Do you also want to discover the darkest part of humanity?
Dear reader, are you one of those travelers who goes in search of magnetic sensations Y sinister places ? do you travel wanting to find dark stories untold ?
So he dark tourism it's your thing We have not invented this concept ourselves, it was coined in 1996 when teachers John Lennon and Malcolm Foley from the Scottish University of Glasgow began to investigate people's interest in traveling to sinister locations and related to death.
There are more and more people interested in these types of places, some of them abandoned to their fate, where the mystery can still be breathed in the atmosphere. How not to think about Chernobyl right now?
They can refer to cemeteries , forests, catacombs , islands, prisons, remains of a shipwreck, a lonely beach, a former psychiatric hospital …”. The speaker is Míriam del Río, a journalist specializing in thanatotourism and author of the new book 'Dark tourism. Destinations with dark magnetism' (Ed. Luciérnaga, 2019), where in addition to making known 60 dark places , also delves into the reason for our interest in feeling fear and curiosity about these types of destinations.
Darvaza Hell Gate in Turkmenistan.
“ Dark Tourism born from my special predilection for the gloomy places and with a certain decadence. I have always liked the tranquility of cemeteries and the discovery of areas that have a historical burden behind them”, she adds.
Míriam has collected stories, some only suitable for the brave, from the five continents. Is there anything left to know about Europe? , we ask him.
“Europe is a bottomless pit of stunning locations. There are always new locations to talk about, such as the immersive experience of the War Hostel in Sarajevo , a place that I am going to include in the future second part of Turismo Dark, and that offers to live the siege during the bosnian war (1992-1996). The manager of the hostel was a child at the time who suffered the war in the first person, so he proposes to the visitor spend two nights in the same conditions: without light, or running water, sleeping on the ground... his idea is to prevent the dangers of war and pay tribute to the survivors”.
while for her the great unknown is Oceania . “There you can find mountains that Aboriginal people believe are cursed and are inhabited by an intraterrestrial civilization, the mysterious legend of a yeti in new zealand or the rotten ritual of an ancient tribe from Australia that would make us vomit… ”, she stresses to Traveler.es.
we have rescued eight stories that you will find in her book, if you want to know more about dark tourism you will have to enter the pages of it ...