seaton and Lennon, 2004 ). Individuals answered favorably to all questions related to interest in experiencing paranormal activity. Although Sharpley (2005) suggested “fascination with death” as a potential motive for tourists to visit dark tourism destinations, questions specifically related to death (i.e., to witness the act of death and dying , to satisfy personal curiosity about how the victims died ) , reveal that fascination with death and dying was not a strong motivating factor for the tourists' who participated in this research study. The positive relationships of dark experience with attitudes ( H1 ) and subjective norm ( H2 ) , respectively, implies that tourists are seeking experiences that satisfy curiosity or they are seeking interaction with the paranormal. Tourists seek a fun and enjoyable tourist experience by visiting dark tourism destinations, and do not feel pressured by societal norms of their friends and family, which may prevent them from visiting dark tourism destinations.

The engaging entertainment dimension regarding both attitude ( H3 ) and subjective ( H4 ) was not supported in this study, which is interesting considering the questions in this dimension were developed to determine the importance of the tourists connecting with the information presented at the destination while still having an enjoyable experience.

Like Raine (2013) , this study considered the unique learning experience dimension to include individuals who are hobbyists and are typically visiting these destinations solely for educational purposes and to not engage with the destination as a dark tourism site. To present an alternative consideration to the construct of unique learning experience, Seaton (1996) determined that the more attached a person was to a destination, the less likely they would be fascinated with death, resulting in the tourists not viewing the dark tourism destination as being “dark”. This thought process may be a possibility of explanation for why the relationships were negative between unique learning experience and the TPB constructs, resulting in both Hypothesis 5 and 6 not being supported. Farmaki (2013) strengthens this argument by determining that many tourists visit museums for the purpose of education, but museums will incorporate the concept of death to enhance the tourist experience.

Results from this study also indicate that participants of this study were not traveling to dark tourism destinations for educational purposes. Additionally, results indicate that individuals who were perhaps traveling for the purposes of unique learning experience had negative feelings or experiences with subjective norms, lending to the belief that their family and friends were not supportive of their choice to visit a dark tourism destination.

Raine (2013) discovered a group of tourists she classified as sightseers and passive recreationalists. These tourists can be themed as “incidental” as they were likely not seeking a dark tourism destination related to death and burials, but instead were looking for a destination to escape from everyday life. These statements can easily be supported by this research study as Hypotheses 7 and 8 were both positively supported in relationship to casual interest and attitudes ( H7 ) and subjective norm ( H8 ). The questions asked in this study specifically relate to value of tours, special promotions, and enjoying time with friends and family.

Individuals were seeking attitudinal experiences through their visits to dark tourism destinations, supporting Hypothesis 9 . Unlike the results from Lam and Hsu (2004) , subjective norms do play a role in behavioral intentions. This study found that the influence of societal norms and pressures do influence tourists' intention to visit dark tourism destinations, lending to Hypothesis 10 not being supported as expected. Regarding perceived behavioral control, when tourists feel capable and in control of their tourism choices, it will positively impact their behavioral intention or likelihood of visiting a dark tourism destination, supporting Hypothesis 11 .

Practical implications

Practitioners working in tourism industries and communities of dark tourism destinations can greatly benefit from the results of this study. Managers of dark tourism destinations must realize that visitors are attracted to these locations for many different reasons ( Bissell, 2009 ) and not just for fascination of death or paranormal activity. While this research does not focus specifically on individual motivating factors that influence behavior to visit, overarching attributes were determined to influence behavioral intentions more than others. The significant positive relationships found in this study between dark experience, unique learning experience, and casual interest suggest dark tourism destination managers offer a variety of tours and services to visitors and should be sensitive in how they display or present information so it does not come across as being offensive to tourists in the event they have strong emotional ties to the destination or individual(s) who may have been a victim at the destination.

Due to the broad nature of this study and its data collection efforts, the dark tourism locations visited by participants varied greatly. It can be concluded from the data that the use of television and contemporary media featuring dark tourism locations does positively influence tourists' behavioral intention to visit. Variables related to dark tourism destinations featured on television shows were more strongly favored in relationship to the dark experience construct than engaging entertainment. This indicates that tourists are curious about what they have seen on television or mass media and want to experience similar. Managers of dark tourism destinations featured on television shows should effectively market their locations as such to increase interest and tourism traffic to their destination. If paranormal tours are not currently being offered this would be a recommendation (if applicable) to generate more tourism interest.

Additionally, due to the increased popularity and reliance on websites and social media platforms for information, practitioners should register their location on dark tourism websites and registries so more curious travelers can easily locate them. Utilizing TripAdvisor.com and other similar travel websites is another option for practitioners to generate tourism interest to their destination. Making information readily available and easy to locate for tourists will continue to strengthen the relationship between perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention. Additionally, considering societal norms had a positive relationship with dark tourism constructs within this study, practitioners could market their destination as being taboo to tourists wanting to satisfy their rebellious curiosity.

Limitations and future research

This study has several limitations. Since the data was collected using Qualtrics Panels, potential participants are asked to self-report and assess whether they are eligible dark tourists for this study, based on given definition of dark tourism. Such self-assessment may not always be precise. If adopting this survey method, future research may consider asking participations to provide the specific dark tourism destination type that they have visited in the past 24 months, to help further confirm their eligibility for study participation. It is also recommended that if time and resources permit, future research consider collecting data on-site at dark tourism destinations. Also, this research study did not take into consideration the type of dark tourism destination visited by the respondents. Dark tourism destinations vary in the levels of violence and death that are associated with them ( Seaton, 1996 ; Stone, 2006 ). Future research can investigate additional motivational factors of tourists to visit dark tourism destinations with varying levels of darkness associated to them.

Most of the previous studies are case studies with historical battlefields and concentration camps being the hot spot for tourist activity. It is important and yet lacking to explore the general pattern of the association between motivations and visit intentions to dark tourism sites in general. Ryan and Kohli (2006) suggested there are differences between dark tourism destinations created by natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes in Sichuan, China; Biran et al. , 2014 ) and those that were sites of death at the hand of man (e.g., Auschwitz concentration camp). Moreover, Zhang et al. (2016) were among the few that explored the associated between motivation and association, but only on college students at one specific site. Although this study is inclusive of different dark tourist groups and dark tourism sites, future research may consider factoring in such difference in dark tourism destinations while exploring dark tourist motivations and visit intensions.

Conclusions

This study serves as exploratory research examining the association between tourist motivations and visit intentions and paves the way for future research in dark tourism. This study contributes to the dark tourism literature by proposing a new theoretical framework linking and extending dark tourism motivation construct with the Planned Behavior Construct. Study results can also benefit practitioners in dark tourism sector.

Graphic representation of theoretical framework and hypothesis testing results

Factor loadings for dark tourism variables

Partial disaggregation parcel groupings of TPB variables

Demographic characteristics of survey participants

CFAs of nested models

Full-data set hypothesis testing results

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Further reading

Krisjanous , J. ( 2016 ), “ An exploratory multimodal discourse analysis of dark tourism websites: communicating issues around contested sites ”, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management , Vol. 5 No. 4 , pp. 341 - 350 , doi: 10.1016/j.jdmm.2016.07.005 .

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Everything You Need to Know Before Visiting the Darkest Places in Human History

T ravel isn’t always supposed to be fun. A lot of the time, travel is about learning and pushing your personal boundaries. Often, the best way to do this is by visiting places that make you uncomfortable, whether it be memorials, ghost towns, or concentration camps . Though emotionally taxing, dark tourism destinations are incredibly powerful, and perhaps even more worth your time than the lighter, more obvious attractions you’ll find in a travel brochure.

Before you go, however, remember that visiting Chernobyl isn’t like visiting the Eiffel Tower. While emotional preparation is necessary before touring some of the world’s more troubling sites, there’s also a different etiquette to keep in mind.

Tourist misbehavior has been rampant at the Auschwitz concentration camp , for example. In January 2022, a Dutch tourist was fined for doing a Nazi salute at the gates of Auschwitz while posing for photos, CNN reports. The same week, a visitor from the Czech Republic was banned from Venice for posing topless on a war memorial.

These seem like obvious things that shouldn’t be done. Other things can be less obvious, however. We got in touch with dark tourism experts for everything you need to know before visiting the darkest places in human history.

How to prepare for a visit to dark tourism destinations

Chances are, if you’re visiting the site of a tragic historical event, one of your chief objectives is to learn. But don’t rely on getting all the information from the site itself. To ensure you get the most out of your experience, come prepared with questions in advance.

“Read up on the places in question ahead of time,” advises Dr. Peter Hohenhaus of dark-tourism.com . “Some places do an admirable job with interpretive information, especially most of the concentration camp memorials in Germany, but in other cases information can be scant or presented wrongly, such as at some prison memorial sites like Hoa Lo in Vietnam or the disturbingly revisionist Yushukan war museum in Tokyo.”

Put away food, drinks, and your phone when visiting dark tourism destinations

Photo: hanohiki /Shutterstock

Bad tourist behavior is, unfortunately, all too common.

“There are often tourists talking loudly about unrelated topics or laughing at these sites, which is not very respectful,” says Sian Alison of Dark Tourist Trips , a company that creates itineraries for self-guided day trips. “I have actually asked people to be respectful and lower their voices on occasion. I have also witnessed people dropping litter, eating, and drinking.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, inappropriate photo-taking is one of the biggest issues. Visitors seem to be stuck on auto-pilot, succumbing to the familiar muscle memory of taking an abundance of pictures while on vacation.

Hohenhaus recommends staying “in the moment” as much as possible. Try to put aside any distractions, and immerse yourself in the destination.

“At such sites,” he says, “what is important is place authenticity, getting a feel for the atmosphere, even aura, of a place where some significant dark chapters of history played out. So concentrate on that aspect.”

One way to do this, of course, is by refraining from excessive photography, and particularly selfies. “Being at a dark site is not about yourself,” he says, “but about the place and the victims who may have suffered there. Pushing yourself into the foreground instead, by taking grinning selfies or generally being boisterous, is therefore disrespectful.”

“I was a little shocked by the extremely excessive selfie-taking by domestic visitors at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre memorial site in Amritsar, India,” Hohenhaus says. “I don’t know if these people were just ignorant of the very tragic events that took place there or really didn’t care. Similarly, I’ve seen people munching chocolates right by the crematoria at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial – even though it says in the house rules that consuming food and drink or smoking were not allowed.”

Understand that visiting dark tourism destinations can be a coping mechanism

People are fascinated by the more disturbing aspects of human history. It’s why true crime podcasts are so popular. In addition to simply being an educational experience, tragic historical sites stir emotions that more traditional destinations don’t.

“There has always been a fascination with morbid curiosity,” Alison says. “Dark tourism is perhaps one of the oldest forms for tourism in the world. It dates back as far to when public executions took place and when people used to attend gladiator and lion fights at the Colosseum.”

Alison also believes such sites illuminate difficult areas of history that can’t be fully grasped in textbooks or museums. More importantly, they provide a space for conversation.

“Dark tourism teaches people the horrors of the past by allowing you to also pay respect,” Alison says. “This form of tourism opens up difficult topics and allows deep conversations to take place. I think people are attracted to dark places to pay respect, to learn more about a tragic historic event, to be educated, and of course, simple curiosity.”

Curiosity always tends to grow when the subject matter is taboo or sensitive. But Hohenhaus suggests that our fascination with the morbid and tragic goes beyond mere curiosity, and is actually a coping mechanism for the darker elements in our own lives.

“We see our world becoming more and more threatened by political, sociological, ecological crises,” he says, “so people seek to learn about dark pasts they can relate to, and which may help them better understand the present.”

Dark tourism is not all about morbid curiosity

Usually, you take a vacation to have fun – not to become emotionally unsettled and worry about breaking strict etiquette. So why do people do it? Clearly, there’s immense value in visiting the sites of tragic events that won’t necessarily send you home with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

“Visiting places with a dark past is a way to keep those tragic memories alive, and perhaps stop these mistakes from happening again in the future,” Alison says. “It allows people to understand more about an event and educates the younger generation that may not have been around during the time of the event.”

