Then again, we see grief tourism so often. For example, The Freedom Museum in Chicago, a very mainstream tourism spot “contains stone pieces of historical significance from the Great Wall of China, the Alamo, the White House, the World Trade Center, and the Berlin Wall.”

Chicago also has the Abraham Lincoln Civil War tour which includes Stephen Douglas’ tomb and memorial along with other significant sites.

We get a quote from Professor John Lennon, of Glasgow Caledonian University:

“People want to go and be tourists in war zones while wars are happening. They seem to have an appetite to get very close while the blood is still dripping. There is no limit to the appetite for this stuff and demand is driving it faster and faster.

“We are always fascinated by the dark side of human nature and the most evil things people can do.”

I find this quote interesting for several reasons. First I think Lennon is exaggerating when he says there’s no limit to our appetite for visiting war zones. Ask yourself how many of your friends would like to visit a war zone and get close enough to see dripping blood. I know that experiencing a war is not on my shortlist of vacation ideas.

So I’m going to disagree with Lennon on his first point. There most certainly is a limit to our appetite for visiting war zones.

The Lennon says something about being fascinated by the dark side of human nature etc. I don’t think you have to be a scholar or a professor to know that. The reason I find this obvious comment interesting is because of what it implies about the definition of dark tourism. It implies that dark tourism is centered around the evil things that people do. This might not include acts of nature such as Hurricane Katrina or the Tsunami. As I’ve said before, the definitions of words like grief tourism and dark tourism are still being written so this interpretation will only be meaningful if other people also refer to things people do when they refer to dark tourism. We shall see.

You’ve got Rome, where Caesar was assassinated. You’ve got Dallas where there’s a famous grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street and John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza. Then there’s Washington D.C. where you can see a play at Ford’s Theatre, the Lincoln Memorial, and the National Museum of Health and Medicine (to see the .44 caliber bullet which was removed from Lincoln’s head, plus a skull fragments from Honest Abe). And there’s New York City’s Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park in memory of John Lennon who was shot nearby outside the Dakota building.