15th October 2009
Three islands, Diable, Royale, and St. Joseph, are collectively known as the Iles du Salut, an obvious misnomer for islands that offered no salvation or rehabilitation for prisoners. Located about 6 miles off the northern coast of French Guiana in the Caribbean Sea, all three once housed infamous prison settlements. Established in 1852 [...]
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Posted in French Guiana, Prison Tourism | No Comments »
28th July 2009
We are all familiar with the Holocaust, known as the Shoah or the Hebrew word for calamity, and the unspeakable tragedies that occurred at concentration camps. Unfortunately, there were other places filled with sorrow and grief that served as temporary deportation stations; Drancy is one.
The Jews had lived quietly and unobtrusively in [...]
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Posted in France, Holocaust Tourism | No Comments »
6th November 2008
Here’s an article that starts off with one dark tourism expereince and then starts discussing different examples of dark tourism.
Apparently there’s an attraction known as Death Railway in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. It’s a bridge built during WWII where “13,000 PoWs, 80,000 Asian labourers and 1,000 Japanese and Korean guards died while working in the most appalling conditions [...]
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5th September 2008
Through the years, countless ships have been lost at sea, the Titanic being the most familiar and much later the Andrea Doria. Yet, there were other lesser known, but even greater disasters that history would like to forget – the Wilhelm Gustloff is one.
The ill-fated ship had the dubious honor of being named after the [...]
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Posted in Battlefield Tourism, Poland | No Comments »
7th November 2007
Here’s an article describing some ghost tourism in Scotland. This is actually the 5th page of a mini-series but it talks about a haunted room in Drovers Inn (in Inverarnan). You can also download a podcast of an interview with the author from this page.
You can find more on ghost hunting vacations here and here.
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3rd June 2007
This blog entry has an interesting story and some chilling pictures of two grief tourism related sites in Cambodia, “Wat Mai†the Killing Field Memorial and the Aki Ra Landmine Museum. He visited the Killing Fields after seeing Angkor Watt, so tourists can work this into their Cambodian vacation plan. The official Cambodian tourism site [...]
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3rd June 2007
Vaughan Street Jail or Jailhouse is not usually open to the public, but when it is open it is called dark tourism.
Hundreds got a rare glimpse of the 126-year-old concrete fortress Saturday. It was one of 52 buildings involved in the annual Doors Open Winnipeg weekend to show off the insides of historic structures normally [...]
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28th May 2007
Arlington National Cemetery is a good example of a popular tourist attraction that can be called grief tourism. It’s certainly a place where people go to feel grief, from the Tomb of the Unknowns to diffrent monuments and memorials to actual funeral ceremonies.
I’d like to share a few posts from a football message board regarding Memorial Day [...]
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Posted in America, Cemetery Tourism | No Comments »
17th May 2007
This is an interesting story (with photos) of a tour on June 15, 2000. The site toured was Hart Island and the tour was provided by the New York Correction History Society.
Hart Island is said to be a ghost town with an abandoned church, asylum, and military base. The military base has Nike missile silos left over [...]
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Posted in America, Cemetery Tourism | No Comments »
1st May 2007
Here’s an interesting blog entry on ghost hunting in Chicago. You often see these kinds of articles on sites dedicated to ghost hunting, but this seems to be a site for fairly mainstream sports tourists like people who want to see a baseball game at Wrigley Field or go to a museum.
Then again, we see grief [...]
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Posted in America, Grief tourism in pop culture | No Comments »