Summer may the ideal time for vacation season, but October is the month for a spooky new phenomenon called “dark tourism”. The goal of dark tourism is to pick a vacation destination that is creepy and not crawling with people in bikinis. Most of these places center around death, destruction and despair.
These “dark tourism” destinations seem interesting…but you still should avoid them. They’re too creepy.
1. Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, Rwanda.
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This memorial commemorates the victims of the Rwandan genocide, which in 1994 killed 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans (almost 20% of the population).
2. Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.
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The infamous concentration camp in south Poland was home to the execution of up to 1.1 million Jews. It has rooms where you can see victims’ collected shoes, glasses and even hair.
3. Alcatraz, California.
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During the years it was open between 1934 and 1963, Alcatraz was said to be America’s strongest prison. That’s probably because it sits on an island 1.25 miles off the coast of San Francisco.
4. Banff Springs Hotel, Canada.
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This sprawling Canadian railway hotel is rumored to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Many venture to the mountains of Alberta just to see the ghosts of a family that was once murdered there.
5. Fukushima, Japan.
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The site of one of the world’s most disastrous and most recent nuclear accidents is suddenly becoming a tourist hot spot. Memorial buildings are being constructed to keep protect guests from the radiation if you so desire to visit this futuristic horror-land.
6. Babenhausen Barracks, Germany.
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This town was once home to Nazi soilders during WWI. It is said that German soldiers can be seen there, still performing drills and shouting through the night.
7. London Dungeon, England
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The London Dungeon takes visitors on a journey through 1,000 years of the bloodiest parts of London’s history.
8. Riddle House, Florida.
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Originally built as a funeral parlor, this house is now a paranormal tourist attraction. It’s famous for the hauntings of at least two of the home’s employees who killed themselves here.
9. Choeung Ek, Cambodia.
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The Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia killed over 1 million people and the Choeung Ek acts as a memorial to this tragedy. 9,000 bodies lay here, scattered throughout the land in mass graves.
10. Ground Zero, New York.
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The National September 11 Memorial & Museum was built to commemorate the victims of one of America’s greatest tragedies.
11. Pompeii, Italy.
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Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, killing much of Pompeii’s population of only 11,000. It wasn’t until 1599 that the site was even found underneath all the debris.
12. Island of the Dolls, Mexico.
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It’s said that a man named Don Julian Santana used to live on a small island south of Mexico City. He supposedly found the body of a drowned girl washed up ashore. He believed her spirit was haunting him so he thought he would appease her by hanging hundreds of dolls in the trees around his house. Soon Santana’s body was found lying in the same place the girl’s body was found.
13. Costa Concordia Shipwreck, Italy
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This recent tragedy occurred when the cruise ship Costa Concordia hit some underwater structure off the coast of Isola del Giglioin 2012 that made it capsize. 32 people were killed.
14. Oradour-sur-Glane, France.
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The Nazis believed one of their officers were being held captive in this French town, so they murdered an entire town in the streets. The town was rebuilt as a memorial to this tragedy.
15. Bran Castle, Romania
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This Romanian castle was once home to Vlad Dracula, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s vampire character with the same name. Dracula might not have been a vampire, but he did have a strange affinity for impaling and stabbing people, which is no less charming.
16. Stull Cemetery, Kansas.
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Known as one of the seven “gateways to hell” this cemetery is supposed to be home to the body of Satan’s only son. When the Pope traveled to America he refused to allow his plane to fly over east Kansas, so that’s a good sign.
17. Leap Castle.
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Features of this vacation destination include a secret dungeon filled with death spikes used to execute prisoners and a chapel called simply “Bloody Chapel” for all the violence that took place there.
18. Suicide Forest, Japan.
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Due to the peacefulness this Japanese dense forest produces, it has become a popular site for people to go and end their life. It is home to over 100 suicides a year.
19. The Ridges, Ohio.
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The Athens Lunatic Asylum (also known as “The Ridges”) was infamous for performing an encouraging the trans-orbital lobotomy. It also had a dangerous tuberculosis ward where many people died.
20. Somme Battlefields, France.
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The Battle of Somme took place in 1916. It was the largest of World War I. More than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The battlefields left behind are historic, but filled with ghosts.
21. Pripyat, Ukraine.
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Pripyat is the town where the Chernobyl nuclear plant workers lived. When the disaster happened in 1986, 31 people died, but many people of the area still suffer from cancers and deformities to this day.
22. Belchite, Spain.
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After the Spanish Civil War, this town was essentially decimated and a new town was built just down the road. The old ruins are still a popular fascination amongst tourists of the most melancholy variety.
23. La Noria Cemetery, Chile.
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This abandoned old Chile mining town has a cemetery that features graves that were never quite fully filled in with dirt, leaving the spirits free to walk around at night.
24. Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic.
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The Czech Republic is home to a chapel decorated with the bones of anywhere between 40,000 and 70,000 people. No surprise that it’s decor is often featured in horror movies.
25. Okpo Land, South Korea.
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After the deaths of two small children this small amusement park closed down, leaving nature to sneakily take it back.
Actually, sitting on a beach and enjoying the sun may be a better vacation than visiting one of these places. Celebrating death and destruction just doesn’t sound like a good idea.
