Journal of

Anomalistics
Scientific and

Exploration
Frontier
Science

Atlas of Dark Destinations­—Explore the

Reviewed by Dark tourism is an appellation defining travel to a diverse array of tourist sites that
Philip R. Stone portray death, disasters, or calamities. For more than 25 years, dark tourism as an interna-
tional subject of scholarly interest has drawn together multidisciplinary discourse, where
Institute of Dark Tourism Research the dominion of the dead collides with contemporary touristic consumption. In turn, dark
University of Central Lancashire, UK tourism has opened scholarly scrutiny of our “Significant Other” dead and how societies
deal with difficult heritage. Consequently, dark tourism is about polysemic touristic en-
counters with our memorialized dead, where a fine line exists between commemoration
and commercialism. Dark tourism is inherently political and dissonant, as (re)presenta-
tions of our dead are imbued with sociopolitical bias, and remembrance is politically en-
gineered and hegemonically orchestrated. Whereas heritage may produce narratives for
dark tourism, it is the tourist experience that consumes such messages and co-constructs
meaning-making. Indeed, dark tourism displays our fights, follies, failures, and misfor-
tunes, and subsequent tourist experiences of our “heritage that hurts” mediates a sense
of mortality at places of fatality.
Dark tourism has also piqued sustained interest from global print and broadcast me-
dia over the past decade or so. Undoubtedly, the provocative term for the media implies
a focus on death and dying, though in reality, academic interrogation has demonstrated
that dark tourism is more to do with life and the living. Dark tourism has also recently
been brought to the public market with the first-ever tourist guidebook (Stone, 2021),
published a week before Atlas of Dark Tourism, the subject of this book review. The publici-
Laurence King Publishing, 2021
zation of the research field of dark tourism is now under way, and the Atlas of Dark Tourism
ISBN 978-1913947194
has the potential to broaden the appeal of tragic memory to the lay market.
Yet, despite these new tourist guidebooks that allow visitors to sightsee in the man-
https://doi.org/10.31275/20222609
sions of our significant dead, the Atlas of Dark Tourism is neither a practical tourist guide
nor a scholarly publication. With insensitive and inappropriate ratings of stars and cross-
PLATINUM OPEN ACCESS
bones for each site—a so-called “darkometer” arbitrarily created by the author—the book
Creative Commons License 4.0.
CC-BY-NC. Attribution required.
is confusing in terms of its readership objectives. Indeed, the naive “rating” of sites using
No commercial use. stars and crossbones as symbolic markers of “experience” turns this volume from a use-
ful tome to a tabloid manual. Consequently, the erroneous inclusion of the “darkometer”
adds unnecessary sensationalism to visitor sites of tragedy and contested history. There-
fore, this book serves as an interesting compendium of subjectively selected “dark” sites
from the travels of Hohenhaus, a self-declared expert and dark tourist.
With a value for money price tag ($31), this hardcover A4 book comprises 352 pages
and more than 300 potential visitor sites, with an abundance of full-color photos from
across 90 countries. Visitor sites are geographically grouped for expediency, though some
countries have more dark tourism sites than others. For example, Great Britain has eight
allocated sites, Portugal only one, while Germany has twenty-six. Each of the “dark tour-
ism” entries provides a descriptive but readable synopsis, some more succinct than oth-
ers, and include former prisons, concentration camps, nuclear test centers, assassination
spots, medical museums, and ghost towns. The book also includes a surprising feature

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on volcanoes as dark tourism sites, especially considering historical analysis and depth and, consequently, serve
that Hohenhaus states in the Introduction that he wishes only as rudimentary introductions. Thus, this Atlas of Dark
to focus the book on modern (19th century onward) his- Tourism is not a history book either. That said, however,
tories. Nonetheless, much of the book focuses on military the tome may prove useful for students with limited his-
sites or exhibitions, or places associated with the detritus torical knowledge who want a basic introduction to some
of war and conflict. Combined with a military gothic font potential dark tourism sites. Students may wish to further
to highlight each visitor site, and with a black color design, research the sites with case study approaches. Otherwise,
this weighty book appears masculine rather than a universal this is not a particularly well-grounded book for historians
“passport” of discovery it purports to be. Practical tourist or scholars of dark tourism. Instead, in terms of the public
information—that is, addresses, opening times, travel direc- market, this book will appeal to the lay person who might
tions, websites, and a miscellany of other information that wish to rudimentarily “dip into” the world of dark tourism.
permits potential visitation to each of the sites—is omitted
from the narrative. Therefore, this Atlas of Dark Tourism can- REFERENCE
not serve as the tourist guide that it wishes to be. Stone, P. R. (2021). 111 dark places in England that you
Moreover, the uncritical descriptions of each site lack shouldn’t miss. Emons Publishers.

326 JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION • VOL. 36, NO 2 – SUMMER 2022 journalofscientificexploration.org