Dark Tourism as a side of cacher travel

"Dark tourism" has been defined as tourism that includes travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy - so far the translation from English Wikipedia. We have also visited dark tourism destinations with cacher trips, such as Chernobyl or the Ghost Church in Czech. Often also associated with Lost Places.

Other destinations are known, such as the fields of Verdun, the Killingfields in Cambodia or concentration camps such as Auschwitz or Dachau. However, you can also find many unknown places on the Internet, so that nothing stands in the way of extensive holiday trips. The Beelitz sanatoriums near Berlin, not unknown to some cachers, are included in this catalog as the “scariest clinic in the world”.

An example for Dark Tourism

An example of the boom in Dark Tourism: the Skelter Tour in Los Angeles: A ticket for a four-hour descent into hell in the footsteps of cult leader Charles Manson costs around EUR 70. The "Helter Skelter Tour" takes participants to the scenes of a notorious series of murders in the USA. The most famous victim was heavily pregnant actress Sharon Tate, wife of director Roman Polanski. A total of seven people died in the bloodlust of the so-called "Manson Family". In minibuses you can go to the dark side of Los Angeles with a tour agency. It goes to the actual crime scenes. With videos and audios, the tour participants are told everything about the brutal murders. It's a "strange and horrifying" story, but it's also part of the history of the city of Los Angeles. The tour is often sold out.

Likewise Chernobyl. More and more tour operators are reporting a day trip from Kyiv – sometimes even a 2-day tour with an overnight stay….

Definition

Anyone who takes part in such trips could be called a “dark tourist”. The term dark tourism was coined in 1996 by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, two tourism researchers from the UK.

If you read up on Dark Tourism, you'll soon come across Peter Hohenhaus. He is one such dark tourist and runs a website with travel destinations and tips on the subject. He has visited more than 700 places in 90 countries that can be assigned to dark tourism. It is not surprising that dark tourism is said to exist in many different forms. There are also many disasters and misfortunes, crimes. The relationship to death and disaster can also be narrower or broader in dark tourism. It doesn't always have to be deaths either.

Motivation

There are as many different reasons for visiting a gloomy place or a lost place as there are people who plan their trip there. Contact with suffering and death, which has largely been suppressed in our culture, is often seen as a motivation. Answers to unasked questions are sought here. But pure curiosity and a thirst for knowledge are also sources of motivation, as is an interest in history. Psychology can also play a role when it comes to processing one's own history or that of relatives or friends. And finally, there is also the simple voyeurism here, which means that dark toursim is also often viewed as negative.

Netflix

Those who are less courageous and would like to find their way from the couch at home to places of dark tourism have recently found a good partner at their side in Netflix. Under the title "Dark Tourist" you will find a season in which journalist David Farrier presents unusual places.

Moral

While we regard historical interest in morbid locales as a high goal, it becomes ethically more difficult with current catastrophes. The school class that visits Auschwitz is legitimate and well respected, the Seattle underground tour is popular with young and old alike and is not viewed as morally reprehensible. The run to a cruise ship that has just sunk, the selfies in front of the wreck of the Costa Concordia trigger different feelings.

In this area of dark tourism, too, there is good and bad behavior on the part of tourists. However, a seriously interested dark tourist knows his destinations well and has prepared well for his visit.