When I first glanced at this phrase, I thought it might have something to do with today’s spook fest holiday. But as
I began reading the article, I learned that this
special report by the Guardian is not
about ghosts and goblins of the supernatural kind. (Although cemeteries do figure into this a bit.)
Dark tourism is the term used
to describe tourist activity which takes place at sites of tragedy — visiting places where the real horrors of life
have occurred. Professors John Lennon and Malcolm Foley have been
studying this phenomenon for years, trying to understand why people
are drawn to visit places such as Auschwitz or Ground Zero. As the Guardian notes, “Our motivations are murky and
difficult to unravel: a mix of reverence, voyeurism and maybe even the thrill of coming into close proximity with
death.”
I’m been to Dachau and
Ground Zero, and both visits were extremely uncomfortable — I was
saddened and reverent, but also felt very uneasy about being there. However, my visit to
Pere-Lachaise (one of the
world’s best graveyards) did not
leave me with that same uneasiness, probably because it was not the actual site of a tragedy. I felt peaceful wandering
the paths on a warm summer day, and quite enjoyed my time there.
It’s an interesting topic to think about — how do we best balance between tourism to further knowledge and proper
respect of tragedies past? Facing the harsh realities of our history can often be a powerful way to learn more about
the injustices of our world, but at what expense? The Guardian report dives into this much deeper, sharing personal
commentary from travelers and stories about visiting dark places like Palestine, Chernobyl and a Thai jail.