During the month of October, many folks get into the spirit of Halloween by putting themselves in scary situations, like going to see a horror movie or visiting a haunted house. However, some travelers seek that feeling all year round by engaging in “dark tourism.”
Dark tourism is the act of going to places that are connected to the macabre, or historical sites where death and suffering took place. Places such as Chernobyl; Auschwitz; Salem, Massachusetts; and notorious crime scenes are some of the places connected to the darker narratives of history that travelers choose to visit. Aside from the historical interest, people visit these places to feel a connection with the victims and come to terms with the injustices they suffered.
Another part of the appeal is the physical charge one often gets from being in a state of unease. James Giordano, a neurobiology researcher at Georgetown University Medical Center, says getting frightened triggers a specific response in the human body.
“The idea of being somewhere that is evocative of fright or evocative of horror and the garish is exciting,” Giordano says. “Going to those places is like we are hanging out over the edge a little bit.” Think of when someone might look intently at a grisly auto accident on the side of the road, he says. Going to some of these spaces where tragedy has occurred may evoke similar feelings, but in different ways.
Fear, and the rush of adrenaline that comes with it, is present. So is a capacity to relate in some ways to the lessons of history that one can glean from visiting a site of historical terror. But another key element is also present: safety. People are expecting to be scared, but they also know they’ll be safe the whole time. As Giordano puts it, the allure of dark tourism is about getting “all of the rush but none of the reality.”
More Than Just Witchcraft
A museum in the tiny Swiss town of Ennenda commemorates the last person to be executed for practicing witchcraft in Europe. Visitors can learn about the historic site and even see the sword used to behead the impoverished accused woman, Anna Göldi, who was killed in 1782. Nicole Billeter, one of the curators of The Anna Göldi Museum, says the museum and its presentation are meant to educate visitors about incidents that happened hundreds of years ago in a way that counters the historical misinterpretations of witchcraft from the 19th century.
“There are so many false images around witchcraft which are starting from the 19th century,” Billeter says. “Everyone has this historical picture of [what people who are condemned for witchcraft did] which is really historically false. We want to correct it.”
Anna Göldi’s history is discussed in school in Switzerland, Billeter says, and so local tourists come seeking a connection to history. “In Switzerland, we have all kinds of young people,” she says. “I was astonished that teenagers are coming.”
But tourists from around the world come to the museum too, all genders, all walks of life. Most are interested in dark tourism, but one recent visitor from Brazil came for a very specific reason: She wanted to see if Anna was one of her ancestors. “She came in because her last name was Göldi,” Billeter says.
The appeal of visiting places connected to witchcraft goes beyond just an interest in the occult. “I think it speaks to everyone not just because of the witchcraft, but because of this class difference,” Billeter says. “You can really relate to someone being thrown under the bus who can’t defend herself because she has no rights at all. I think everyone can really take something from it.”
Billeter also says that, even though Anna Göldi was executed centuries ago, her life and death are still important to discuss. “There are always people who are treated unfairly, and there is still capital punishment around the world.”
A Tour Filled With Tales
Los Angeles historians Kim Cooper and Richard Schave started giving dark history tours with their company Esotouric Tours in 2007 after their Los Angeles true crime travel blog, “The 1947 Project,” became popular.
“People are drawn to this because these types of stories are almost operatic in nature,” Cooper says. “They feel very connected to the people in these stories. They know who the good guys and the bad guys are. They know about the victims. They’ve read where they can. And, in some ways, they’re just hungry for something that is less sensational and more fact-based.”
The pair explain that their tours are curated with the specific intention to reveal “the past and current shortcomings of Los Angeles” and to expose the vast “quagmire of corruption” that defines crime in Los Angeles.
Like the Anna Göldi museum, Esotouric tends to primarily draw local tourists. Cooper and Schave have seen multiple generations of Angelenos come to share knowledge about the history of the city. These locals often add to the tapestry of understanding of the crimes documented on the tour and how the tales of the past can sometimes reveal issues that are still needing to be addressed in the present.
Some individuals come to these tours to help them process the grief that has been sitting with them for decades. Schave says an elderly man in his eighties who had come on one of Esotouric’s bus tours spoke to him about his experience as a young boy on the day Elizabeth Short—known historically as the Black Dahlia—was found murdered and mutilated in a highly publicized killing that was retold in a novel, a film, and in multiple episodes of American Horror Story.
“The man said, ‘I was a paperboy on January 15th, and no one had seen our friend who had the paper route on Norton Avenue. We hadn’t seen him in a couple of hours. Another kid said that there were police on Bobby’s route. We didn’t know what to do, so we all ran over there on our bikes … and we saw this bisected corpse.’” The man had told Schave that he was only 12 or 13 when that happened. It had taken him a long time to process being haunted by the image of Beth Short’s corpse.
In a city full of crime history lore, smaller stories can sometimes get lost among the bigger ones, and this typically happens at the expense of the victims and families affected by the crime. Cooper came to this realization when she was curating a tour and added a stop along the route to mark what she referred to at the time as a “throwaway case”—a crime, unlike so many in Los Angeles, with no sensational backstory or Hollywood connections. The case involved a man whose car got repossessed. The man got so angry, he drove to the Cadillac dealership and shot the auto dealer. “A guy at the back of the bus said, ‘That was my uncle who got shot.’” The moment changed Cooper. “It was early on, and it made me think. There are no throwaway stories. It’s a heavy thing that has kept me honest.”
Gaining Understanding
People choosing to engage in dark tourism come with their motivations: to learn, to share, to process, and to grieve. They come to feel like they are part of a larger human story. This is particularly the case with visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland, which stands on the former site of the World War II concentration camp, and which has become a dark tourism destination.
While it takes a strong will to visit these places, some people purposely bring themselves to these intense spaces in search of a deeper understanding of history.
“I deal with a lot of medical students who take a fellowship sojourn to Auschwitz because they learn about medical ethics and the bastardization of science,” Giordano says. These places bring about a “profound sense of deep homage and pathos,” he says, that provide individuals with emotional tools. In the case of the medical students, that can give them an understanding to help them move forward in their personal and professional journey with the lens of additional insight.
Being afraid and curious is natural; it gives us life. When we embark on trips to places connected to death, we are reminded of both the darkness and lightness of life. Perhaps the illumination we get by going to a space connected to mortality can serve as a light to teach us what’s necessary to conquer the darknesses that occur in our everyday journeys—before our stories someday cease to exist as well.