For Hohenhaus, his time visiting dark sites has given him a more comprehensive view of the world.

“I genuinely do think that I’ve learned more about the world through these past 15 years of exploring dark tourism than through my entire formal education or academic career,” he says.

He also lauds the ability of these destinations to steel visitors against propaganda through education and example.

“It makes you less susceptible to propaganda and misinformation,” he says. “When you’ve seen firsthand the results of Communist, Nazi, or other propaganda, then you just see through current examples of propaganda more clearly, and are better able to identify it. In general, visiting dark places makes you think, and that’s always a good thing.”

Expert recommended dark tourism destinations

Photo: Mikhail Gnatkovskiy /Shutterstock

When we think of dark tourism destinations with a tragic past, we tend to think mainly of concentration camps, but there are other equally powerful sites that deserve our attention.

For Hohenhaus, “visiting places like the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, Le Redoutable nuclear missile submarine in France, or the former Soviet nuclear test site in Kazakhstan are all very exciting, particularly because all these sites used to be extremely off limits.”

While those might be his personal favorites, Hohenhaus also recommends more popular destinations in dark tourism, including Auschwitz, Chernobyl, the 9/11 Museum in New York City, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Choeung Ek Killing Fields, and Tuol Sleng in Cambodia.

As an alternative to Auschwitz, Hohenhaus recommends checking out the Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland.

“It’s far less crowded than Auschwitz,” he says, “and it offers at least as much place authenticity because it was liberated as early as in the summer of 1944, when the Soviets captured the site before the fleeing SS personnel had the chance to destroy all the evidence of their deeds.”

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Dark Tourists: Profile, Practices, Motivations and Wellbeing

José magano.

1 Research Center in Business and Economics (CICEE), Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, Rua Sta. Marta 47, 5.º Andar, 1150-293 Lisboa, Portugal

2 ISCET-Higher Institute of Business Sciences and Tourism, Rua de Cedofeita, 285, 4050-180 Porto, Portugal

José A. Fraiz-Brea

3 Department of Business Organization, Business Administration and Tourism Faculty, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain

Ângela Leite

4 Center for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Portuguese Catholic University, Rua de Camões 60, 4710-362 Braga, Portugal

Associated Data

Datasets are available upon request to the authors.

This work aims to address whether knowing what dark tourism is (or not) impacts rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourist wellbeing, as well as practices and motivations for dark tourism. A quantitative approach, based on a survey of 993 respondents, reveals that women and more educated participants know more about dark tourism; people who know what dark tourism is have visited more Holocaust museums, sites of human tragedy and natural disasters, concentration camps, and prisons; show more curiosity, need to learn and understand, and need to see morbid things. A model was found showing that gender, age, know/do not know dark tourism, and motivations (curiosity, the need to learn, the need to understand, and pleasure) explained 38.1% of a dark tourism practice index. Most findings also indicate that rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability are associated with darker practices. Greater wellbeing was not found in participants who knew in advance what dark tourism was. Interestingly, participants who visit tragic human sites present higher values in hostility and tourist wellbeing than those who do not. In summary, people who visit more dark places and score higher on negative personality characteristics have higher values of tourist wellbeing.

1. Introduction

Many people are increasingly looking for new and unique touristic experiences to satisfy a wide range of motivations. That has driven the segmentation and the emergence of increasingly specific typologies, such as dark tourism, that, in contrast with mass tourism, are characterized by a high degree of diversification and individualization. Dark tourism comprises visiting real or recreated places related with death, suffering, disgrace, or the macabre [ 1 , 2 ]. From the perspective of dark tourism places, it is important to understand what drives people to visit them to design satisfying experiences. We may think of death as an obvious motivation, often part of the site’s history, but it is not always the primary or explicitly recognized motivation for a visit. Sharpley and Stone [ 3 ] admitted that the field of motivation to visit dark tourism destinations remains an understudied area, although recent literature has provided an increasing number of empirical studies about the reasons for visiting those sites [ 4 , 5 ].

This research intends to contribute to the dark tourism literature by seeking to understand whether people know what dark tourism is and identify a differentiated sociodemographic, motivational, and tourist practice profile between people who know and do not know what dark tourism is. In addition, it aims to understand if dark tourists’ motivations for visiting dark tourism destinations explain their practices. The research approach relies on empirically exploring the motivations, practices, and sociodemographic characteristics of a sample of 933 people that participated in a survey held in Portugal.

The remainder of the text is organized as follows: firstly, a brief theoretical background is put forward, focused on the dark tourism concept and dark tourists’ motivations and practices; then, the quantitative study’s applied methods and obtained results are described; finally, the results are discussed, and conclusions and implications are drawn.

2. Theoretical Background

Despite the fact that some authors consider it one of the older forms of tourism, it has gained great popularity amongst academics from the 1990s onwards [ 3 ], confirmed by the significant volume of literature published ever since [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. However, understanding the demand for this type of tourism persists as poorly defined and theoretically fragile [ 3 , 4 , 7 , 8 ]. For a long time, places that have been the scene of wars, disasters, deaths, and atrocities have always fascinated people, motivating them to travel [ 3 , 9 ]. Sharpley and Stone [ 3 ] often use the term dark tourism as the type of tourism that encompasses traveling to sites related to death, suffering, and macabre—a globally accepted definition. However, Tarlow [ 10 ] implies the phenomenon is complex by describing it as “visits to places where noteworthy historical tragedies or deaths have occurred that continue to impact our lives”, which raises the question about the inherent motives to consume dark tourism.

2.1. Dark Tourists and Their Motivation to Dark Tourism Consumption

Stone’s (2006) idea of dark tourism goes far beyond related attractions. From this standpoint, diverse well-visited tourist sites may become places of dark tourism due to their history linked with death—e.g., suicides in the Eiffel Tower, tombs in the pyramids of Egypt, the Valley of the Kings, and the Taj Mahal, funeral art at the Cairo Museum, and terrorist attacks in Ground Zero [ 11 ]. Ashworth and Isaac [ 12 ] also suggest that all tourist places have a greater or lesser potential of being perceived as “dark.” Accordingly, the same dark tourism place can evoke different experiences in different visitors (i.e., a site one visitor sees as “dark” may not be for another); thus, the authors argue that no site is intrinsically, automatically, and universally “dark,” as, even they may be labeled as dark, they are not always perceived as such by all visitors.

Walter [ 13 ] states that most dark tourism is not specifically motivated, comprising only parallel visits inserted in a trip of a wider reach. Nonetheless, the literature indicates that tourists who visit dark places are not a homogeneous group, and neither the factors inherent to the visitation are the same. Moreover, the “darker” motivation can undertake distinctive levels of intensity. Consequently, in addition to the fascination and interest in death [ 12 , 14 , 15 ], the visit to this type of place is also motivated by personal, cultural, and psychological reasons [ 4 ] or driven by entertainment purposes [ 7 , 16 ].

The literature indicates numerous reasons to visit dark tourism sites: educational experience, desire to learn and understand past events, and historical interest [ 7 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ], as self-discovery purposes [ 17 ], identity [ 7 ], memory, remembrance, celebration, nostalgia, empathy, contemplation, and homage [ 10 , 17 , 20 ], curiosity [ 17 , 19 , 20 , 21 ], the search for novelty, authenticity, and adventure [ 2 , 20 ], convenience when visiting other places [ 19 ], and also status, prestige, affirmation, and recognition that these visits provide [ 22 ]. To a lesser extent, the literature also mentions religious and pilgrimage reasons, feelings of guilt, a search for social responsibility, or heritage experience.

The desire to learn and understand stands out as a motive associated with sites of death and/or heritage. Whereas some visitors exhibit a considerable need for emotional experience and connection to their heritage, engaging, as Slade puts it [ 23 ], in a “profound heritage experience”, and emotionally to the “dark” space influence [ 24 ], other visitors may be knowledge-seekers, who are more interested in a knowledge-enriching experience [ 25 ] than an emotional one and look for gaining a deeper understanding. Isaac et al. [ 20 ] found that memory, gaining knowledge and awareness, and exclusivity were important motivations for dark tourists; also, “(…), consuming dark tourism may allow the individual a sense of meaning and understanding of past disaster and macabre events that have perturbed life projects” [ 2 ]. Tourists’ interest in places associated with death and tragedy may also be related to educational goals [ 9 ].

Curiosity and the need to learn and understand are entwined. Dark tourism develops curiosity and satisfies the desire for knowledge of past suffering and pain [ 26 ]. Ashworth (2004) and Ashworth and Hartmann [ 27 ] suggested three main reasons for visiting dark sites: curiosity about the unusual, attraction to horror, and a desire for empathy or identification with the victims of atrocity. Yan, Zhang, Zhang, Lu and Guo [ 24 ] refer to the curious type of dark tourist who engages cognitively by learning about the issue. From another perspective, dark tourists may feel motivated by morbid tourism [ 28 ] and show interest in specific macabre exhibitions and museums [ 29 ] and fascination with evil [ 30 ], given the morbid nature of dark tourism [ 31 ]. Other authors present yet other motives: secular pilgrimage; a desire for inner purification; schadenfreude or malicious joy; “ghoulish titillation”; a search for the otherness of death; an interest in personal genealogy and family history; a search for “authentic” places in a commodified world; and a desire to encounter the pure/impure sacred [ 18 ]. Iliev [ 4 ] concludes that although tourists visit places related to death, they may not necessarily be considered dark tourists; as already acknowledged, those sites may not be experienced as “dark” by each visitor. It is, therefore, imperative that the so-called dark tourists are considered as such based on their experience.

2.2. Dark Tourist Personality

Some authors who study dark tourism have tried to relate dark tourist practice with personality characteristics, namely with the dark triad—psychoticism, narcissism, and Machiavellianism [ 16 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. However, the nature of dark tourism, especially that related to the Holocaust, can be so complex that the personality characteristics that motivate it may be less central, so we decided to study the following characteristics: rumination in sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability.

Rumination about sadness includes “repetitive thoughts concerning one’s present distress and the circumstances surrounding the sadness” [ 35 ]. These thoughts are related to the nature of one’s negative affect, are not goal-directed nor lead to plans for solutional action [ 36 ], and are not socially shared while the rumination occurs. Thus, rumination on sadness presents a negative content, “does not facilitate problem resolution, is a solitary activity, and is intrusive if the person is pursuing either self-or situationally imposed task-oriented goals” [ 35 ].

Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow’s [ 36 ] measure of rumination focuses on ideation, contrary to expression or disclosure, but it also includes disclosing feelings to others and emotional expressiveness as components of rumination. According to Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow [ 36 ], ruminative responses are different from structured problem-solving because people only think or talk about how “unmotivated, sad, and lethargic they feel” (p. 569). Despite that, Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow’s [ 36 ] stated that ruminative responses include telling others how badly one feels. Although rumination has negative consequences, disclosure may have positive effects [ 37 ]; also, some forms of emotional expressiveness, a component of disclosure, seem beneficial [ 38 ].

Self-hatred is an “enduring dysfunctional and destructive self-evaluation, characterized by attributions of undesirable and defective qualities, and failure to meet perceived standards and values leading to feelings of inadequacy, incompetency, and worthlessness” [ 39 ]. High self-hatred is related to low self-esteem, shame, self-blame or guilt, and a mental state of agitation, raising an experience of psychological and emotional turmoil [ 39 ].

According to Derogatis and Melisaratos [ 40 ], hostility captures thoughts, feelings, and actions associated with hostile behavior. Although the hostility scale measures perceived levels of expressed hostility rather than actual levels of outwardly expressed hostility, the hostility scale is significantly associated with anger [ 41 ], and high anger is related to outward, uncontrolled, and negative expressions of anger [ 42 ].

Psychological vulnerability is the “individual’s capacity to deal with mechanisms of maintaining emotional strength, in case of a pessimistic point of view, due to the lack of social support” [ 43 ]. Psychological vulnerability is a pattern of cognitive beliefs translating to “a dependence on achievement or external sources of affirmation for one’s sense of self-worth” [ 44 ]. Psychological vulnerability is negatively associated with positive affect, self-efficacy, and social support and positively associated with negative affect, perceived powerlessness, and maladaptive coping behavior [ 43 , 44 ]. Dark tourists are subjects situated in emotionally sensitive spaces [ 45 ] that can trigger their psychological vulnerability.

