7 - Ghost and Crime Tours, Deadly Towns and Disaster Tourism

Summary

This chapter looks at ‘deadly towns’, ghost and crime tours, tourism associated with natural disasters and the growing nature of online dark tourism, which may bolster knowledge of rural locations too remote to access in person. According to Addeo et al (2021a, 280), the role of the media has increased dark and disaster tourism, and ‘once a disaster has been publicised, it becomes an attraction to those who, for whatever reason, wish to travel to gaze upon it’ (Sharpley and Wright, 2018, 336). Further, many of the locations discussed in this chapter are not formally recognised tourist destinations and some have an associated level of danger attached to visiting these sites. For certain tourists, there may be excitement, pleasure and heightened emotions linked with the prospect of visiting a site where there are restrictions and prohibitions (Addeo et al, 2021b, 213).

Furthermore, the increased use of social media is both encouraging tourism and offering new avenues for ‘dark tourism’. For example, as will be explored in this chapter, Instagram has been accused of motivating tourists to travel to remote and risky destinations in search of the perfect selfie; and online social media sites offer free advertising as well as ‘shared spaces online for dark tourists to communicate, share experiences and discuss how such places affect and influence them’ (Bolan and Simone-Charteris, 2018, 731). There are also dedicated ‘dark tourism’ websites directing people to various locations across the globe, and a growing number of publications focus on advertising such destinations. For example, Peter Hohenhaus (2021) recently published Atlas of Dark Destinations: Explore the World of Dark Tourism advertising (and rating by ‘darkness’) dark sites across the world.

Ghost and crime tourism

Notoriety can often overtake small towns. Impromptu tourism to sites of murder and crime continues to occur across the world, and the sites themselves become irrevocably intertwined with the name of the location. As Heidelberg (2015, 74) outlines, following the killing of the DeFeo family by their son Ronald on 13 November 1974, Amityville, United States, ‘is no longer a quiet, small town community; it is linked to the Amityville Horror and is a dark tourism destination’. Many communities have scandals or tragedies, but in many rural locations, these ghosts become the new town identity, and ‘give small communities like Amityville a level of long-term fame they never anticipated.