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Dark Tourist

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Dark Tourist is an American documentary series that was released on Netflix on July 20, 2018. This series explores the phenomenon of dark tourism.

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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 .

London:  A writer used Camille Pissarro’s paintings of suburban London and a “lost” railway as a lens for exploring the city’s history  — and settling an arcane mystery.

Dublin,:  While the Irish capital has become a more international hub, locals have made efforts to ensure what makes the city unique — its spirited personality and famed hospitality  — doesn’t get entirely swallowed up.

Norway:  Can A.I. devise a bucket-list vacation to the Scandinavian nation that checks all the boxes: culture, nature, hotels and transportation? We put three virtual assistants to the test .

The Berkshires:  A writer shares his favorite ways to experience the often-overlooked  Housatonic River in western Massachusetts.

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Dark tourism: when tragedy meets tourism

The likes of Auschwitz, Ground Zero and Chernobyl are seeing increasing numbers of visitors, sparking the term 'dark tourism'. But is it voyeuristic or educational?

Days after 71 people died in a London tower block fire last June, something strange started to happen in the streets around it. Posters, hastily drawn by members of the grieving community of Grenfell Tower, appeared on fences and lamp posts in view of the building's blackened husk.

'Grenfell: A Tragedy Not A Tourist Attraction,' one read, adding — sarcastically — a hashtag and the word 'selfies'. As families still searched for missing inhabitants of the 24-storey block, and the political shock waves were being felt through the capital, people had started to arrive in North Kensington to take photos. Some were posing in selfie mode.

"It's not the Eiffel Tower," one resident told the BBC after the posters attracted the attention of the press. "You don't take a picture." Weeks later, local people were dismayed when a coachload of Chinese tourists pulled up nearby so that its occupants could get out and take photos.

Grenfell Tower, which still dominates the surrounding skyline (it's due to be demolished in late 2018), had become a site for 'dark tourism', a loose label for any sort of tourism that involves visiting places that owe their notoriety to death, disaster, an atrocity or what can also loosely be termed 'difficult heritage'.

It's a phenomenon that's on the rise as established sites such as Auschwitz and the September 11 museum in Manhattan enjoy record visitor numbers. Meanwhile, demand is rising among those more intrepid dark tourists who want to venture to the fallout zones of Chernobyl and Fukushima, as well as North Korea and Rwanda. In Sulawesi, Indonesia, Western tourists wielding GoPros pay to watch elaborate funeral ceremonies in the Toraja region, swapping notes afterwards on TripAdvisor.

Along the increasingly crowded dark-tourist trail, academics, tour operators and the residents of many destinations are asking searching questions about the ethics of modern tourism in an age of the selfie and the Instagram hashtag. When Pompeii, a dark tourist site long before the phrase existed, found itself on the Grand Tour of young European nobility in the 18th century, dozens of visitors scratched their names into its excavated walls. Now we leave our mark in different ways, but where should we draw the boundaries?

Questions like these have become the life's work of Dr Philip Stone , perhaps the world's leading academic expert on dark tourism. He has a background in business and marketing, and once managed a holiday camp in Scotland. But a fascination with societal attitudes to mortality led to a PhD in thanatology, the study of death, and a focus on tourism.

"I'm not even a person who enjoys going to these places," Stone says from the University of Central Lancashire, where he runs the Institute for Dark Tourism Research. "But what I am interested in is the way people face their own mortality by looking at other deaths of significance. Because we've become quite divorced from death yet we have this kind of packaging up of mortality in the visit economy which combines business, sociology, psychology under the banner of dark tourism. It's really fascinating to shine a light on that."

Historical roots

The term 'dark tourism' is far newer than the practice, which long predates Pompeii's emergence as a morbid attraction. Stone considers the Roman Colosseum to be one of the first dark tourist sites, where people travelled long distances to watch death as sport. Later, until the late 18th century, the appeal was starker still in central London, where people paid money to sit in grandstands to watch mass executions. Hawkers would sell pies at the site, which was roughly where Marble Arch   stands today.

It was only in 1996 that 'dark tourism' entered the scholarly lexicon when two academics in Glasgow applied it while looking at sites associated with the assassination of JFK. Those who study dark tourism identify plenty of reasons for the growing phenomenon, including raised awareness of it as an identifiable thing. Access to sites has also improved with the advent of cheap air travel. It's hard to imagine that the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum would now welcome more than two million visitors a year (an average of almost 5,500 a day, more than two-thirds of whom travel to the Polish site from other countries in Europe) were it not for its proximity to Krakow's international airport.

Peter Hohenhaus, a widely travelled dark tourist based in Vienna, also points to the broader rise in off-the-beaten track tourism, beyond the territory of popular guidebooks and TripAdvisor rankings. "A lot of people don't want mainstream tourism and that often means engaging with places that have a more recent history than, say, a Roman ruin," he says. "You go to Sarajevo and most people remember the war being in the news so it feels closer to one's own biography."

Hohenhaus is also a fan of 'beauty in decay', the contemporary cultural movement in which urban ruins have become subject matter for expensive coffee-table books and a thousand Instagram accounts. The crossover with death is clear. "I've always been drawn to derelict things," the 54-year-old says. As a child in Hamburg, he would wonder at the destruction of war still visible around the city's harbour.