2.3. Research Questions

Although research on dark tourism has increased in recent years, there are not enough studies exploring if people’s knowledge of this phenomenon and their personality traits lead to distinctive dark tourists’ motivations and behaviors. Taking into account the aforementioned motivations to visit dark tourism places, the present study intends to empirically explore if dark tourists’ personality characteristics and sociodemographic variables impact such motivations and dark tourists’ practices and wellbeing (the latter, measured as a dark tourism practice index, given the diversity of known dark tourism practices). Specifically, our research questions are: Do rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability explain the practices and motivations for dark tourism and thus explain tourist wellbeing? Does knowing what dark tourism is (or not) impact rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability, as well as practices and motivations for dark tourism and tourist wellbeing?

3. Materials and Methods

Given the research questions, the aims of the present study are as follows: (1) to find the sociodemographic differences in touristic practices and motivations for dark tourism according to two groups (those who knew what dark tourism is and those who did not know); (2) to assess the fit of the rumination on the sadness scale, self-hatred scale, hostility scale, psychological vulnerability scale, and tourism wellbeing scale; (3) to determine the differences in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to two groups (those who knew what dark tourism is and those who didn’t know); (4) to find the differences in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to practices and motivations for dark tourism; and (5) to determine variables that contribute to the dark tourism practice index. Accordingly, we hypothesize:

Participants who know what dark tourism is are younger and have more education than those who do not.

Participants who know what dark tourism is are more motivated and visit more places associated with dark tourism than those who do not.

All measures show a good fit for the sample.

Differences in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to two groups (those who knew what dark tourism is and those who did not know) will be found.

Differences in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to practices and motivations for dark tourism will be found.

Gender, age, to know/know not dark tourism, and the motivations of curiosity, need to learn, need to understand, and pleasure will contribute to explaining dark tourism practice.

3.1. Procedures

All procedures followed the Declaration of Helsinki and later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The investigation protocol included informed consent, and confidentiality and anonymity of the data were guaranteed. The research protocol was applied in person to a random sample of participants between 18 October and 17 December 2021. The participants were informed about the study’s purpose and were ensured confidentiality and anonymity of the data; they also signed informed consent. The inclusion criteria consisted of being over 18 years old, Portuguese, and having touristic experiences. The respondents were approached by two researchers and five MSc students on the University’s campuses and within their informal networks, with the questionnaire being self-administered.

3.2. Instruments

The instruments that were not validated for the Portuguese population—the Rumination on Sadness Scale (RSS) and the Self-Hatred Scale (SHS)—were first translated from English to Portuguese by two bilingual translators, one from and another not from the field of psychology. Then, a third bilingual translator from the field of psychology provided a reconciliation of the two translations. Next, a native English speaker not from the psychology field independently performed the reconciled version’s back-translation. Finally, the first translator reviewed the back-translated version of the scale and compared it with the original English version to ensure linguistic and cultural equivalence consistency.

• Sociodemographic questionnaire

The sociodemographic questionnaire included questions related to gender (feminine—0; masculine—1), age, education (no education–0; primary education—1; secondary education—2; higher education—3), marital status (no relationship-single, divorced, separated, widowed–0; in a relationship-boyfriends, married, de facto union—1), and employment status (inactive—unemployed, retired, on sick leave–0; active-student, employee, housewife, caregivers—1).

• Questionnaire about dark tourism’s practices

The questionnaire on dark tourism practices includes a question about knowledge of dark tourism (or not). In addition, it also asked participants about their tourist practices related to dark tourism (Have you ever visited…? cemeteries; holocaust museums; sites of human tragedy; concentration camps; prisons; sites of war; sites of natural disasters; stop to see accidents). All these questions are answered dichotomously (no—0; yes—1).

• Questionnaire about dark tourism´s motivations

This questionnaire includes the presentation of several reasons to visit a dark place: curiosity, the need to learn, the need to see, the need to understand, pleasure, and the need to see morbid things. All these questions are answered dichotomously (no—0; yes—1).

• Rumination on Sadness Scale (RSS)

The Rumination on Sadness Scale, an individual-difference measure of rumination on sadness, was developed by Conway et al. [ 35 ] as an alternative to the Ruminative Responses Scale of the Response Styles Questionnaire (RRRSQ; [ 36 ]). It is a unifactorial scale with 13 items. Higher ratings indicate higher levels of rumination on sadness. Cronbach’s alpha, the internal reliability coefficient, was 0.91 in the original version. Since there is no Portuguese version of this scale, it will be validated in this study.

• Self-Hatred Scale (SHS)

The Self-Hatred Scale was developed by Turnell et al. [ 39 ] to assess individuals’ levels of self-hatred. Since self-hatred is a significant predictor of suicidal ideation, this scale has the potential to be helpful in suicide risk assessment. Higher ratings indicate higher levels of self-hatred. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.95 in the original version. There is no Portuguese version of this scale, so it will also be validated in this study.

• BSI Hostility Scale (HSS)

BSI Hostility Scale (HS) is a subscale of the Brief Symptoms Inventory [BSI; [ 40 ]], whose Portuguese version is from Canavarro [ 46 ]. BSI is a 53-item measure to identify self-reported clinically relevant psychological symptoms in adolescents and adults. The BSI covers nine symptom dimensions: Somatization, Obsession-Compulsion, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Depression, Anxiety, Hostility, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Ideation, and Psychoticism; and three global indices of distress: Global Severity Index, Positive Symptom Distress Index, and Positive Symptom Total. The Hostility subscale includes five items, and higher ratings indicate higher levels of hostility. In the original version, the alpha coefficients for the nine dimensions of the scale ranged from 0.64 in the Psychoticism dimension to 0.81 in the Somatization dimension. In the Portuguese version, the alpha coefficients ranged from 0.71 in the Psychoticism dimension to 0.85 in the Depression dimension.

• Psychological Vulnerability Scale (PVS)

The Psychological Vulnerability Scale (PVS) was designed to obtain information about maladaptive cognitive patterns, such as dependence, perfectionism, need for external sources of approval, and generalized negative attributions. The PVS is a six-item scale with higher scores indicating greater psychological vulnerability. In the original version [ 44 ], Cronbach’s α coefficient ranged from 0.71 to 0.87 for different samples; in the Portuguese version [ 47 ], Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.73.

• Tourism Wellbeing Scale (TWS)

The Tourism Wellbeing Scale (TWS) was developed by [ 48 ] Garcês et al. (2018 [ 49 ]); it aims to evaluate tourism wellbeing in each destination, having been built from positive psychology variables, namely, wellbeing, creativity, optimism, and spirituality. It is a unifactorial scale with eight items. Higher ratings indicate higher levels of tourism wellbeing. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.97 in the original version.

3.3. Data Analysis

Prior to analysis, the normality of items was examined by skewness (SI) and kurtosis (KI) indexes; absolute values of SI less than 3 and KI less than 10 indicate a normal distribution of the data. [ 50 ]. All the instruments were subject to a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) procedure with maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). The model fit evaluation was based on test statistics and approximate fit indexes, following the thresholds presented in Kline [ 50 ]. Thus, a non-significant model chi-square statistic, χ 2 , states that the model fits the data acceptably in the population; the higher the probability related to χ 2 , the closer the fit to the perfect fit. A value of the parsimony-corrected index Steiger–Lind root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) close to 0 represents a good fit; RMSEA ≤ 0.05 may indicate a good fit, but the upper bound of the 90% confidence interval exceeding 0.10 may indicate poor fit; also, this test should be non-significant at the 0.05 level. Values of incremental fit index (IFI), Tucker–Lewis index (TLI), and the Bentler incremental comparative fit index (CFI), close to 1 (0.95 or better), are indicators of best fit; also, the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), a statistic related to the correlation residuals (SRMR over 0.10 suggests fit problems) was used; the smallest the values, the most parsimonious is the model.

Besides goodness-of-fit index evaluation, model re-specification involved analyzing path estimates, standardized residuals of items, and modification indices for all non-estimated parameters. The modifications indices (MI) provide information about potential cross-loadings and error term correlations not specified in the model and the expected change in the chi-square value for each fixed parameter if it were to be freed. Only modifications theoretically meaningful and MI > 11 were considered. Finally, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated to ascertain the model’s reliability.

Group differences were analyzed. The independent t-test was applied to compare the means of the two groups. In addition, chi-squared was used to compare distributions’ differences and Mann–Whitney test to compare ordinal data. Three measures of the effect size, Cohen’s d, the eta squared, phi, and rank biserial correlation were used according to the variables’ measurement level; interpretation followed Cohen’s [ 51 ] guidelines; the statistical significance level was set at 0.05. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 28 and AMOS version 28.

The sample includes 993 participants, mainly female, in a romantic relationship, with secondary or university education, and active; the mean age is around 31 years. Statistically significant differences were found concerning age and education between the sample that had already heard about dark tourism and knew what it was and the sample that had not yet heard about it. Participants who had heard about dark tourism were significantly younger and more educated than those who had not ( Table 1 ).

Sample sociodemographic characteristics.

Notes: N = frequencies; % = percentage; M = mean; SD = standard deviation; χ 2 = qui-squared test; Φ = Phi size effect; t = t -test; Cohen’s d = size effect; p = p -value. In bold: statistically significant values.

Concerning the total sample and dark tourism practices, most people have visited cemeteries, and about a third of the sample stopped to see accidents. On the other hand, about a quarter of the sample already had other practices, except for a visit to concentration camps, which was only carried out by about 14% of the total sample. The same trend remains in the sample that has not yet heard about dark tourism and the sample that has. However, there are statistically significant differences between these two samples regarding practices related to dark tourism, being that the sample that has already heard about dark tourism visits many more Holocaust museums, sites of human tragedy, concentration camps, prisons, and sites of natural disasters than the sample that has not yet heard about dark tourism ( Table 2 ).

Dark tourism practices.

Notes: N = frequencies; % = percentage; χ 2 = qui-squared test; Φ = Phi size effect; p = p -value. In bold: statistically significant values.

As for the reasons behind the desire to visit dark places, curiosity stands out in the total sample, with the least chosen reason being the need to see morbid things. The same trend can be seen in the two subsamples. However, there are statistically significant differences between these two samples regarding motives to visit dark places, being that the sample that has already heard about dark tourism presents higher values in the motives related to curiosity, the need to learn and understand, and the need to see morbid things than the sample that has not yet heard about dark tourism ( Table 3 ).

Dark tourism motives.

Table 4 shows the descriptive statistics related to the items of the instruments used in this study: the rumination on sadness, tourism wellbeing, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability. The skewness and kurtosis values are all within the normative values, ensuring the normality of the distribution, except for item SHS3 whose values are slightly above the recommended one.

Items’ frequencies.

A confirmatory factorial analysis of the rumination on sadness scale was carried out to confirm the authors’ model [χ 2 (46) = 4.121; CFI = 0.977; TLI = 0.961; IFI = 0.977; RMSEA = 0.056; PCLOSE = 0.107: SMRM = 0.028]; however, to achieve this model fit, some correlations between errors were established ( Figure 1 ).

Model fit of Rumination on Sadness Scale.

Confirmatory factorial analysis of the self-hatred scale [χ 2 (11) = 5.118; CFI = 0.992; TLI = 0.984; IFI = 0.992; RMSEA = 0.064; PCLOSE = 0.069: SMRM = 0.015] ( Figure 2 ), hostility scale [χ 2 (2) = 4.216; CFI = 0.995; TLI = 0.976; IFI = 0.995; RMSEA = 0.057; PCLOSE = 0.317: SMRM = 0.012] ( Figure 3 ), psychological vulnerability scale [χ 2 (7) = 2.886; CFI = 0.992; TLI = 0.983; IFI = 0.992; RMSEA = 0.044; PCLOSE = 0.644; SMRM = 0.018] ( Figure 4 ), and tourism wellbeing scale [χ 2 (16) = 3.787; CFI = 0.979; TLI = 0.964; IFI = 0.980; RMSEA = 0.053; PCLOSE = 0.339: SMRM = 0.029] ( Figure 5 ) were carried out to assess the models’ adjustments. Despite finding good fits for all models, some correlations between errors were established to achieve such fits. Thus, hypothesis H3 is confirmed.

