From true crimes to terror: When is 'dark tourism' too dark?

Why are the locations of past atrocities, natural disasters, infamous deaths and incarcerations so popular with visitors? What does it say about us?

Fifty years ago, parishioners from Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in San Francisco began to settle a rural commune in the South American country of Guyana. The Jonestown experiment ended four years later in one of the most tragic and bizarre murder-suicide incidents in American history. More than 900 people died on November 18, 1978, including a U.S. congressman named Leo Ryan.

Now that Guyana is considering a proposal by a government-backed tour operator to open the now-overgrown compound to visitors, it raises a fascinating debate about the appeal, ethics and sensitivities of so-called “dark tourism” — the visiting of sites associated with tragedy.

Why are the locations of past atrocities, natural disasters, infamous deaths and incarcerations so popular with visitors? What does it say about us that we want to get close to these vortexes of disaster and evil? What obligations do governments have to give or deny access? Who gets to decide how history is presented to visitors? And what impact do such events and the subsequent visitors have on those who live near these spots?

There are no simple answers, but it’s important to explore the questions anyway.

On my first cross-country trip, in college, my girlfriend and I stopped at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, the site of a battle in which nearly 200 died, including a former U.S. congressman named Davy Crockett. Then a week later in Los Angeles, local relatives of mine took us on a driving tour that included the crime scene address of then-recently murdered Nicole Brown Simpson. The former visit felt like a U.S. history lesson, the latter like morbid gawking. And somewhere in between is the subjective line that dark tourism dances around.

Dark tourism (also known as memorial tourism, or thanatourism, from the Greek “Thanatos” meaning death, or more derogatorily as morbid tourism, or grief tourism) comes in various shades.

Gettysburg was the single deadliest battle in the U.S. Civil War, where 51,000 souls took their last breath, and yet where countless school field trips and, according to the National Park Service, 1.5 million visitors flock every year. Is that dark tourism? How about visiting the beaches in France where between 8,000 and 14,000 soldiers died in the D-Day invasions that turned the tide for Allies winning World War II? And what of Ground Zero and Flight 93 memorials for more than 3,000 who died on September 11, 2001?