That childhood interest has developed into an obsession; Hohenhaus has visited 650 dark tourist sites in 90 countries, logging them all and more besides on his website . He has plans to put together the first dark tourism guidebook. His favourite holiday destination today is Chernobyl and its 'photogenic' ghost town. "You get to time travel back into the Soviet era but also into an apocalyptic future," he says. He also enjoys being emotionally challenged by these places. "I went to Treblinka in 2008 and heard the story of a teacher at an orphanage in Warsaw who was offered a chance to escape but refused and went with his children to the gas chambers. Stories like that are not everyday, you mull over them. Would you have done that?"

But while, like any tourism, dark tourism at its best is thought-provoking and educational, the example of Grenfell Tower hints at the unease felt at some sites about what can look like macabre voyeurism. "I remember the Lonely Planet Bluelist book had a chapter about dark tourism a while ago and one of the rules was 'don't go back too early'," Hohenhaus says. "But that's easier said than calculated. You have to be very aware of reactions and be discreet when you're not in a place with an entrance fee and a booklet." Hohenhaus said he had already thought about Grenfell Tower and admits he would be interested to see it up close. "It's big, it's dramatic, it's black and it's a story you've followed in the news," he says. "I can see the attraction. But I would not stand in the street taking a selfie."

A mirror to mortality

An urge to see and feel a place that has been reduced to disaster shorthand by months of media coverage is perhaps understandable, but Stone is most interested in the draw — conscious or otherwise — of destinations that hold up a mirror to our own mortality. "When we touch the memory of people who've gone what we're looking at is ourselves," he says. "That could have been us in that bombing or atrocity. We make relevant our own mortality." That process looks different across cultures — and generations — and Stone says we should take this into account before despairing of selfie takers at Grenfell Tower or Auschwitz.

"I've heard residents at Grenfell welcoming visitors because it keeps the disaster in the public realm, but they didn't like people taking photos because it's a visual reminder that you're a tourist and therefore somehow defunct of morality," he explains. "We're starting to look at selfies now. Are they selfish?" Stone argues that the language of social media means we no longer say "I was here", but "I am here — see me". He adds: "We live in a secular society where morality guidelines are increasingly blurred. It's easy for us to say that's right or wrong, but for many people it's not as simple as that."

"Travel itself is innately voyeuristic," argues Simon Cockerel, the general manager of Koryo Tours , a North Korea specialist based in Beijing. Cockerel, who has lived in China for 17 years and joined Koryo in 2002, says demand has grown dramatically for trips to Pyongyang and beyond, from 200 people a year in the mid 1990s, when the company started, to more than 5,000 more recently. He has visited the country more than 165 times and says some clients join his tours simply to bag another country, and some for bragging rights. But the majority have a genuine interest in discovering a country — and a people — beyond the headlines.

"I've found everyone who goes there to be sensitive and aware of the issues," he says. "The restrictions do create a framework for it to be a bit like a theme park visit but we work hard to blur those boundaries. More than 25 million people live in North Korea, and 24.99 million of them have nothing to do with what we read in the news and deserve to be seen as people not as zoo animals or lazy caricatures."

More challenging recently has been the US ban on its citizens going to North Korea, imposed last summer after the mysterious death of Otto Warmbier. The American student had been arrested in Pyongyang after being accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster. Americans made up about 20% of Koryo's business, but Cockerel argues the greater loss is to mutual perception in the countries. "The North Korean government represent Americans as literal wolves with sharpened nails," he says. "At least a few hundred Americans going there was a kind of bridgehead against that. Now that's gone."

At Grenfell Tower, responsible tourism may yet serve to keep alive the memory of the disaster, just as it does, after a dignified moratorium, at Auschwitz and the former Ground Zero. Hohenhaus says he will resist the urge to go until some sort of memorial is placed at the site of the tower. At around the time of a commemorative service at St Paul's Cathedral six months after the fire, there were calls for the site eventually to be turned into a memorial garden. The extent to which Hohenhaus and other dark tourists are welcomed will be decided by the people still living there.

Five of the world's dark tourism sites

1. North Korea Opened to visitors in the late 1980s, North Korea now attracts thousands of tourists each year for a peek behind the headlines.

2. Auschwitz-Birkenau The former Nazi death camp became a memorial in 1947 and a museum in 1955. It's grown since and in 2016 attracted a record two million visitors.

3. 9/11 Memorial and Museum Built in the crater left by the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the museum, opened in 2014, has won plaudits for its portrayal of a disaster and its impact.

4. Rwanda Visitor numbers to genocide memorials have grown in Cambodia and Bosnia as well as in Rwanda, where there are several sites dedicated to the 1994 massacre of up to a million people. The skulls of victims are displayed.

5. Chernobyl & Pripyat, Ukraine Several tour companies exist to send visitors to the exclusion zone and ghost town left otherwise empty after the nuclear accident in 1986. All are scanned for radiation as they leave.

Published in the March 2018 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK)

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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?

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The Dark Tourist – Travel Documentary Series Review

One lazy Saturday morning, I was scrolling through the Netflix menu, searching for travel documentaries, when I stumbled upon The Dark Tourist. An eight-episode long documentary series covering various destinations promoting Dark tourism around the world.

Table of Contents

What is Dark Tourism?

Honestly, I had never heard of Dark tourism until now. I knew something called Disaster Tourism, where you visit places struck by a man-made or environmental disaster. The best example is Chernobyl and Fukushima. However, Dark Tourism is a new world in travel and tourism. It includes places associated with a disaster, death and any form of tragedy (murders, assassinations, sacrificial rituals, etc.).

About the show

Journalist David Farrier hails from New Zealand, leads the show in his undeniably charming way. He encounters many infamous people in his journey, from Escobar’s favourite hitman to Boogieman’s best friend. Through these eight episodes, Farrier shows us a different side of tourism like Disaster tourism, Slum tourism and War tourism.