Model fit of Self-hatred Scale.

Model fit of Hostility Scale.

Model fit of Psychological Vulnerability Scale.

Model fit of Tourism Wellbeing Scale.

There are no differences in the values of rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing concerning knowing what dark tourism is or not ( Table 5 ).

Rumination on sadness (RSS), self-hatred (SHS), hostility (HSS), psychological vulnerability (PVS), and tourism wellbeing (TWBS) frequencies and differences between those who know dark tourism and those who do not.

Notes: α = Cronbach’s alpha; M = mean; SD = standard deviation; MR–mean rank; U = Mann–Whitney test; p = p -value; r = rank-biserial correlation.

Differences were assessed regarding the values of rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to dark tourism practices. Being that only statistically significant results are presented, it was found that participants who visit cemeteries have significantly lower values of self-hatred and psychological vulnerability than participants who report not visiting cemeteries ( Table 6 ). Furthermore, those who visit tragic human sites present higher values in hostility and tourism wellbeing than those who do not. Those who visit sites of war present higher values in self-hatred than those who did not. Those who visit site of natural tragedies also present higher values in hostility and tourism wellbeing. Lastly, those who stop to see accidents present higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing than those who do not stop ( Table 6 ).

Rumination on sadness (RSS), self-hatred (SHS), hostility (HSS), psychological vulnerability (PVS) and tourism wellbeing (TWBS) frequencies and differences according to dark tourism practices.

Notes: α = Cronbach’s alpha; M = mean; SD = standard deviation; MR–mean rank; U = Mann–Whitney test; p = p -value; r = rank-biserial correlation. In bold: statistically significant values.

Differences were also assessed concerning the values of rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to dark tourism motives. Those participants who identified curiosity, need to see, and need to understand as reasons to visit dark places in the context of tourism presented higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing than those who did not identify curiosity as a motive ( Table 7 ). Concerning the motive “need to learn”, it was found to be a statistically significant difference in tourism wellbeing, being that those who identified the need to learn as a motive to visit dark places in the context of tourism present higher values in tourism wellbeing and self-hatred than those who did not. Those participants who identified the need to see as a reason to visit dark places in the context of tourism presented higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability than those who did not identify the need to see as a motive ( Table 7 ). Those participants who recognized the need to understand as a reason to visit dark places in the context of tourism present higher values in rumination on sadness, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing than those who did not identify the need to understand as a motive ( Table 7 ). Concerning the motive “pleasure”, it was found a statistically significant difference in tourism wellbeing; those who recognized pleasure as a motive to visit dark places presented higher values in tourism wellbeing than those who did not. Lastly, those participants who identified the need to see morbid things as a reason to visit dark places presented higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability than those who did not identify the need to see morbid things as a motive ( Table 7 ).

Rumination on sadness (RSS), self-hatred (SHS), hostility (HSS), psychological vulnerability (PVS), and tourism wellbeing (TWBS) frequencies and differences according to dark tourism motives.

After creating a new variable, an index about practices related to dark tourism, based on the individual items, we carried out a multiple linear regression in which the dependent variable is the index, and the independent variables are the motivations, with the intent to find the variables that explain the touristic practice. It was found that gender, age, know/know not dark tourism, and motives (curiosity, need to learn, need to understand, and pleasure) explain 38% of the touristic practice ( Table 8 ).

Variables that contribute to the dark tourism practice index.

Notes: R 2 = R squared; R 2 Adj. = R squared adjusted; B = unstandardized regression coefficients; EP B = unstandardized error of B; β = standardized regression coefficients; ** p < 0.001.

5. Discussion

The aims of the present study were to find the sociodemographic differences in touristic practices and motivations for dark tourism according to two groups (those who knew what dark tourism is and those who did not know); to determine the differences in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to two groups; to find the differences in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing according to practices and motivations for dark tourism; and, at last, to determine variables that contribute to a dark tourism practice index. To this end, we carried out a cross-sectional study that included questionnaires related to sociodemographic aspects, motivations to visit dark tourism places, practices of dark tourism, the rumination on the sadness scale, the self-hatred scale, the hostility scale, the psychological vulnerability scale, and the tourism wellbeing scale.

Concerning the participants’ profiles, those who had heard about dark tourism were significantly younger and more educated than those who had not. These results confirm hypothesis H1. These results corroborate those of Millán, et al. [ 52 ] who found a profile of dark tourists in Cordoba between 26 and 40 years old and having university studies. Dark tourism is a niche market [ 53 ] and also is itself a trend [ 54 ], and young people are more available and attentive to new trends [ 55 ]. In addition, more educated people seek more information and have superior technological skills [ 56 ]. Significant differences between the two samples regarding practices related to dark tourism were found, being that the sample that has already heard about dark tourism visits much more Holocaust museums, sites of human tragedy, concentration camps, prisons, and sites of natural disasters than the sample that has not yet heard about dark tourism. These results confirm hypothesis H2. According to Iliev [ 4 ], “if tourists do not experience a site as dark, then they cannot be called dark tourists”, so the author proposed a more apparent distinction of the “dark tourists” based on experience. Ashworth and Isaac (2015) also stated that any tourist site has a greater or lesser potential of being perceived as “dark.” Besides, “darkness cannot be viewed as an objective fact because it is subjectively and socially constructed since (different) people in various (cultural or social) contexts understand and experience dark tourism in different ways” [ 57 ]. In fact, we may ask “who makes the association of ‘darkness’ to a place? Is the label ‘dark tourism’ applied by those offering (and commoditizing) the visitor experience? Alternatively, is any “dark” significance to be evaluated and decided upon by the tourists themselves?” [ 58 ]. “Dark tourism consumption can no longer be derived as an ordinary activity where humans might engage in for “fun”, but rather as part of a quest for a deeper experience, especially in our inherent fear of death” [ 4 ].

The subsample that has already heard about dark tourism presents higher values in the curiosity, the need to learn and understand, and the need to see morbid things motives than the sample that has not yet heard about dark tourism. These results also confirm hypothesis H2. In fact, dark tourists are very interested in understanding historical events; they are psychologically moved by the need to be in contact with authentic experiences by looking at the other’s death as if it were their own death [ 59 ]. One of the motivations that drive dark tourists is the possibility of re-creating the same emotions victims experienced, followed by the authenticity issue [ 60 ]. “Many dark tourists are motivated by the desire and interest in cultural heritage, learning, education, understanding about what happened at the dark site” [ 4 ].

There are no differences in the values of rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing concerning knowing what dark tourism is or not. Therefore, hypothesis H4 cannot be confirmed. These results apparently seem to contradict the relationship between the dark triad of the personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) and the practice of dark tourism [ 16 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. That relationship, studied by those authors, reflects the practice of dark tourism and not the knowledge about it (which is the subject of our study), although there is hardly any knowledge without practice. Concerning tourism wellbeing, these results may question Kidron [ 61 ] who said that dark tourism generates wellbeing and thus assume that dark tourists show wellbeing despite dark practices. However, our results do not show greater wellbeing in the participants who knew in advance what dark tourism was in relation to the others.

Participants who visit cemeteries have significantly lower values of self-hatred and psychological vulnerability than participants who report not visiting cemeteries. Visiting a cemetery can fulfill different functions, such as visiting a dark place or the social and cultural function of honoring the dead. Probably, our results reflect this last function to the detriment of the first and this conformity to cultural and social practices is in accordance with lower values of psychopathology [ 62 ], namely rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability. This result partially confirms hypothesis 5.

Those who visit sites of war present higher levels of self-hatred than those who did not. Furthermore, those who visit natural tragedies sites present higher values in hostility and tourism wellbeing than those who do not. This result reflects the relationship of this tourist practice with the above-mentioned dark triad [ 16 , 32 , 33 , 34 ] and is in line with Kidron [ 61 ], who suggested wellbeing in dark tourists. At last, those who stop to see accidents present higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing than those who do not stop. Again, this result reveals the relationship between psychopathology and tourist wellbeing that needs to be further explained, although some authors suggest that psychopathology leads to less tourism wellbeing [ 63 ]. This result partially confirms hypothesis 5.

Participants who identified curiosity as a reason to visit dark places in the context of tourism presented higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing than those who did not identify curiosity as a motive. Curiosity has been a central reason pointed out in the literature for tourism in general [ 64 ] and, specifically, for dark tourism [ 15 , 17 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 65 , 66 ]. Curiosity is a complex construct, which can be seen as something positive, but it can also contain darker aspects of the personality, namely morbid curiosity, and this fact explains its relationship with, on the one hand, wellbeing, and, on the other hand, with rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability. This result partially confirms hypothesis 5.

The participants who identified the need to learn, the need to understand as motives to visit dark places in the context of tourism present higher values in tourism wellbeing and self-hatred than those who did not. The need to learn and understand are also central reasons for tourism in general and their relationship with wellbeing does not seem specific to dark tourism [ 67 ]. This result partially confirms hypothesis 5.

The participants who identified the need to see as a reason to visit dark places in the context of tourism presented higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing. This result partially confirms hypothesis 5. Similarly to the need to learn, the need to see correlates with wellbeing but with psychopathology. Perhaps this need to learn motivation is correlated with the touristic practice of seeing morbid things [ 68 ].

The participants who recognized pleasure as a motive to visit dark places presented higher values in tourism wellbeing than those who did not. This result partially confirms hypothesis 5. Dark tourism conforms with the pleasure of tourism in general (Yanjun et al., 2015); wellbeing derives from the emotional experience of dark tourism as a motor for transforming the self [ 69 ].

The participants who identified the need to see morbid things as a drive to visit dark places presented higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability. The need to see morbid things may be a specific motivation for dark tourism [ 1 , 70 ] and not tourism in general. To that extent, the relationship between this motivation and rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability is justified. This result partially confirms Hypothesis 5.

The reasons to visit dark places-curiosity, the need to see, the need to understand, and pleasure are positively and significantly correlated with all places associated with dark tourism. Gender, age, know/know not dark tourism, and motives (curiosity, the need to learn, the need to understand, and pleasure) explained 38.1% of the practice index variance, thus confirming H6. These results mean that motivations to visit dark places are associated with the touristic activity itself and may contradict those of Buda [ 71 ], that claims more emotional and psychoanalytical explorations through the concepts of the death drive [ 71 ], desire [ 72 ], and unconsciousness and voyeurism [ 73 ]. In fact, dark tourists are not altruistic persons [ 14 , 60 ]. Moreover, Jovanovic, Mijatov, and Šuligoj [ 32 ] found that Machiavellianism was related to the preference for dark exhibitions, psychopathy to the preference for visiting conflict/battle sites, and sadism was negatively related to the preference for fun factories and dark tourism sites. However, the “darker” motivation may present different levels of intensity; besides the fascination and interest in death [ 15 ], these visits are also motivated by personal, cultural, and psychological reasons [ 4 ] and/or by entertainment purposes such as entertainment-based museums of torture [ 7 , 16 ]. One of the most curious outcomes of this study is the association of motivations to visit dark tourist sites and self-hatred; the fact that the authors have not found any study that could explain such a result suggests this association exists in the context of dark tourism and not of tourism in general. The dark nature of this type of tourism can be attractive to tourists with less positive personality traits such as self-hatred.

