Dark tourism (also black tourism or grief tourism) has been defined as tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy (Foley & Lennon, 1996, p. 198). It is the most unusual type of tourism, just some of tourists are ready to visit places like that. Most people are scared to be in a place where something terrible happened. Tourists flock to experience sites of past terror that offer up grim and disturbing tragedies (Ntunda, 2015, p. 7).
Dark tourism has categories, which is sorted by natural, industrial or both. For example grave tourism, Holocaust tourism, genocide tourism, prison and persecution site tourism, communism tourism, cult-of-personality tourism, Cold War & Iron Curtain tourism, nuclear tourism, disaster area tourism, icky medical tourism (Dark tourism, 2018). Grave tourism-visiting cemeteries, graves of famous individuals, or grand mausoleums of some real cult-of-personality big shots (Atatürk's in Ankara, Turkey, for instance). Holocaust tourism – visiting concentration camp memorial sites, former ghettos. Communism tourism – very niche and more weird than dark are e.g. museums of communism and socialist realist art displays, some looking more at the lighter, quirky sides of the communist era of the past, some overlapping into the darker aspect of persecution. Cold War & Iron Curtain tourism – seeking out traces and remains of the Berlin Wall, for instance, or border museums along the former Iron Curtain. Nuclear tourism ('atomic tourism') – apart from sites of nuclear testing. Icky medical tourism is to see exhibitions such as the Josephinum in Vienna, Austria, or the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, USA, which displays e.g. longitudinal slices of heads, medical monstrosities such as deformed babies, specimens of outsized parasites and other such things that make most people cringe but that still exude a strange appeal to many (Dark tourism, 2018).
Dark tourism is provide for peoples who are interested in history or in new, extremes feelings. If you choose to be dark tourist, you need to ready to put your life in danger but it doesn’t mean that you will not have fun. (Ntunda, 2015, p. 11)
Really interesting is a Netflix documentary series ‘’ Dark Tourist’’ about the phenomenon of dark tourism. It is presented by journalist David Farrier. The series has eight episodes.
If you are ready to seen some unusual things or places, welcome to be a dark tourist!