Like in the first episode of The Dark Tourist, Farrier heads to Medellin Columbia to investigate the past life of the infamous drug lord, Pablo Escobar. The tour includes a visit to Escobar’s grave, his former residence and his prison at the hilltop, where he meets his former hitman Popeye.

In one of the episodes, he heads to Japan for some bone-chilling experiences. From visiting the world’s most suicidal spot to a Tsunami inundated area to a radioactive zone, giving us a glimpse of Nuclear Tourism. And in another episode, he visits Paddock Wood to attend the Dark tourist festival. A five-day event, where the tourists participate in war re-enactment from both the battlefield and home front.

I found the series captivating and full of surprises. Many places and events shown in the docuseries made me think, what makes such infamous spots so famous amongst the tourists?

On a quick Google search, I came across a book by J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley on Dark Tourism that eases my curiosity. The author theorizes several reasons why this is booming. One is the desire to understand & connect with history better, and another is a subliminal desire to get closer to death.

I have visited two such spots in India, and the experience was not great mentally. Every nook and corner screamed of pain and agony. However, the experience gave us a better insight into the history and the events.

Here’s a list of a few tours shown in the series.

1. The Real Pablo Escobar Tour , Medellín, Columbia 2. Vampire and Voodoo Tour , New Orleans, US 3. Fukushima Disaster Area Tour , Japan 4. JFK Assassination Tour, Dallas , US 5. McKamey Manor , Tennessee, US 6. Helter Skelter Tour, California , US 7. Voodo Festival , Benin 8. Cleaning the dead ceremony , Taroja, Indonesia

Let me know your thoughts on Dark Tourism and The Dark Tourist series.

Meenakshi is a designer by profession and traveller by heart. Photography is something that she cherishes and goes on a Click! Click! Click! spree wherever she goes.

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-Rajkumar R

I’ll look into it, thanks a lot 😀

Dark Tourism is a new term for me. I read out the whole topic and learn so many unknown issue through this writing. This amazing writing and thanks for sharing these information with all of us.

glad you liked it 🙂 I was so surprised to learn about the level of popularity around dark tourism. The show was really an eye opener. 😯

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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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Season 1 – Dark Tourist

Where to watch, dark tourist — season 1.

Watch Dark Tourist — Season 1 with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

Host David Farrier's empathetic curiosity keeps Dark Tourist from feeling too exploitative -- though shallow observations about its macabre destinations often leave something to be desired.

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‘dark tourist’: tv review.

New Zealand's David Farrier takes Netflix viewers around the world on vacations too dark, blood-drenched, radiation-filled and tragedy-adjacent for the average holiday-goer in 'Dark Tourist.'

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

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It isn’t until the eighth episode of New Zealand journalist and filmmaker David Farrier’s new Netflix series,  Dark Tourist , that somebody mentions Louis Theroux.

As befits the oddness of Dark Tourist , the interview subject who aptly brings up the British documentarian behind Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and My Scientology Movie , is Michael Channels, who coasted a wave of fame last fall as a 30-year-old pen pal to Charles Manson and alleged owner of a Manson will.

Air date: Jul 20, 2018

Amused in this context to be asked why he was trying to be Louis Theroux, Farrier laughs and agrees: “I’m like the cheap version of Louis Theroux.”

Jokes aside, Farrier ( Tickled ) is probably correct that Dark Tourist plays as a slightly less in-depth version of the sort of quirkily humorous, frequently murky immersive nonfiction journeys Theroux has built a career upon. That’s probably OK, because Theroux isn’t so prolific that there isn’t room for the kind of investigation-meets-comedy-meets-light-anthropology that Farrier practices in Dark Tourist . The series isn’t always focused or consistent, but it’s got ample strangeness and droll laughs, and every once in a while it packs an unexpected emotional punch.

The lack of consistency is hardly surprising. Farrier seems to begin every episode, before a wonderfully macabre animated credit sequence, with a very slightly different definition of what “dark tourism” even is. That definition is usually so strained by the end of 40 minutes that it takes bent-over-backward voiceover narration to impose a theme on his adventures. 

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So what is dark tourism? It’s the phenomenon of people vacationing in places associated with death and destruction, though Farrier even expands the definition to encompass general “strangeness” as well. He never gets quite so far as to open up the definition to include any trip too inconvenient for any normal person lacking the resources provided by a TV budget, press credentials and the door-opening magic of a video camera. Probably he should. There’s nothing all that dark about attending a press conference and rocket launch at Baikonur, the birthplace of the Soviet space program. Even Farrier’s attempt to add morbidity to the equation by musing that the rocket in question looks technologically behind the curve doesn’t change the fact that this particular expedition, though it might be complicated or out of the logistical reaches of your typical traveler, is something that most people would just describe it as cool.

Mostly, Farrier keeps within a more justifiable range. Over the eight episodes, he continent-hops around the globe, and a number of recurring “dark tourist” variations occur. In the two episodes in the United States, for example, serial killer tours catch his attention, following in the footsteps of Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee and Charles Manson in Los Angeles. He’s got a thing for areas of high radiation and wanders, Geiger counter clicking aggressively, through a nuclear test site in Kazakhstan and dangerously close to the radiation-tainted ruins of the 2011 earthquake in Fukushima. Doomsday preppers pop up in multiple episodes, whether as virulently racist, distressingly friendly white separatists in South Africa or more garden-variety American extremists in Virginia.