6. Conclusions

The results of this study add new knowledge to this area of expertise as it allows us to understand the association between motivations and practices related to dark tourism. This study also identified the main motivations to visit dark places-curiosity, the need to see, the need to understand, and pleasure, being, interestingly, all internal motivations and, thus, contradicting the literature that, in addition to these motivations, also identifies external motivations. Most findings also indicate that the rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability personality dimensions are associated with dark practices (e.g., the need to see morbid things). Lastly, people who visit more dark places and score higher on negative personality characteristics have higher values of tourism wellbeing. These findings are in line with the literature, which suggests that dark tourism generates negative and positive wellbeing (or even ambivalence). As such, dark tourists, even presenting negative personality characteristics, and also because of them, show tourism wellbeing in their practices and motivations.

The fact that this study was held in a specific sample in Portugal may be considered a limitation; future lines of research could extend it to other countries and age segments.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.M., J.A.F.-B. and Â.L.; methodology, J.M.; formal analysis, J.M. and Â.L.; writing—original draft preparation, J.M.; writing—review and editing, J.M., J.A.F.-B. and Â.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, as no medical research involving human subjects has been carried out, including research on identifiable human material and data, as indicated by the terms of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Death And Dying

What's Dark Tourism? And Why Is It So Popular?

Updated 05/3/2022

Published 05/8/2020

Sam Tetrault, BA in English

Contributing writer

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When most people think of travel, they think of posing in front of the world’s most stunning sights or relaxing on a tropical island. They probably don’t think about visiting places where some of the world’s biggest tragedies and horrors took place—unless you’re talking about dark tourism. 

Jump ahead to these sections: 

What is dark tourism , why is dark tourism popular, criticisms of dark tourism, dark tourism etiquette, where can you find dark tourism in popular culture and media, what books can you read to learn more about dark tourism.

Dark tourism isn’t a new concept, though it recently gained popularity after the launch of the Netflix series with the same name. In the documentary series, journalist David Farrier visits some of the most unusual and macabre tourism places around the globe. From a nuclear blast site in Kazakhstan to JFK’s assassination site, nothing is off-limits.

With all of this excitement both for and against dark tourism, what is it exactly? Is it a shining example of death positive or yet another way to commercialize human suffering? In this guide, we’re pulling back the curtain on dark tourism to understand why it’s so alluring. 

In simple terms, dark tourism is the opposite of “traditional” tourism . Instead of visiting inspiring, classic sites, travelers take great care to visit places where some of the darkest events in human history took place. This includes anything from natural disasters to war and assassination. 

While most people have only just familiarized themselves with the term “dark tourism,” this is no way a new phenomenon. The term was coined in 1996 at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. Researchers have found evidence of dark tourism going back throughout history.

For example, during the Battle of Waterloo in the 19th century, regular civilians lined up along the sides of the battle with their carriages to watch everything taking place. While this sounds particularly grotesque, it doesn’t end there. Researchers also compare today’s modern fascination with dark tourism to public executions and hangings in the Middle Ages. Crowds would form to watch those put to death take their final breaths. 

In ancient Rome , spectators came from all over to watch gladiators fight to the death. Bloody sports and spectacles of human mortality were very common up until modern times. Today, as a society, people still have an urge to peak into these dark curiosities. 

Popular dark tourism sites

You might be surprised at some of the most popular dark tourism sites . Many of them are classic destinations, though they harbor a dark past. Some, on the other hand, might send even the most experienced traveler running for the hills (or the airport). 

• Colosseum (Italy): The Colosseum was a gory battlefield for hundreds of years. While it’s an architectural wonder, it also has a deadly history. 
• Auschwitz (Poland): Visiting any concentration camp from the Nazi era is a humbling experience, but especially the notorious Auschwitz. 
• Ground Zero (USA): Ground Zero is the site where the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. While there is a memorial and museum in place now, this is an undeniably eerie location. 
• Killing Fields (Cambodia): The Killing Fields in Cambodia were where some of the worst genocides in human history took place, and you can still see the remnants of blood today. 
• Chernobyl (Ukraine) : Possibly one of the most well-known dark tourism sites, Chernobyl is where the 1986 nuclear reactor accident took place. The grounds are still dangerously radioactive, but you can still take a guided tour. 
• Hiroshima Museum (Japan): Travelers and locals alike visit the site of the Hiroshima bombings to see artifacts from the explosion that killed so many. 
• Murambi Memorial (Rwanda): Visitors can see the original clothing of the Murambi Genocide victims hanging in this countryside memorial. 
• Alcatraz Penitentiary (USA): Possibly one of the most well-known prisons in the world, Alcatraz allows visitors to glimpse into the hard life of inmates incarcerated on this island. 
• Pompeii (Italy): When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it wiped out the entire Roman city of Pompeii. This was in 79 AD, and the archaeological site is still a popular place for people to visit. 

Does this list surprise you? Dark tourism is very much intertwined with mainstream travel, though some are willing to go farther off the beaten path. 

In many ways, dark tourism is not much different from watching a horror film or going through a haunted house. Humans are naturally curious creatures, and death is the great unknown. These close encounters with some of the worst tragedies offer a rush of adrenaline from a “safe” distance. It’s a way to walk in the footsteps of history, even when that history isn’t pretty. 

Humans are naturally interested in death. We will all die at some point, and death all over the world has come to mean different things. Most people visit these sites not to poke fun or take Instagram photos. They want to encounter death up close, to peer into what it might have been like for the victims of these places and events. 

There is a lot of philosophy behind this phenomenon. Coming to terms with something so grim as genocide or tragedy isn’t easy. By visiting these dark tourism destinations, visitors have an opportunity to learn from this experience and pay their respects. 

While many have argued for the advantages of dark tourism (they see them as educational, intriguing, and so on), others have a lot of criticisms. There is no clear answer. 

The main question is whether this is an opportunity to learn something about death, tragedies, and real-life examples of rituals from around the world? Or is this a way for privileged Westerners to explore some of the biggest catastrophes of the world so they can feel better about themselves?

Dark tourism often doesn’t account for other cultures and belief systems. It can either intentionally or unintentionally paint things as “sinister” that might otherwise just be a cultural misunderstanding. For instance, finding a grave in another part of the world might cause a dark tourist to draw untrue conclusions. 

Ultimately, there’s something unappealing about the commercialization of tragedy. The Netflix series does a fair job of exploring some of these money-fueled tourist “attractions.” Things like war reenactments, assassination narratives, and actors pretending to be a part of drug cartels are just a bit too close to reality for comfort.

It’s left up to the individual traveler to determine their own boundaries between thrill-seeking, education, and being respectful of cultures and tragedies. There will never be a clear answer for what’s “right” or “wrong” in the debate around dark tourism. For some, boundaries will be overstepped. For others, it might be an enriching educational experience. 

If you do plan to take on some dark tourism of your own, it’s important to consider the proper etiquette. Much of the debate around whether this is a worthwhile practice stems from those who pay little attention to the consequences of their actions, no matter how small they may seem. 

Because travel should always be about respecting other cultures and ideas, here are the most important things to remember about dark tourism etiquette:

• Respect graves : Most dark tourism sites have some form of memorial or grave. This is something that should always be treated with respect. Never touch graves, sit against tombstones, or otherwise disrupt the monuments.
• Avoid cliches : A lot of cultures around the world have been warped by Hollywood portrayals. Always familiarize yourself with the history of the places you visit and don’t buy into stereotypes of false beliefs. 
• Put the camera away : When visiting heritage sites, treat them with respect. Don’t take unnecessary photos or selfies. Though these tragedies might have happened long ago, remember to honor those who died by being mindful of your photography. 
• Follow the rules : While some dark tourism sites are open to the general public, always read any posted rules. There might be things that are off-limits or not allowed, and you don’t want to overstep these boundaries. 
• Emotions: A lot of people have strong emotional reactions to visiting these dark tourism places. This is very understandable, but it might be a reason to rethink your trip. If you’re worried you’ll be upset or challenged by visiting something, it’s best to stay away. 
• Tourism companies : A lot of tourism companies offer guided tours to some dangerous sites, but that doesn’t mean you should go. Always do your research to make sure these companies operate safely and ethically.
• Intent : Finally, remember your intent behind your visit. Are you hoping to learn from these events and gain deeper respect, or is it just something to check off your travel list?

There are no stopping people from visiting some of the darkest places on the planet, and there is a strong argument for why dark tourism is important. However, it’s always essential that you’re mindful of your behavior, so you treat these places with the respect they deserve.  

Since the rise of the internet and social media, dark tourism has become a greater part of mainstream media and pop culture. While these places were largely hidden and distant in the past, the internet makes them closer than ever before. Dark tourism has also encouraged people from across the globe to venture to these destinations as part of their bucket list . 

Thanks to the accessibility and availability of travel, dark tourism is more popular than ever. Far off sites of destruction used to be something only seen on the big screen or read about in newspapers. Today, visitors from across the globe can flock to these places for themselves. Here’s where you can find dark tourism in today’s pop culture and media. 

Social media

It should come as no surprise that social media is a huge source of the excitement around dark tourism. As more everyday people travel to these places, it’s becoming common to share these experiences on social media platforms. When seen on a news feed, they feel even more accessible. Some popular profiles that explore dark tourism are:

• Chernobyl_guide : This TikTok account has over 1.5 million followers, and its narrator shares the many sites you can visit if you book your own Chernobyl tour through the nuclear disaster site. 
• URBEX : This YouTube channel explores abandoned and dangerous spaces to share an inside, never-before-seen look for over 300k subscribers. 
• The Proper People : With over 1.25 million subscribers on YouTube, the Proper People is one of the leading dark tourists pages on social media. These travelers explore abandoned hospitals, power plants, and more to share the lesser-seen side of dark tourism. 
• Exploring with Josh : Josh is an amature videographer and explorer who isn’t afraid to highlight some of the world’s most surprising destinations on his YouTube channel. With over 4 million subscribers, he is one of the pioneers in this digital space. 

Film and TV

Movies and TV shows also explore the world of dark tourism, especially in recent years. From docuseries to dramatic reenactments, all of these things lead to a rise in dark tourism across the globe. 

• Dark Tourist : This 2018 Netflix documentary series shows a New Zealand reporter traveling to some of the world’s most notorious destinations. 
• Chernobyl : The HBO historical drama Chernobyl reenacts the catastrophic nuclear disaster from the town of Chernobyl, Ukraine in the 1980s. 
• Inside North Korea’s Dynasty : National Geographic shares an in-depth documentary series about the lives and actions of the Kim family in North Korea from WWII until the present day. 
• Lost Cities : Featuring American scientist and explorer Albert Lin, this National Geographic docuseries examines ancient cities with high-tech imagery and 3D technology. 
• Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown : Lastly, the late Anthony Bordain’s CNN show Parts Unknown explores often unseen destinations, not shying away from the darker aspects of travel. 

Finally, there are many books that explore the idea of dark tourism in more detail. From uncovering the realities behind these destinations to delving deep into the motivations of dark tourists, these books are far from light reading. Whether you’re a traveler yourself or simply open minded, it’s important to take a critical look at your motivations and perspectives when seeing more of the world. 

• Imagine Wanting Only This (Kristen Radtke): Named one of the best books of 2017 by Forbes and Lit Hub, this is a graphic memoir written about Radtke’s experience coming to terms with the grief of losing an uncle. She discovers a fascination with ruins, people, and the places left behind. 
• Dark Tourist (Dom Joly): After spending his childhood in war-torn Lebanon, Joly wished to push beyond the sanitized experiences of modern day travel. In this memoir, this comedian isn’t afraid to tread off the beaten path. 
• I Am the Dark Tourist (H. E. Sawyer): Sawyer becomes a self-aware dark tourist in this memoir. This is more than a travel story. It’s an examination of why people wish to visit sites touched by death in the first place. 
• Dark Lands (Tony Wheeler): Lonely Planet’s Tony Wheeler goes deeper into the world’s darkest corners to explore troubled nations. His well-traveled perspective gives these places rarely seen in popular media a dose of reality and openness. 
• Memorial Museums (Paul Williams): What has led to the world’s rush to commemorate atrocities? William researches this phenomenon, and he visits many of these memorial museums himself to see whether they fit within cultural history. 
• A Nuclear Family Vacation (Nathan Hodge): Two Washington D.C. defense reporters paint a portrait of nuclear weaponry around the world. 

