Enthusiasm for “macabre tourism”

North Korea. East Timor. Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that for decades has been the powder keg of ethnic conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

These are not typical tourist destinations.

But don’t tell that to Erik Faarlund, editor of a photography website in Norway, who has visited all three. His next “dream” trip is to visit San Fernando, Philippines around Easter time, when people volunteer to be nailed to a cross to commemorate the suffering of Jesus Christ, a practice discouraged by the Catholic Church.

52-year-old Erik Faarlund has visited places that fall into a category of travel known as dark tourism, a broad term that boils down to visiting places associated with death, tragedy and the macabre.

Most people seek on vacation to achieve goals like escape from reality, relax and rejuvenate. This is not the case for this type of tourist, who takes advantage of their professional respite to delve deeper into the dark, even violent, corners of the world.

According to them, visiting abandoned nuclear power plants or countries where genocides have taken place is a way to understand the harsh realities of current political unrest, climatic calamities, war and the growing threat of authoritarianism.

“When the whole world is on fire and no one can pay their energy bills, lying on a beach at a five-star resort feels out of place,” says Jodie Joyce, who manages contracts for a sequencing company of the genome in England and who visited Chernobyl and North Korea.

Mr Faarlund, who does not view his travels as dark tourism, says he wants to visit places “that work in a totally different way to the way things are run at home. [lui] “.

Whatever their motivations, Erik Faarlund and Jodie Joyce are hardly alone.

As many as 82% of American travelers said they had visited at least one dark tourism destination in their lifetime, according to a study published in September by Passport-photo.online, which surveyed more than 900 people. More than half of respondents said they prefer to visit “active” or former war zones. About 30% said that once the war in Ukraine was over, they wanted to visit the Azovstal steelworks, where Ukrainian soldiers resisted Russian forces for months.

The growing popularity of dark tourism suggests more and more people are resisting vacations that promise escape, choosing instead to witness first-hand the places of suffering they’ve only read about, Gareth said. Johnson, founder of Young Pioneer Tours, which organized trips for Jodie Joyce and Erik Faarlund.

Tourists, he says, are tired of “being presented with a sanitized version of the world.”

Not yesterday

The term “dark tourism” was coined in 1996 by two Scottish scholars, J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, who wrote Dark Tourism – The Attraction to Death and Disaster.

But people have been using their free time to witness the horror for hundreds of years, said Craig Wight, associate professor of tourism management at Edinburgh Napier University.

“It goes back to the gladiator fights” of ancient Rome, he recalls.

Wight said the modern dark tourist typically travels to a site defined by tragedy to connect with the place, a feeling that’s hard to achieve by simply reading about it.

According to this definition, anyone can be a black tourist. A tourist going on a weekend trip to New York can visit Ground Zero. Boston visitors can travel to Salem, Massachusetts to learn about the persecution of those accused of witchcraft in the 17^e century. Travelers to Germany or Poland can visit a concentration camp. Their motivations can be multiple: to honor the victims of a genocide or to better understand history. But in general, a dark tourist is someone who makes a habit of seeking out places that are tragic, morbid, or even dangerous, whether the destinations are local or as far away as Chernobyl.

In recent years, as tour operators have sprung up around the world to offer dives in locations notorious for their recent tragedy, media attention has followed and questions have arisen about visitors’ intentions, says Dorina- Maria Buda, Professor of Tourism Studies at Nottingham Trent University.

News reports about people raving about New Orleans neighborhoods destroyed by the hurricane Katrina or who pose for selfies in Dachau have sparked disgust and outrage.

Are people driven to these sites by “voyeurism or to share pain and show support?” asks Mr. Buda.

An “ethically troubled territory”

David Farrier, a New Zealand journalist, has spent a year documenting trips to places like Aokigahara, Japan’s so-called suicide forest, the luxury prison Pablo Escobar built for himself in Colombia and McKamey Manor in Tennessee, a famous haunted house where people sign up to be buried alive, immersed in cold water until they feel like they’re going to drown, or even beaten.

The journey has been turned into a spectacle, Dark Touristwhich aired on Netflix in 2018, and was derided by some critics as gruesome and “sleazy.”

Farrier, 39, said he often wonders about the moral implications of his travels.

“It’s very murky territory ethically,” says Farrier.

But it was worth “pointing the cameras” at places and rituals that most people want to experience but never will, he adds.

Visiting places where terrible events took place humbled him and helped him face his fear of death. He mentions that he felt privileged to have visited most of the places he saw, with the exception of McKamey Mansion. “It was out of whack. »

An opportunity to reflect

Part of the appeal of dark tourism is its ability to help people understand what’s going on “as the world grows darker and dimmer,” says Jeffrey S. Podoshen, professor of marketing at Franklin and Marshall College. , black tourism specialist.

“People are trying to understand dark things, to understand things like the realities of death and violence. They see this type of tourism as a way to prepare. »

Mr. Faarlund recalls a trip he took with his wife and twin sons: a private tour of Cambodia that included a visit to the Killing Fields, where between 1975 and 1979 more than 2 million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation and disease under the Khmer Rouge regime.

Her boys, then 14, listened intently to the harsh and brutal accounts of the Khmer Rouge-run torture center. At some point, the boys had to get out and went to sit outside, remaining silent for a long time.

“They needed a break,” he recalls. It was very mature of them. »

Afterwards, they met two Khmer Rouge survivors, frail men in their 80s and 90s. The teenagers asked if they could hug them and the men agreed.

It was an emotional trip that also included visits to temples, including Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, and meals of frogs, oysters and squid at a roadside restaurant.

“They loved it,” Mr. Faarlund says of his family.

Yet he doesn’t see them coming with him to see people re-enact the crucifixion in the Philippines.

“I don’t think they want to go with me on this one,” concludes Mr. Faarlund.

This article was published in the New York Times.