Farrier likes hastily evacuated ghost towns, whether they were cleared after military conflicts in Cyprus or an economic collapse in Japan. He’s also a sucker for eerily tourist-free capitals erected at tremendous expense by dictatorial regimes, be they in Myanmar or Turkmenistan. When watched in a batch, the episodes gives you a feel for Farrier’s preferred rhythms. He usually starts with a touristy version of a ritual and then wonders if what he just did was too touristy before booking an intimate visit with a practitioner of esoteric customs. Another pattern involves the frequency with which Farrier walks into a situation involving animal sacrifice and gets squeamish.

Beyond revealing his repeated tropes and platitudes, the episodes collectively showcase Farrier’s sense of humor. He’s extremely droll, a tactic that allows him to outright insult more than a couple of subjects, who simply don’t notice. He’s also very good at setting himself up as a fool so that he can learn a valuable lesson, like when he accidentally calls a South African township visit a “slum tour” before apologizing extensively in the next segment, or when he narcs on his tour’s coyote in a Mexican border-crossing stunt filled with moments both harrowing and giggle-inducing. He’s intellectual and foolhardy in nearly equal measure, slightly favoring the latter approach.

Farrier is unquestionably voyeuristic and exploitative in certain moments, with a corpse-exhuming Indonesian funeral ceremony providing the most eyebrow-raising bits. But you sense he’s doing this to emphasize a characteristic of dark tourism, and he tries to expose his own ignorance and dig deeper. He doesn’t always succeed. Sometimes the ingrained colonialism of his visits becomes unavoidable, even for someone who’s himself a resident of a former colony. But he tries.

'Who Is America?': TV Review

Farrier is very good at recruiting unlikely and outrageous tour guides, like Pablo Escobar’s favored assassin during a trip to Colombia, or insinuating himself into a situation in a way that gives astounding access, like when a chat with a disturbing British museum operator ends with a phone call to the notorious criminal played by Tom Hardy in the movie Bronson . I often wished he would spend more time trying to learn more about his fellow tourists, since those are the relationships that yield the most powerful beats, like the climax of that trip to the atomic wasteland of Kazakhstan.

It’s possible that a clearer definition of dark tourism will evolve as Farrier keeps going and keeps refining. I’m still waiting for an understanding of whether, for example, a Jew traveling to ghettos and concentration camps in Eastern Europe is a dark tourist or a cultural tourist or something Farrier is wisely leaving out of the purview of this show.

These eight episodes are a reasonable starter set of vacations you’d never want to go on, tours you’d be too perplexed to take, museums too weird to visit and a few places just enticing enough to make you investigate a booking for your next holiday. Not bad for a cheap version of Louis Theroux.

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Dark tourist.

S1.E1 ∙ Latin America

S1.E2 ∙ Japan

S1.E3 ∙ United States

S1.E4 ∙ The Stans

S1.E5 ∙ Europe

S1.E6 ∙ South East Asia

S1.E7 ∙ Africa

S1.E8 ∙ Back in the USA

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Welcome to Dark Tourists

Dark tourism has become ever-more popular for those looking for alternative types of travel. However, the whole idea of dark tourism can stoke criticism and controversy. Should destinations connected to some of history’s most devastating events be turned into tourist attractions?

The question is a complicated one, however, to assume that the entire notion of dark tourism is exploitative would be to miss a very important point.

For many of us, visiting such destinations brings us a little closer to comprehending the sheer horror of what took place. It is often a powerful, personal reaction where the lessons of history’s teachings become vivid and hard-hitting. And it is through this, that together we have a better chance of ensuring such atrocities do not happen again.

Here at DarkTourists.com, we provide insight into what it means to travel this way. We explore the ethics of dark tourism, and the simple do’s and don’ts when visiting places with complicated pasts. The ethos of dark tourism should always be to educate and inform.

Our aim is to highlight some of the world’s most significant dark tourism travel destinations. From assassinations and murder sites to locations of untold man-made devastation. We explore the battle relics of world wars, the remnants of corrupt regimes, and haunting places of genocide.

Latest Locations //

Spac Prison: Albania’s Dark Tourism Destination Reveals a Haunting History

Visiting Hartheim Castle Memorial Site (Austria)

Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial & Museum (Yerevan)

Visiting Cellular Jail, Port Blair – All You Need to Know

What is dark tourism.

Essentially, dark tourism is the term given to a type of tourism that involves traveling to a site associated with death and tragedy.

Very often we visit these places due to their historical significance. As we mentioned above, a lot can be learned from actually visiting a location where sinister events took place.

However, there will always be those that travel through morbid curiosity and a fascination with the macabre.

There are countless locations that can be described as dark tourist sites. A browse through this website will demonstrate that.

However, places connected with history’s darkest moments come in many forms. There’s the entire abandoned city of Pripyat that can be visited in connection with the Chernobyl disaster .

Or the site of Captain Cook’s murder commemorated with a 27-foot-high obelisk in Hawaii.

Auschwitz is a carefully maintained tourist destination with exhibits and audio tours. A visit to Highgate Cemetry in London will bring you to the site of Alexander Litvinenko’s lead-lined coffin , you can do this during the opening hours of the cemetery alone.

All would fall under the umbrella of dark tourism because of the history associated with each site.

A History of Dark Tourism

Dark tourism was first coined in 1996, by Lennon and Foley ; two scholars at Glasgow Caledonian University, (they were exploring the touristic fascination with sites associated with assassinations ).

The label may be relatively new, but the idea of visiting places associated with death is very old. Consider what the Romans liked to do during their days off. ‘Tourists’ would travel for days to watch Gladiators fight each other to the death in grand battles at the Colosseum .