The Darker Side of Travel

Travel isn’t always about relaxation and getting away from the hustle and bustle. Sometimes it’s a way to challenge yourself and broaden your mind. For many, this includes an element of dark tourism. Not only does visiting these macabre sites give visitors a thrill, but they’re also a way to pay respects to a darker past. 

That being said, dark tourism requires travelers to tread carefully. This is not a simple issue, and it requires a lot of consideration. Before you head off on your next travel venture, give some thought to the history of the place and what your visit might mean. 

• “Did gladiators always fight to the death?” History Stories. 1 September 2018. History.com . 
• Madden, Duncan. “Dark Tourism: Are These The World’s Most Macabre Tourist Attractions?” Forbes . 25 September 2019. Forbes.com . 
• Sampson, Hannah. “Dark tourism, explained.” Washington Post. 13 November 2019. WashingtonPost.com .

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Dark Tourism

A brief look at the seedier side of extreme holidays..

Posted December 9, 2019 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

In a previous article , I briefly examined ‘disaster tourism’, a form of ‘dark tourism’ and 'niche tourism'. Since writing that article I came across an interesting book chapter by the Slovenian researcher Dr. Lea Kuznik entitled ‘Fifty shades of dark stories’ examining the many motivations for engaging in the seedier side of tourism. Dark tourism is something that I have been guilty of myself. For instance, as a Beatles fanatic , when I first went to New York, I went to the Dakota apartments where John Lennon had been shot by Mark David Chapman . In her chapter, Dr. Kuznik notes that:

“Dark tourism is a special type of tourism, which involves visits to tourist attractions and destinations that are associated with death, suffering, disasters and tragedies venues. Visiting dark tourist destinations in the world is the phenomenon of the twenty-first century, but also has a very long heritage. Number of visitors of war areas, scenes of accidents, tragedies, disasters, places connected with ghosts, paranormal activities, witches and witchhunt trials, cursed places, is rising steeply”.

As I noted in my previous article, the motivations for such behaviour is varied. Those working in the print and broadcast media often live by the maxim that ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ (meaning that death and disaster sell). Clearly whenever anything hits the front of newspapers or is the lead story on radio and television, it gains notoriety and infamy. This applies to bad things as well as good things and is one of the reasons why dark tourism has become so popular. Kuznik notes that although dark tourism has a long history, it has only become a topic for academic study since the mid-1990s. Dr. Kuznik observes that:

“The term dark tourism was coined by Foley and Lennon (1996) to describe the attraction of visitors to tourism sites associated with death, disaster, and depravity. Other notable definitions of dark tourism include the act of travel to sites associated with death, suffering and the seemingly macabre (Stone, 2006), and as visitations to places where tragedies or historically noteworthy death has occurred and that continue to impact our lives (Tarlow, 2005). Scholars have further developed and applied alternative terminology in dealing with such travel and visitation, including thanatourism (Seaton, 1996), black spot tourism (Rojek, 1993), atrocity heritage tourism (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996), and morbid tourism (Blom, 2000). In a context similar to ‘dark tourism’, terms like ‘macabre tourism’, ‘tourism of mourning’ and ‘dark heritage tourism’ are also in use. Among these terms, dark tourism remains the most widely applied in academic research (Sharpley, 2009)”.

Kuznik also notes that dark tourism has been referred to as “place-specific tourism”. Consequently, some researchers began to classify dark tourism sites based upon their defining characteristics. As Kuznik notes:

“Miles (2002) proposed a darker-lighter tourism paradigm in which there remains a distinction between dark and darker tourism according to the greater or lesser extent of the macabre and the morose. In this way, the sites of the holocaust, for example, can be divided into dark and darker tourism when it comes to their authenticity and scope of interpretation…On the basis of the dark tourism paradigm of Miles (2002), Stone (2006) proposed a spectrum of dark tourism supply which classifies sites according to their perceived features, and from these, the degree or shade of darkness (darkest to lightest) with which they can be characterised. This spectrum has seven types of dark tourism suppliers, ranging from Dark Fun Factories as the lightest, to Dark Camps of Genocide as the darkest. A specific example of the lightest suppliers would be dungeon attractions, such as London Dungeon, or planned ventures such as Dracula Park in Romania. In contrast, examples of the darkest sites include genocide sites in Rwanda, Cambodia, or Kosovo, as well as holocaust sites such as Auschwitz-Birkenau”.

In relation to the reasons for visiting dark tourism sites, Kuznik came up with seven main motivations for why we as humans seek out such experiences (i.e., curiosity, education , survivor guilt , remembrance, nostalgia , empathy, and horror ) that are outlined below (please note that the descriptions are edited verbatim from Kuznik’s chapter)

Curiosity: “Many tourists are interested in the unusual and the unique, whether this be a natural phenomenon (e.g. Niagara Falls), an artistic or historical structure (e.g. the pyramids in Egypt), or spectacular events (e.g. a royal wedding). Importantly, the reasons why tourists are attracted to dark tourism sites derive, at least in part, from the same curiosity which motivates a visit to Niagara Falls. Visiting dark tourism sites is an out of the ordinary experience, and thus attractive for its uniqueness and as a means of satisfying human curiosity. So the main reason is the experience of the unusual”.

Empathy: “One of the reasons for visiting dark tourism sites may be empathy, which is an acceptable way of expressing a fascination with horror…In many respects, the interpretation of dark tourism sites can be difficult and sensitive, given the message of the site as forwarded by exhibition curators can at times conflict with the understandings of visitors”.

Horror: “Horror is regarded as one of the key reasons for visiting dark tourism sites, and in particular, sites of atrocity…Relating atrocity as heritage at a site is thus as entertaining as any media depiction of a story, and for precisely the same reasons and with the same moral overtones. Such tourism products or examples are: Ghost Walks around sites of execution or murder (Ghost Tour of Prague), Murder Trails found in many cities like Jack the Ripper in London”.

Education: “In much tourism literature it has been claimed that one of the main motivations for travel is the gaining of knowledge, and the quest for authentic experiences. One of the core missions of cultural and heritage tourism in particular is to provide educational opportunities to visitors through guided tours and interpretation. Similarly, individual visits to dark tourism sites to gain knowledge, understanding, and educational opportunities, continue to have intrinsic educational value…many dark tourism attractions or sites are considered important destinations for school educational field trips, achieving education through experiential learning”.

Nostalgia: “Nostalgia can be broadly described as yearning for the past…or as a wistful mood that an object, a scene, a smell or a strain of music evokes…In this respect Smith (1996) examined war tourism sites and concluded that old soldiers do go back to the battlefields, to revisit and remember the days of their youth”.

Remembrance: “Remembrance is a vital human activity connecting us to our past…Remembrance helps people formulate an identity , allowing them to learn from past mistakes, and to go forward with a clear vision of the future. In the context of dark tourism, remembrance and memory are considered key elements in the importance of sites”.

Survivor’s guilt : “One of the distinctive characteristics of dark tourism is the type of visitors such sites attract, which include survivors and victim‘s families returning to the scene of death or disaster. These types of visitors are particularly prevalent at sites associated with Second World War and the holocaust. For many survivors returning to the scene of death and atrocity can achieve a therapeutic effect by resolving grief , and can build understanding of how terrible things came to have happened. This can be very emotional experience”.

Dr. Kuznik also developed a new typology of “dark places in nature”. The typology comprised 17 types of dark places and are briefly outlined below.

* Disaster area tourism: Visiting places of natural disaster after hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic destructions, etc.

* Grave tourism: Visiting famous cemeteries, or graves and mausoleums of famous individuals.

* War or battlefield tourism: Visiting places where wars and battles took place.

* Holocaust tourism: Visiting Nazi concentration camps, memorial sites, memorial museums, etc.

* Genocide tourism: Visiting places where genocide took place such as the killing fields in Cambodia.

* Prison tourism: Visiting former prisons such as Alcatraz.

* Communism tourism: Visiting places like North Korea.

* Cold war and iron curtain tourism: Visiting places and remains associated with the cold war such as the Berlin Wall.

* Nuclear tourism: Visiting sites where nuclear disasters took place (e.g. Chernobyl in the Ukraine) or where nuclear bombs were exploded (e.g., Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan).

* Murderers and murderous places tourism: Visiting sites where killers and serial killers murdered their victims (‘Jack the Ripper’ walks in London, where Lee Harvey Oswald killed J.F. Kennedy in Dallas)

* Slum tourism: Visiting impoverished and slum areas in countries such as India and Brazil, Kenya.

* Terrorist tourism: Visiting places such Ground Zero (where the Twin Towers used to be) in New York City

* Paranormal tourism: Visiting crop circle sites, places where UFO sightings took place, haunted houses (e.g., Amityville), etc.

* Witched tourism: Visiting towns or cities where witches congregated (e.g., Salem in Massachusetts).

* Accident tourism: Visiting places where infamous accidents took place (e.g. the Paris tunnel where Princess Diana died in a car accident).

* Icky medical tourism: Visiting medical museums and body exhibitions.

* Dark amusement tourism: Visiting themed walks and amusement parks that are based on ghosts and horror figures (e.g., Dracula).

Looking at these different types quickly I reached the conclusion that I would class myself as a ‘dark tourist’ as I have engaged in many of these and no doubt reflects my own interest in the more extreme aspects of the lived human experience.

Ashworth, G., & Hartmann, R. (2005). Introduction: managing atrocity for tourism. In G. Ashworth & R. Hartmann (Eds.), Horror and human tragedy revisited: the management of sites of atrocities for tourism (pp. 1–14). Sydney: Cognizant Communication Corporation.

Blom, T. (2000). Morbid tourism – a postmodern market niche with an example from Althorp. Norwegian Journal of Geography, 54( 1), 29–36.

Dann, G. M., & Seaton, A. V. (2001). Slavery, contested heritage and thanatourism. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 2 (3-4), 1-29.

Foley, M., & Lennon, J. (1996). JFK and dark tourism: A fascination with assassination.International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2 (4), 198–211.

Foley, M., & Lennon, J. (2000). Dark tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 19 (1), 68-78.

Kuznik, L. (2018). Fifty shades of dark stories. In Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, D.B.A. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology (Fourth Edition). (pp.4077-4087). Pennsylvania: IGI Global.

Miles, W.F. (2002). Auschwitz: Museum interpretation and darker tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 29 (4), 1175-1178.

Podoshen, J. S. (2013). Dark tourism motivations: Simulation, emotional contagion and topographic comparison. Tourism Management, 35, 263-271.

Rojek, C. (1993). Ways of escape. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.

Seaton, A. V. (1996). From thanatopsis to thanatourism: Guided by the dark. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2 (4), 234–244.

Sharpley, R., & Stone, P. R. (Eds.). (2009). The darker side of travel: the theory and practice of dark tourism. Bristol: Channel View.

Smith, V. L. (1996). War and its tourist attractions. In A. Pizam & Y. Mansfeld (Eds.), Tourism, crime and international security issues (pp. 247–264). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Stone, P. R. (2006). A dark tourism spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitions. Tourism, 54 (2), 145–160.

Strange, C., & Kempa, M. (2003). Shades of dark tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island. Annals of Tourism Research, 30 (2), 386-405.

Tarlow, P.E. (2005). Dark tourism: the appealing dark side of tourism and more. In M. Novelli (Ed.), Niche tourism – Contemporary issues, trends and cases (pp. 47–58). Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Tunbridge, J.E., & Ashworth, G. (1996). Dissonant heritage: The management of the past as a resource in conflict. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Mark Griffiths, Ph.D., is a chartered psychologist and Director of the International Gaming Research Unit in the Psychology Division at Nottingham Trent University.

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Dark Tourism Ethics and Criticisms

By: Author Zachary Friedman

Posted on Last updated: January 26, 2024

Categories Travel

Home » Travel » Dark Tourism Ethics and Criticisms

There is quite a bit of controversy surrounding dark tourism. Some find it to be disrespectful, voyeuristic, or even unethical. This guide discusses dark tourism ethics and criticisms. We’ll outline a few of the main arguments for and against dark tourism as well as provide some examples.

The question ‘is dark tourism ethical?’ is really a philosophical question. It’s not black and white. The answer comes down to your personal code of ethics, your culture, your upbringing, your past experience, and a number of other factors.

When deciding whether or not a particular site is ethical to visit, you may want to consider the nature of the site as well as its age, finances, design, and more. Sometimes the behavior of the operators and visitors comes into play as well. The answer will vary from person to person. Hopefully, this guide helps you decide.

What is Dark Tourism?

Dark tourism is a type of tourism that involves travel to a site where death, suffering, tragedy, disaster, or violence took place. This could include sites of natural disasters, genocides, assassinations, man-made disasters, etc. Museums and monuments that memorialize these places and events are also considered dark tourism sites. People visit these sites for historical reasons, educational purposes, to remember those who died, or simply out of morbid curiosity. Dark tourism is also known as black tourism or grief tourism.

A few of the most visited dark tourism sites in the world include Auschwitz concentration camp, the ruins of Pompeii, the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Colosseum, Gettysburg battlefield, the 9/11 memorial, and the Catacombs of Paris.

Ethical Concerns and Criticisms of Dark Tourism

The controversy of dark tourism sites stems from the subject matter. These are sites where fellow human beings suffered or died. Many dark tourism sites have a political element as well. These are touchy subjects.

Some find it unethical to visit these sites for tourism purposes. Some don’t see any issue with it. For others, it depends on the site. In this section, I outline a few of the main arguments for and against dark tourism. I’ll also share some examples of popular dark tourism sites and their common criticism about them.

1. Dark Tourism Exploits Human Suffering

The most common criticism of dark tourism is that it exploits human suffering. Operators can exploit these sites to make money or simply to provide entertainment. This disrespects the victims of the event. This type of behavior may be unethical.

There is an element of truth to this claim. Dark tourism sites are some of the biggest tourist destinations on the planet. They attract millions of visitors per year and generate millions of dollars in revenue per year. For example, Pompeii draws around 2.5 million visitors per year. Entry costs 11 Euros. As you can see, dark tourism is big business there.

In addition, many dark tourism sites have gift shops, restaurants, cafes, guides, and hotels that bring in even more money. Many sites receive donations and government grants. The idea of an individual or business profiting off of other people’s suffering or death does feel a bit problematic.

When deciding whether or not a dark tourism site exploits the victims, it’s important to consider where the money goes. In most cases, the money that dark tourism brings in goes toward maintenance, restoration, preservation, education, and various cultural programs. In this case, there probably isn’t much ethical concern, if any.

Without dark tourism, many sites would fall into disrepair, be demolished, and eventually disappear. If we lose dark tourism sites, we will also lose their history. For example, if it weren’t for tourism, the Anne Frank House may not exist. Tourism to the museum pays for the maintenance of the site.

Of course, some dark tourism sites operate as for-profit businesses. This may be considered exploitation and may be unethical. For example, a business offering slum tours of the favelas of Brazil or Kibera in Nairobi is operating strictly for profit. In this case, the business owners are essentially profiting off of the poverty and suffering of others.

If a person, organization, or government is getting rich off operating a dark tourism business, it may very well be unethical for those operating the business. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s unethical for you to visit. Having said that, you may want to re-consider if you don’t support where your money is going.

Another issue is that some dark tourism sites are designed to entertain rather than to educate. This can come off as disrespectful toward the victims and could be considered exploitation. Some consider these types of sites to be unethical as well.

A good example of this is the firing range at the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam. Here, you can fire a live round from a variety of Vietnam War era guns including the AK 47 or M16. This has nothing to do with dark tourism. It is strictly entertainment. Whether or not this is unethical is up to you to decide. Most dark tourism sites educate rather than entertain.

Personally, I don’t see a problem with integrating some fun or entertainment into some types of dark tourism sites. It really depends on the nature of the site. We don’t need to act depressed or somber at every dark tourist site in order to be respectful. Some dark tourism sites are naturally lighter than others due to the nature or age of the event.

2. Dark Tourism Sites Can Spread Misinformation

Another common criticism of dark tourism sites is the spread of misinformation. Some sites are presented with a bias. This is often done for political purposes. Countries present information in a way that makes them look like either the good guys or the victim. Nobody wants to be the bad guy. This type of misinformation is common in war or atrocity related sites.

For example, if you visit the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, you’ll learn about the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective. If you visit the National Vietnam War Museum in Texas, you’ll learn about the Vietnam War from the American perspective. You’ll get different information at each museum. Neither is necessarily right or wrong. That comes down to perspective. The information is just presented with different biases. It’s interesting how two sides can tell the story completely differently without either one really being wrong.

Sometimes sites simply omit information. For example, the museum at Perm-36 Gulag focuses on the labor the prisoners performed and how they helped the Russian economy rather than the way the country treated them in the prison. Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco gets similar criticism. The tour focuses on the security of the prison rather than the prisoners themselves. They leave out the bad part of history.

Some dark tourism sites water down or whitewash part of history. This may be done to make the site more appealing or palatable to the average visitor. In my experience, this is common at war-related sites. They tend to focus more on honoring the soldiers. They may downplay or leave out the horrors of war.

In some cases, the opposite is done. The site operators or tour guides may make up or exaggerate facts for dramatic effect. Some tourists want to hear gory details and that’s what they get.

If you’re visiting a dark tourism site for historical or educational purposes, try to seek some information about the site from an outside source. You may find that some information was altered or left out. At the very least, you’ll learn more about the site and maybe get a different perspective.

3. Some Visitors have the Wrong Intention

For some, whether or not dark tourism is ethical comes down to the visitor’s intention. Why are you visiting? Are you traveling to a particular site to learn about the history of an event or to honor the victims? Or are you visiting out of morbid curiosity or just to say that you’ve been there?

The argument is that it is ethical to visit a dark tourism site for some reasons but unethical to visit for other reasons. Some claim that it is ethical to visit for purposes such as gaining a deeper understanding or to pay respects to the victims. At the same time, it may be unethical to visit a dark tourism site for taking a photo, checking off a box on your bucket list, showing off, or just for entertainment.

Personally, I think the intent is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the visitor’s behavior. To tell someone that they’re visiting a site for the ‘wrong reasons’ is like accusing them of a thought crime. It is not unethical to have an unethical thought because thinking something unethical does not create any harm. Additionally, a person who is visiting for the ‘wrong reasons’ isn’t affecting anyone else’s experience as long as they are behaving appropriately.

There is nothing wrong with visiting a dark tourism site because you are fascinated by death and suffering or just to check it off of your bucket list. You just need to remain respectful toward the victims and the site itself. Chances are, a dark tourist with ‘bad intent’ will gain a deeper understanding of a site during their visit, even if they were there for the ‘wrong reasons.’

4. Inappropriate Conduct at Dark Tourism Sites

I think most people would agree that behaving inappropriately at a place where others have suffered or died is disrespectful and possibly unethical. Exactly which behaviors are inappropriate depends on a number of factors including the age of the site, the nature of the event that the site commemorates, and the culture of the country where the site is located.

Many dark tourist sites have signs requesting that people behave respectfully. For example, they may ask that you keep your voice down. Operators sometimes prohibit photography. Some dark tourist sites also have a dress code. They may request that you wear long pants and a long sleeve shirt or they may simply ban inappropriate clothing like bathing suits. Some dark tourist sites have signs requesting that you not eat or drink outside of the cafe or restaurant. You wouldn’t want to make a mess. Ofttimes smoking and drinking alcohol are prohibited as well. Of course, you should never cause damage to the site, vandalize, create graffiti, walk where you’re not supposed to, or steal anything either.

Some behaviors aren’t necessarily against the rules but may still be inappropriate. For example, joking around, laughing, and smiling can come off as disrespectful. Talking on your phone would also be rude. Additionally, you shouldn’t talk negatively about the victims of the tragedy or disaster that the site commemorates. To avoid offending anyone or causing any disrespect, it’s best to stay somber and quiet while visiting a dark tourism sites.

5. The Selfie Problem

Selfies have become pretty controversial at dark tourism sites. The argument is that taking a selfie where others have suffered or died is insensitive, disrespectful, and maybe even unethical. This has become such a problem that people get called out or shamed on social media for taking or sharing dark tourism selfies. It’s become a real travel faux pas.

Still, when visiting any dark tourist site, you’re sure to see people walking around with their selfie sticks and smiling for the camera. People take selfies at the gates of Auschwitz, in front of abandoned buildings near the Chernobyl disaster zone, at the killing fields in Cambodia, and every other dark tourism site. After a major disaster, it’s not uncommon to see people taking photos in front of the destruction. For example, after the Grenfell Tower burned down in London, people were showing up to take selfies in front of the burned out building.

Interestingly, selfies are perfectly acceptable at some dark tourism sites. For example, nobody cares if you take a selfie at the Taj Mahal (which is a tomb), the ruins of Pompeii, or the Colosseum.

So when is it okay and when is it not okay to take a selfie? Or is it always okay to take a selfie?

I’m kind of conflicted about this point. Personally, I don’t take selfies at dark tourist sites because I find them a bit tacky and insensitive. There is also a certain stigma to these photos. I wouldn’t want to share them even if I took them. In fact, I take very few photos, if any, when visiting a dark tourism site.

Having said that, I think it’s fine if somebody wants to snap a selfie. As long as they aren’t holding up the tour, getting in everyone’s way, or posing in a disrespectful manner, they aren’t bothering anybody. In my mind, the selfie controversy comes down to personal choice. Telling someone that they can’t take a selfie is just too controlling for my taste. Also, taking selfies isn’t against the rules unless you’re in an area where photos are prohibited. It’s also pretty judgmental to shame someone for something as simple as taking a selfie.

If someone wants to take an insensitive smiling selfie in front of Chernobyl, that’s their decision. After all, it’s their vacation. They probably spent thousands of dollars and a great deal of their time to get there. As long as they don’t break any rules or bother any other visitors, they can do what they want.

Even if someone smiles while taking a photo at a dark tourism site, they’re not necessarily being disrespectful. After all, it is second nature to smile for a photo. It would be weird to frown.

To read another perspective on the selfie problem, check out this article.

A Note About Taking Photos at Dark Tourism Sites

Sometimes, simply taking photos at a dark tourism site is a bit controversial. For example, at sites where there are human remains on display, people like to take pictures of bones. This could come off as disrespectful to the dead. A couple of dark tourism sites where you’ll find human remains on display include the Killing Field of Choeung Ek in Cambodia and the Gisenyi Memorial site in Rwanda. In some cases, it is acceptable to take photos of human remains. For example in the Paris Catacombs and Seldec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, accept photography.

Taking photos while touring a slum is also controversial because it is an invasion of privacy. It’s also simply insensitive of the poverty and suffering of others. Of course, in these situations, it isn’t illegal to take pictures. It is just frowned upon and may be considered disrespectful.

Many visitors also like to have a photo of themselves taken to remember the day and to prove they’ve been to a particular site. This may be controversial for the same reasons as selfies. That’s up to you to decide.

6. Too Soon: Does the Age of the Dark Tourism Site Matter?

Oftentimes, sites where a tragedy or disaster more recently occurred are considered more controversial than ancient sites. Probably because there may still be people living who survived the event that the site commemorates. Some people may have family members who suffered or died in the event.

For example, nobody finds vising Pompeii unethical because the event occurred nearly 2000 years ago. All of the descendants of the dead passed on long ago. The entire Roman civilization has ended. At this point, Pompeii is an ancient historical site. At the same time, Many would consider visiting New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina to be unethical because people were suffering. Many lost their homes or died. They are both natural disaster sites. Yet one fine to visit and the other is controversial. The same is true of war zones. Dark tourism to a Syrian war zone is controversial but visiting the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg is perfectly acceptable.

Is there such thing as too soon in dark tourism? After how much time has passed is it acceptable to visit the site of a tragedy or disaster?

Some argue that it’s only ethical to visit a dark tourism site after all who were involved have passed on. Others see no issue in visiting a site immediately after or even during a dark event. There is no hard rule. If there is tourism infrastructure, you can assume that enough time has passed that it is okay to visit.