Public executions were considered a family day out during Victorian times . Visitors could buy refreshments and those living so close that their windows and balconies offered views of the hanging, could charge admission.

In fact, a whole industry would surround an execution. Tourists keen for a memento of the day would buy printed pictures and transcripts detailing the crimes of the condemned.

The site of Jack the Ripper’s murders became tourist spots even as he prowled the streets of Whitechapel. You can buy walking tours during a visit to London to this day.

The Catacombs beneath Paris were a desirable concert location for wealthy 19th Century Parisians. They could enjoy the refined aural pleasures of Mozart while sat beside the bones and skulls pressed into the walls.

Dark tourism is not always associated with death. Asylums during the 18th century would open their doors to the paying public as a source of extra revenue. Tourists would take walking tours around these squalid institutions to gawp at the afflicted.

And while we cannot get into the minds of ‘Dark Tourists’ from times past, it does seem apparent that an innate fascination for the macabre was an overriding factor in the popularity of it all. It was treated as entertainment.

So where does that leave us today? How do we reconcile ourselves with the ethical questions surrounding dark tourism in 2019?

The Ethics of Dark Tourism Today?

There will always be ethical concerns where the site of a tragedy has been repurposed for financial gain.

Some dark tourist sites struggle to strike a balance between education and entertainment and as a result, the horrors of the past can appear to be glorified.

Context is an important issue here. A dark tourism location needs to think carefully about how it represents its story and the artifacts that go along with it.

The best sites clearly explain their past and the events that took place. When done sensitively in a coherent manner the impact on the visitor will be a poignant one; they will appreciate the fact that the site was a place where great suffering took place.

If on the other hand, a site presents an almost random collection of macabre artifacts, with little in the way of a meaningful narrative, the result is often a much more ethically ambiguous experience.

Without context, the dark tourism site is unlikely to educate or inform and will become just a vehicle of dark glorification of the location and whatever is on display.

All of this aside, the ethical questions surrounding dark tourism will continue to remain subjective. There will be some that see the notion as a particularly sinister form of entertainment that should be left well alone, (and others that will visit sites for exactly the same reason).

And then there are those much like the writers of this website. We see dark tourism and its relevant travel destinations as a chance to learn; to come face to face with the horrors of our collective pasts and to pay our respects to those that suffered.

Dark Tourism – The Scholarly Perspective

The nature of dark tourism and its increasing popularity has gained the interest of scholars in recent years.

In fact, there is an entire institute dedicated to Dark Tourism, based at the University of Central Lancashire, England,

Aptly named the Institute for Dark Tourism Research (iDTR); it has become known as one of the world’s leading academic centers for dark tourism scholarship, research, and teaching.

The importance of the institute in the development of ethical dark tourism cannot be understated. (In academic literature, Dark tourism is also referred to as ‘ thanatourism ’ from the Greek word thanatos, meaning death, or grief).

With its continuing work as a center of research and consultation for the appropriate management, interpretation, and promotion of dark tourism sites and attractions, the iDTR has created an internationally recognized body of work that helps to understand dark tourism from an ethical and social scientific perspective.

Head here , for a list of recent interviews with the executive director of iDTR, Dr. Philip Stone .

The scholarly interest in dark tourism doesn’t stop there of course. There are myriad research papers written from all manner of intellectual perspectives; tourism management, social-historical and cultural, to name but a few.

And then there is general commentary within academic literature that takes a somewhat more critical look at thanatourism .

All of the above has its place in furthering our understanding of why it is important to recognize the growing popularity of dark tourism, and how it can be done in an ethically minded manner.

The Dark Tourism Spectrum

Dark tourism locations cross a range of “darkness”. What I mean by this is that the level of tragedy associated with different places and the context in which it is represented does vary.

You could think of this range as the dark tourism spectrum.

To place this in a practical context; a visit to the London Dungeons (which could be considered a dark tourist activity), where actors are involved with the tour and children are allowed, is very different to a trip to Auschwitz.

They are on opposite ends of the dark tourism spectrum. The chart below demonstrates the concept further.

They normally involve visiting a location where the tragedy took place. Visitors are educated about the attached history and should be mindfully respectful throughout.

The killing fields in Cambodia, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and the Gulag Museum in Siberia would all fall into this end of the spectrum.

On the lightest end, history is presented in a more commercial manner. Visitors can still be educated during this type of dark activity, however, they are also expected to be entertained.

A London Jack the Ripper tour or a visit to an Irish castle that is supposed to be haunted would fall into this category.

Ultimately, a “light” dark tourism activity is designed for the visitor to have fun as well as to learn.

Types of Dark Tourism

Understanding the dark tourism spectrum also helps highlight the fact that there is a range of dark tourist activities available.

Let’s take a look at some of them now.

Conflict Sites & Battle Grounds

Sites that have witnessed conflict in terms of civil or all-out war often become dark tourism destinations once peace has been restored, and a suitable amount of time has been passed.

You only need to look at the popularity of the battlefields of the 1st and 2nd World War in France , or the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam to understand what I mean by this.

A somewhat amoral type of dark tourism exists where people visit areas that are still experiencing conflict. The Syrian-Israeli border is a good example.

From a safe distance, high above a valley in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights , tourists can look down and witness the devastation of the war, as well as watch some of the bloodlettings take place in real-time.

Museums and Exhibitions

There are countless dark exhibitions throughout the world. The pages of this website are full of them. Within Europe and Central and South America, you have a wide choice of museums that focus on the tyranny of communism.