In my mind, the sooner tourists start visiting a new dark tourism site, the better. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, tourists bring in money. This greatly helps communities and countries rebuild.

For example, after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, affected countries welcomed tourists back surprisingly back soon after. Tourism money greatly helped countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India to rebuild after the catastrophic event. Tourism money also helps with research and preservation. Without tourists, many dark tourist sites would slowly decay and fade away.

Additionally, the sooner we start visiting a site after a dark event, the more we can learn about it. If we wait for decades after an event to start visiting, we may lose information surrounding the event to time. People also forget and the event loses significance.

For example, Auschwitz opened for remembrance as early as 1947, just 2 years after the war ended. Tourists started visiting the site in larger numbers in the 50s. In the decades since, millions of people have learned about the horrors of the holocaust. If the site wasn’t opened until today, a great deal of information, as well as many learning opportunities, would have been lost.

7. Dark Tourism Can Support the Wrong People

When you visit a dark tourist site, you spend money. You might pay an entrance fee, hire a guide, stay in a hotel, eat in restaurants, etc. Over the course of your trip, you could inject thousands of dollars into a country’s economy. You may want to consider where that money goes and what causes it supports before visiting a dark tourism site.

Some argue that it is unethical to visit countries that are ruled by totalitarian regimes like China, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. When you spend money in these places, you are funding a repressive government that may not have the best interest of its citizens or the rest of the world in mind.

In some cases, you could indirectly fund an evil government that violates human rights. Do you want your tourism dollars funding genocide, torture, slavery, political imprisonment, forced labor, war, or any number of other evil actions?

The most common example of this in dark tourism is North Korea. Pretty much every dark tourist has this strange place on their bucket list. The country has a dark history of war, famine, and communism. North Korea essentially cut itself off from the rest of the world. A mysterious dynasty ruled the country since its birth in 1948. The country also has the unique political ideology of juche. All of this appeals to dark tourists.

In this example, it probably doesn’t matter because tourism in North Korea makes up such an insignificant part of the economy that it doesn’t really make a difference. Still, it’s worth considering what you’re supporting when planning a trip.

The problem is that a visit to North Korea helps to fund a dangerous nuclear program, massive military, and repressive leaders who live lavish lifestyles while regular citizens live in poverty. The tours offered are simply propaganda. Is it ethical to visit such a place? It’s hard to say.

Of course, this example is a matter of perspective. It depends on your political beliefs. If you are a communist, you may not want to support capitalist countries with your tourism money.

Dark tourism can also support good causes. When you visit a dark tourism site, most of the money you spend goes toward maintenance, renovation, and various educational projects. These places aren’t swimming in money. For example, the Anne Frank house depends on revenue from tourism to keep the museum open. They do not receive federal funding. Without tourists, we could lose this historic sight.

Some poor regions can also benefit greatly from dark tourism. For example, Cambodia and Rwanda both experienced devastating genocides in the not so recent past. Tourists visit these places, stay in hotels, eat in local restaurants, and spend their money in the local economy. This helps regular citizens who may still be suffering from the effects of past events. Tourism in both of these poor countries makes up a significant part of the economy.

8. Desecration of the Site

Some dark tourism critics argue that welcoming millions of visitors and building tourism infrastructure like gift shops, restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, restrooms, etc. desecrates the sites of human suffering and death. This disrespects the victims of disaster or tragedy.

There is probably some truth to this. Building tourism infrastructure certainly changes the site. Whether or not this is really desecration is up for debate. In many cases, it comes down to the way the site was designed and preserved.

When designing a dark tourism site, expert historians, engineers, and scientists try to preserve these sites the best they can to keep them as original as possible. The most important artifacts are often moved into museums where they can be carefully preserved.

For example, the Anne Frank House was completely renovated when the museum was built. They kept the secret annex mostly original. Artifacts were preserved in the attached museum. This doesn’t feel like desecration to me.

Besides, it would be unrealistic to expect that everything be kept original. Some changes are needed to make dark tourism sites accessible to tourists.

Welcoming millions of visitors to a dark tourism site definitely does cause wear and tear. There will be some badly behaved visitors. Some people may steal artifacts, visit areas they are not supposed to, write graffiti, and vandalize the site. For example, Justin Bieber caused some controversy when he wrote an inappropriate message in the guest book of the Anne Frank House.

This is unethical behavior on the part of the badly behaved visitors. There are rules in place to prevent visitors from causing damage or disrespecting the sites. Personally, I don’t think a few bad apples should ruin dark tourism for everyone.

9. Voyeurism

Some dark tourism critics claim that visiting a place where a disaster or traumatic event occurred is voyeuristic. This makes it morally questionable. The argument is that it is wrong to visit a site to view suffering or destruction.

Whether or not dark tourism is perceived as voyeuristic depends on a number of factors. For example, some consider viewing natural disasters less problematic than viewing a man-made disaster. The amount of time that has passed since the incident is also important. Many find it unethical to visit an area where a disaster is still ongoing while visiting the site of a past disaster that the country has moved beyond is acceptable.

Perhaps the best and most controversial example of voyeuristic dark tourism is slum tourism. This involves visiting slums or impoverished neighborhoods to see how poor people live. The dark aspect is that these people may not have access to clean water, enough food, electricity, healthcare, education, etc. Oftentimes companies offer guided tours through these slums. Local guides show tourists around the neighborhoods and explain how the locals live. A few popular slum tourism destinations include Dharavi in Mumbai, Kibera in Nairobi, the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and Skid Row in Los Angeles.

One of the most controversial examples of voyeuristic dark tourism is visiting the Suicide Forest (Aokigahara) in Japan. Dark tourists sometimes travel here to see if they can spot a body. For example, Youtuber Logan Paul filmed a video of a recently deceased man in the forest. As you can imagine, this resulted in a major controversy.

Another example of voyeuristic dark tourism is visiting the site of a major man-made or natural disaster. For example, people traveled to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit to view the destruction first hand. This created some outrage at the time. Other examples of voyeuristic disaster tourism include visiting towns near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone, ground zero after 9/11, the site of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Mount St. Helens after the volcanic eruption, etc.

Yet another example of voyeuristic dark tourism is visiting the holy city of Varanasi, India to view the cremation ceremonies that take place on the banks of the Ganges River. Dark tourists hire guides to walk them through the cremation sites and explain the process. This is controversial because it basically turns someone’s funeral into a tourist attraction.

Is viewing destroyed, impoverished, or tragic places for tourism purposes unethical?

Personally, I feel conflicted about this point. On the one hand, I see how some might find it distasteful or problematic to watch others suffer. On the other hand, I’m not convinced that visiting these destinations is unethical. Simply viewing a site doesn’t cause any harm or change the situation. Visiting these places doesn’t break any laws. After all, all of the sites are public places in cities or neighborhoods. No one’s privacy is being invaded.

Also, it is human nature to be curious. After all, we all rubberneck when driving by an auto accident. There is nothing unethical about it. It is a natural reaction.

I think visiting these potentially voyeuristic sites comes down to behavior. Walking through a slum or disaster site and pointing a camera at poor or suffering people is clearly problematic. Pretending to help by volunteering may also be harmful. Taking a tour and educating yourself about the situation is different. There is nothing wrong with observing a site to learn more about it.

There are also benefits to visiting these voyeuristic dark tourism destinations. First, tourism brings in money that can greatly help a community recover from a disaster. For example, tourists stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, purchase souvenirs, go on tours, and more. This money goes directly into the local economy and helps people who may be suffering.

In the case of slum tourism, many slum tourism companies employ people who live or lived in the slum. They may also operate as non-profits that give money back to the community. Of course, this depends on the agency. Some are just in it to make money. Regardless, tourists purchase food, drinks, and souvenirs from the local shops. This helps the residents directly. Some tourists also make charitable contributions or volunteer.

Dark tourism also educates. By visiting a poor or disaster stricken region, tourists can learn about the causes of the issue and its effects on the people living there. One of the greatest lessons this can teach is empathy. Watching a disaster unfold on the news doesn’t have the impact of seeing it with your own eyes. Meeting a survivor gives an entirely different perspective. In many ways, voyeuristic forms of dark tourism do more good than bad.

One interesting argument against tourism to these voyeuristic disaster sites is that it removes the incentive to rebuild areas that have been destroyed. After rebuilding an area, tourism dries up. Tour operators have no incentive to help improve the situation. I haven’t been able to find any evidence of this happening so I’m not sure that I buy this argument.

10. Dark Tourism Can Be Dangerous

Another common criticism of dark tourism is that it can be dangerous. You could cause problems for yourself down the road. You could get injured or killed when visiting some dark tourism sites that are located in dangerous countries.

In some cases, this is true. For example, when visiting the site of a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima, you may expose yourself to harmful radiation. If the dark tourism destination is located in a country with a high rate of violent crime, you risk becoming a victim. Dark tourism to a war zone like much of Syria is dangerous for obvious reasons. Some countries have bad air quality that could affect your respiratory health. There is political risk of visiting some countries. For example, North Korea has imprisoned visitors for seemingly no reason. When visiting the site of a recent disaster like an earthquake or volcanic eruption, you could expose yourself to contaminants or harmful chemicals or particulates that were have been stirred up during the disaster. There are certainly risks to visiting some dark tourism destinations.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk. Some people don’t feel safe leaving their neighborhood while others will literally travel to a war zone for tourism purposes. You’ll have to consider what risks you’re willing to accept when planning to visit a dark tourism destination that is considered dangerous.

To reduce any risk of injury while visiting a dangerous dark tourism destination, you can hire a local guide. They can keep you safe and help you navigate any dangerous areas. You could also visit on a group tour. There is safety in numbers. Simply planning your trip out and preparing well also greatly reduces any risks. In particularly dangerous destinations, you can hire private security.

Of course, the majority of dark tourism destinations are perfectly safe. Museums, monuments, and memorials are designed for tourism purposes. Many dark tourism sites see millions of visitors per year. Some sites that could be dangerous require a guide. Overall, dark tourism is a perfectly safe form of tourism.

Final Thoughts about the Ethics of Dark Tourism

The question “is dark tourism ethical?” is pretty philosophical. There isn’t a black and white answer. Whether or not you consider dark tourism ethical depends on a number of factors including your culture, morals, past experience, upbringing, and more.

Some travelers find dark tourism to be disrespectful, voyeuristic, exploiting, or simply inappropriate. Others don’t see any issue with it at all or simply don’t care. For some, the nature of the site, its age, its finances, and the intention and behavior of the visitors all come into play. Hopefully, this guide has helped you make an educated decision of your own as to whether or not dark tourism is right for your next trip.

One important thing to remember is that visiting places where death or suffering occurred has been popular for as long as tourism has existed. Dark tourism is not a new phenomenon. For example, tourists visited the battlefield of Gettysburg shortly after the battle ended in 1863. Tourists have been visiting Pompeii since the 1800s as well. Gladiator battles started in the Colosseum in 80 AD. Some consider this an early form of dark tourism.

It is only natural for humans to be interested in these dark types of places. Most of us have a natural fascination with morbid things. There is nothing wrong with satisfying that morbid curiosity as long as we do it in a respectful manner without causing unnecessary destruction or harm. At the same time, we can learn about history, culture, and ourselves.

For more info and a list of some of the most popular sites, check out my complete guide to dark tourism.

How do you feel about the ethics of dark tourism? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

More from Where The Road Forks

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• The Best Solo Travel Destinations
• Solo Travel Vs Group Travel: Pros and Cons
• 22 Benefits of Traveling

Zachary Friedman is an accomplished travel writer and professional blogger. Since 2011, he has traveled to 66 countries and 6 continents. He founded ‘Where The Road Forks’ in 2017 to provide readers with information and insights based on his travel and outdoor recreation experience and expertise. Zachary is also an avid cyclist and hiker. Living as a digital nomad, Zachary balances his professional life with his passions for hiking, camping, cycling, and worldwide exploration. For a deeper dive into his journey and background, visit the About page. For inquiries and collaborations, please reach out through the Contact page. You can also follow him on Facebook.

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