There has been no shortage of despots in the East either. Whatever the regime, there will be a dark tourism activity somewhere that will help you learn more.

There are also museums dedicated to the nature of death , torture, and the plague, to name but a few.

Castles and Dungeons

Visiting old castles and dungeons is a great dark tourism activity. Many are now open to the public and by their very nature, they have a dark and bloody past.

The way the history of these locations is represented varies widely, (from the Disneyfied nature of a London Dungeon tour to the authentic no-frills visit to Leap Castle in Ireland ), however, they do make for an interesting trip.

For those that like a supernatural undercurrent to their dark tourist experience, many castles cater to this too. There are very few locations that do not have a good ghost story attached to them.

Cemeteries, Tombs & Catacombs

Cemeteries as a dark tourism activity are becoming more and more popular. Even a moderate fan of The Doors wouldn’t pass on a visit to the Père Lachaise Cemetery while in Paris, to see Jim Morrison’s grave.

Checking out the final resting places of the famous (or infamous) fascinates many people.

Beyond individual gravesites, you have the bleak but often ostentatious beauty of a large cemetery with grand tombs. This becomes a draw for many. The Recoleta Cemetery in Argentina and the Victorian splendor of Highgate in London falls into this category.

Finally, there are catacombs and ossuaries throughout the world. These are crammed with skulls and when open to the public, prove extremely popular.

Disasters Sites

Disaster sites are increasingly becoming more accessible to the dark tourist. Chernobyl is probably the best example of this. The popularity of the recent HBO series has seen tourists flock to the site of the nuclear disaster that took place in 1986.

Hiroshima, Fukushima, Pompei, and Ground Zero are all disaster sites that see thousands, if not millions of visitors each year. Many of them do not even realize they are having a dark tourism experience while they are there.

Areas of Genocide

Auschwitz, the Killing Fields, and the Rwanda Memorial are all popular tourist locations. They are also areas of genocide.

The history of these places is beyond tragic, but it is important that we learn what happened, in order to prevent such atrocities from happening again.

Therefore, it is also important that these areas of remembrance exist. It is a solemn experience to visit them, but also a necessary one.

Dark Tourism as an Umbrella Term

It is also helpful to see Dark Tourism as an umbrella term for different types of tourist experiences that venture into macabre areas.

The following are all seen as tourism classifications in their own right.

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

7 Most Visited Dark Tourist Sites Around the World

There are many dark tourism destinations around the world. As I have already stated, the best of them allow the visitor to explore, commemorate, and understand the tragedies that took place, in a sensitive and enlightening manner.

Under these circumstances, it is no small wonder dark tourism spots are becoming increasingly popular. The following 7 destinations are some of the most visited Dark Tourism spots in the world.

1. Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum

Location: Near Krakow, Poland

Auschwitz hardly needs an introduction. As the largest German Nazi concentration camp of WW2, it is also by far the most infamous.

As the most efficient extermination center ever devised, Auschwitz has become a global symbol of terror and genocide. More than 1.1million men, women, and children lost their lives at the camp.

Over 2 million people visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2019, a figure so high that one can’t help feeling optimistic. Essentially, the memorial and museum is a vital tool for education. By making people aware of the true horrors that took place there, it aims to prevent such atrocities from happening again.

As the museum explains:

“There is no way to understand postwar Europe and the world without an in-depth confrontation between our idea of mankind and the remains of Auschwitz.”

Details: Admission to the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is free. However, you should still reserve a ticket as demand is so high, and there is a limited amount of visitors allowed each day.

The site is open daily from 7.30 am all year round, (excluding Easter Sunday, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day). Not suitable for children younger than 14.

2. Chernobyl

Location: Pripyat, Ukraine

Chernobyl (and the neighboring town of Pripyat) has seen a massive surge in visitors since the release of the popular HBO television series.

It has been a mecca for dark tourists for many years, (I first visited in 2007 and tours have been available long before that), the abandoned buildings within the exclusion zone providing amazing photo opportunities at every turn.

The ghost town that is Pripyat came about because of the world’s worst nuclear accident. On April 25-26th 1986, Chernobyl nuclear reactor 4 malfunctioned during a (not so routine) safety check.

The resulting explosion spewed radioactive debris into the air that quickly spread across Europe. Pripyat, a town built to accommodate the reactor staff and their families, had to be evacuated. No one has been allowed to live there ever since.

Scientists estimate it will take up to 20,000 years before the exclusion zone can safely be habitable again.

That hasn’t stopped a burgeoning tourist industry from taking off mind you. There are countless organized tours of the town available, with tens of thousands of people visiting the site every year.

Details: Chernobyl tours are open year-round with one-day and multi-day trips available. You can also opt for larger group tours or organize a private guide (the latter is definitely recommended).

Rules are strict to keep you safe from radiation poisoning, so do as your guide instructs. The rapid beeping of the Geiger counter will definitely raise your heart rate.

3. National 9/11 Memorial and Museum

Location: New York, USA

More than 10 million people have visited the 9/11 memorial museum since it opened.

This moving tribute of remembrance and honor to the 2,977 people killed during the September 11 terror attacks in 2001, has become a must-see location for any visitor in New York.

Twin reflecting pools have been built in the foundations of where the Twin Towers once stood. Etched into bronze panels along the edges of each pool are the names of every single victim.

It is a poignant, emotionally loaded spot. Despite being in the middle of the business district of Manhatten, there is an air of somber calm here as visitors walk around the pools, inwardly paying their respects.

The museum is packed with information on the building and life of the Twin Towers, as well, of course, the tragedy of its destruction.

Details: The 9/11 Memorial is free every day from 7.30 am to 9 pm. Museum tickets can be bought online (up to 6 months in advance) as well as at the entrance.

4. Murambi Genocide Memorial

Location: Near Murambi, Southern Rwanda

Of all the global memorials dedicated to victims of mass murder and genocide, Murambi’s is arguably the most hard-hitting.

This is not so much due to the events that took place, (which were clearly horrific), it is the presence of the corpses of over 800 victims that have been exhumed from the local killing fields.

Preserved in lime their bodies did not fully decompose. They now form part of the memorial and have been out on display.

They are the victims of a brutal killing spree conducted by Interahamwe militia and soldiers in 1994. This, along with many other massacres during the Rwanda civil war, was in support of the genocide endorsed by the government.

It is estimated that between 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans were killed, with approximately 70% of the country’s Tutsi population (men, women, and children) murdered.

The memorial is positioned on a picturesque hill with bucolic countryside reaching out in all directions.

Details: The memorial is open daily from 8 am to 5 pm. (except on Umuganda Saturdays). Entrance is free and includes an accompanying audio guide.

5. The Ruins of Pompeii

Location: Pompeii, Italy

Mount Vesuvius’s volcanic eruption wiped out the Roman city of Pompeii in 79AD.

Almost two millennia later, the site is a very popular (dark) tourist destination with over 2.5 million making the trip every year.

The devastation of the eruption and the resulting preservation of bodies from the ash, make this an extraordinary place to visit.

The whole site is a monument to the final minutes of Pompeii as the eruption spread through the city.

Details: Pompeii is open daily from 9 am, (except for New Year’s Day, May 1st and Christmas Day). Tickets can be purchased in advance online or at the entrance on the day you visit.

The standard entrance fee is €18.90. However, prices for EU citizens aged 18-24 is €6, Children cost only €3.

6. The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime are responsible for the genocide that took place in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Turning on their own people, the regime rounded up and murdered approximately 1.5 million people during Pol Pot’s radical push towards Communism.

To fulfill its goals of achieving a socialist agrarian republic, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside.

Here forced labor and mass executions were rampant. A former school was transformed into the infamous Security Prison 21 (it is now Tuol Sleng Museum). Here, 20,000 people were sent for questioning. Only seven adults survived.

10 miles southwest of Phnom Penh were the Killing Fields where prisoners were taken to be executed. In order to save bullets, pickaxes were often used. The bodies were then dumped in mass graves close by.

In 1980 the remains of 8,895 people were exhumed from the site. The skulls are now on display inside the memorial based at the Killing Fields. Many of them show evidence of the brutal manner in which the victim died.

Details: The killing Fields are open daily from 7.30 am to 5.30 pm. The entrance fee is $6 including an audio tour.

7. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Location: Hiroshima, Japan

On August 6th, 1945 an atomic bomb detonated above the city of Hiroshima. It helped bring an end to WW2, but the cost to life was horrific.

Innocent men, women, and children were murdered in the blast. It was a moment that would change the course of history, and shape the world towards a battle for nuclear armament that exists to this day.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum houses permanent exhibitions that include artifacts from the explosion, items belonging to victims, and testimonials from those who managed to survived.

Details: Open daily (excluding 30 and 31st of December). The entrance fee is 200 yen.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Dark Tourism

So how should one act when visiting a dark tourist site? Number one answer to that is “respectfully”. And that certainly means you should not pose for a selfie with a shit-eating grin plastered across your face.

(The officials at Auschwitz have faced this issue recently with the growing number of tourists taking smiling, social-media snaps while standing on the infamous train-tracks).

Following the advice below will help you act appropriately while visiting and learning about the world’s darkest history.

What not to do when visiting a Dark Tourist site

We’ll start with the don’ts as some of these irk me greatly. Unfortunately, I think I have seen an example of at least one of the following every time I have ever visited a dark tourist location, (unless I have managed to do a private tour).

Take Selfies

I’ll start with the big one; taking selfies or snaps of your grinning friends and family. It is far from respectful. If your number one reason for being at the site is to show off the fact you have been there to your Instagram following, well then you have totally missed the point.

In fact, I don’t want to talk to you anymore, go find another website.

Making Jokes (Even under your breath)

Dark tourist sites have to be taken seriously. Not only should you be respectful to the memory of what happened (and the people it happened too), you should also be conscientious of the people that are visiting the site.

Joking and general larking about is unacceptable. Even chuckling quietly in your small group can potentially upset others around you. You have no idea of the circumstances that bring them there.

Taking a “small” memento

It is also unacceptable to take a memento from the dark tourist site. While it may seem harmless enough to take a stone, a flower or some other small item from the location, it is still fundamentally wrong.

Just imagine if every visitor felt the same way and took a little piece home with them. These locations need to be treated with respect and left intact.

Litter or graffiti

Leaving your trash around and not clearing up after yourself, or etching your initials into the underside of a bench just to make your mark at a famous location is moronic.

I realize I am starting to sound a little preachy in this section, however, it is because I have seen such behavior all too often and it is one of the many reasons “dark tourists” end up getting a bad wrap.

Leaving your shit behind just reeks of disrespect and demonstrates that you simply do not care.

What you should do when visiting a Dark Tourist Site

Now that we’ve got that bad stuff out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to be a contentious dark tourist.

Learn as much as you can about the history of the location

Take some time to read up on the location before, during and after you are there. Learning some of the history before you go will generally make for a more interesting visit as the information you will have already learned will become ever-more poignant by being there.

That being said, some people prefer to go in blind. And that is absolutely fine. However, a good dark tourist location will have lots of explanatory material (written and audio guides etc) where information can be gleaned as you make your way around the site.

Often time, I leave a location and become an avid reader on the site afterward. For me personally, the history is significantly more powerful after I have made the trip and experienced the dark tourist location for myself.

Join a guided tour or utilize an audio tour

This is a continuation of the above point and is all about learning as much as you can. If reading plaques as you walk around a site isn’t your thing, see if the site offers guided tours.

Today’s technology also means audio tours are available on some of the smallest and most remote locations.

Even if it means you need to pay extra, the money will often be going towards running the site so it is for a good cause.

Act respectfully as you walk around

This basically means don’t do any of the points we listed in the “What not to do” section. No jokes, selfies, or removing items from the location. Be aware of your surroundings and others that are visiting.

Whether the sad or tragic event that happened at the location is from the distant past or the loss is more recent, you should act in a manner that shows respect to the physical location and the memories of those that may have suffered there.

Tell others about your experience

If you found a dark tourist site interesting and/or moving, tell others about it once you return home. This is important type of tourism and we must work together to remove some of the stigma associated with it. There is a lot to be gained from people visiting these locations and learning more about the history associated with them.

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The rise of dark tourism: what’s the appeal?

Netflix's new series focuses on morbid destinations around the world, but why is this travel niche gaining popularity.

Swimming in a lake formed by a nuclear blast in Kazakhstan, attending a voodoo festival in Africa, and dining with vampires in New Orleans may not be at the top of most travellers’ lists, but New Zealand journalist David Farrier isn’t most travellers. He’s the host of the new Netflix series Dark Tourist, reviews of which have spanned enthusiastic praise for its “ample strangeness and droll laughs”, and waspish criticism for being “shallow and sordid”.

It’s easy to see why dark tourism as a notion is polarising. On the whole, it focuses on the macabre, turning disaster sites such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan into an attraction, where guides now lead tourists through towns abandoned when the earthquake hit in 2011. In 2017, locals were horrified when a coachload of Chinese tourists turned up at Grenfell Tower to take photos, just weeks after the fire.

Yet at the other end of the scale, sites such as Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, the September 11 memorial in New York, and the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia, which have all been recognised as historically significant tourist destinations, all saw record numbers of travellers in 2017.

Rise in appeal

The term was coined in 2000 by academics John Lennon and Malcolm Foley who published a book by the same name to explore “the attraction of death and disaster”. “It is clear,” the introduction states, “that tourist interest in recent death, disaster and atrocity is a growing phenomenon”.

This has also been true among British travellers in more recent years. New figures from flight booking website Kiwi.com reveal there has been 307% increase in searches from the UK to destinations usually associated with death and suffering.

Top of the search list is Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Actual bookings have increased by more than 1,200% since 2016. Official figures show visitor numbers to the exclusion zone have boomed in recent years, with almost 50,000 people making the trip in 2017, 70% of whom were foreigners. That’s an increase of 350% since 2012.

The site has been open to tourists since 2010, but local travel agencies suggest the 30th anniversary in 2016 and recent adjustments that reduced the amount of radioactive material being leaked, have both contributed to the sharp rise.

Traveller numbers to Cambodia’s killing fields have more than tripled over the past decade, with as many as 800 tourists a day visiting in 2017. Kiwi has also seen bookings on its site increase tenfold in the past two years.

For Philip Stone, executive director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire, there is no such thing as “dark tourism”. It’s merely, a term academics have used to “shine light on the contemporary commodification of death and disaster sites”.

“There tends to be a lot of emphasis … on the motivation of tourists to visit particular dark tourism sites,” he has said in an earlier interview . “To me, many of the motivating push-and-pull factors to visit dark tourism sites are fairly obvious … What is less obvious, to me at least, are the emergent motivations and consequences of the tourist experience at dark tourism sites. For instance, how does the visitor feel and perform at particular dark tourism sites? What are the meaning-making processes at play within dark tourism consumption?”

Ethical questions

There are those reviewers that have questioned the ethical standards behind some of Farrier’s escapades – including utilising one of Pablo Escobar’s former hitmen as a guide, and going on an immersive recreation of what it’s like to sneak over the US-Mexican border as an illegal immigrant.

There is a risk, as Foley and Lennon point out in their book, that once investment is secured to preserve a former concentration camp, battle site, or the location of a disaster, it “becomes a tourist resort to be exploited like any other”. Indeed, Cambodian officials have expressed concern that tourism is hindering their efforts to protect the memorials of the 2 million people who perished there.

Pawel Sawicki, a press officer at the Auschwitz Memorial museum says the original motivations of visitors aren’t as important as what they learn: “The Auschwitz Memorial is visited by over two million people from all around the world annually. The motivations of the visitors will be very different and complex. Some come here because of family connections, [the] majority visit as part of some educational programs, for some it’s a religious pilgrimage, some want to see this place to learn the history of Auschwitz or the Holocaust.

“There also are people who are just tourists, who visit the Memorial because their guidebook says [so] … For us it’s important to create the situation in which the visit here – no matter what is the motivation of the people coming – is an important lesson of history and a valuable personal experience. Most of the visitors are guided by our experienced educators and the commemorative and learning components are the most important elements of the visit … the guided tour emphasises the role of the Memorial, the authentic historical site, as a place where we commemorate all victims but also a place which is a warning to humanity today.”

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• 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

Cake values integrity and transparency. We follow a strict editorial process to provide you with the best content possible. We also may earn commission from purchases made through affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure .

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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