{"id":9873,"date":"2021-03-15T11:03:16","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T11:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/?p=9873"},"modified":"2023-01-03T13:35:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T13:35:41","slug":"review-i-am-the-dark-tourist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/archive\/review-i-am-the-dark-tourist\/","title":{"rendered":"[Review] I am the Dark Tourist"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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I Am The Dark Tourist<\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Horrified\u2019s Ally Wilkes reviews I am the Dark Tourist by H. E. Sawyer, a thought-provoking, uncomfortable and chilling look at the appeal of \u2018dark tourism\u2019...<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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I\u2019ve dipped my toe into \u2018dark tourism\u2019, large and small. I\u2019ve been on Ripper walks; I\u2019ve visited the epicentre of the bombing of Nagasaki. However, if you asked me why I was interested, I\u2019d probably deflect the question: laugh, and say \u2018I\u2019m just a ghoul\u2019.<\/b><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0I am the Dark Tourist<\/em> by H. E. Sawyer examines not only the \u2018dark tourist\u2019 industry (defined here as \u2018the act of travel to sites of death, destruction or the seemingly macabre\u2019), but also tackles why people feel drawn to visit and explore these sites. It\u2019s a big, interesting, thought-provoking book, lovingly presented in a hardcover edition from Headpress<\/a>. I found it made for compulsive and uncomfortable reading, and would like to note up-front by way of a trigger warning that the book discusses (amongst other things) death, genocide, bodily injuries and mutilation, torture, and suicide. Some of these topics will be touched on in this review.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0There\u2019s simply no getting away from the fact that this book deals \u2013 by its very nature \u2013 with horrific subject matter. Sawyer gives the reader a brief account of the events behind each \u2018dark site\u2019, and these accounts are tough and uncompromising. The sites include the 9\/11 memorial museum; the ghost town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl; Auschwitz-Birkenau; the Killing Fields of Cambodia; and Hiroshima. These \u2013 he says \u2013 make up the \u2018big five\u2019 of dark tourism. Sawyer also takes us to lesser-known locations such as the wreck of the Salem Express ferry, sunk off Egypt in 1991; Aokigahara in Japan, growing in notoriety as the so-called \u2018Suicide Forest\u2019; and (perhaps most controversially) Aberfan in Wales, site of a landfill slide in 1966 which engulfed Pantglas Junior School. Each site is given its own chapter, although there are so many other locations mentioned and referenced that it felt like getting an entire encyclopedia of the subject; the book is crammed with information.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0I am the Dark Tourist<\/em> gets off to what I felt was an inauspicious start: a Ripper walk played for laughs (\u201cYou\u2019ve all come to see where the prostitutes were \u2013 MURRR \u2013 DAAARRRDDD!\u201d), with unhelpful denigration of the looks of one of the Ripper\u2019s victims. However, Sawyer has a far more nuanced approach to his subject than this opening would suggest, and here and elsewhere deconstructs the \u2018Ripper industry\u2019; in the afterword he deals with the controversy surrounding the 2015 opening of the Jack the Ripper<\/a> museum (which was billed as \u2018the only dedicated resource in the East End to women\u2019s history\u2019 and turned out to be \u2013 well, you can probably guess). The book is full of these apparent contradictions and re-evaluations, and I found it genuinely refreshing. No aspect of the dark tourism industry goes unexamined or unquestioned, from the (sometimes horrendously tacky) souvenir shops, to the way we are encouraged to take photographs or selfies at dark sites \u2013 and how those selfies have sometimes led to public internet-based shaming.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0Sawyer relishes digging into what might be shady aspects of (some would say) an already shady industry. For example, he tells us that the Choeung Ek Killing Fields in Cambodia are now leased to a Japanese consortium (which has raised the entry fee), with profits returned to Cambodian government officials; perhaps I\u2019m not qualified to comment, but something feels instinctively difficult about this, given what those deaths meant to Cambodia and its relationship with its own past (explored quite deeply in the chapter entitled \u2018Year Zero\u2019). Meanwhile, some of the larger sites would literally not exist without their torrent of annual visitors, in which the memorialisation of the dead is a self-sustaining industry forced to keep drumming up visitor interest to turn a profit; this is particularly examined in the chapter entitled \u20189\/11 Inc.\u2019 (I\u2019m still intrigued by the paper cranes sold in the 9\/11 gift shop \u2013 as the paper crane is a Japanese symbol of peace, Sawyer tracks down officials at the Peace Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try to get to the bottom of where those $16.95 cranes came from).<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0The question asked repeatedly throughout the book is: who benefits? And more importantly, who should benefit? There are no straightforward answers. Sawyer does, however, show that small-scale dark tourism can benefit those affected by poverty or lasting inequality, mentioning in passing the growing popularity of favela (\u2018shanty-town\u2019) tours in which tourists pay money directly to the community, or his quite moving encounters at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia with two survivors, who now sell their books within the prison walls.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0While this book could easily be simply about the sites and their background, I am the Dark Tourist<\/em> takes time \u2013 in respect of those sites which welcome tourism \u2013 to examine the infrastructure of each, how the \u2018visitor experience\u2019 is framed and stage-managed, and how memorialisation of the dead sits alongside the sites\u2019 various other raison d\u2019\u00eatres, including education. He touches on this most explicitly in \u2018The Promise\u2019, dealing with Auschwitz-Birkenau, and explores the claims of Norman G. Finkelstein (a highly controversial figure) about a \u2018Holocaust Industry\u2019. This was sometimes extremely uncomfortable to read: to be clear, Sawyer considers the extent to which the Holocaust is memorialised and taught while not detracting for a moment from the enormity or evil of the genocide perpetrated. There\u2019s also an intriguing mention of \u2018Jonestown\u2019 in the Guyanese jungle (site of the 1978 People\u2019s Temple cult massacre) and the possibility of developing its infrastructure to allow tourism: the tastefulness or appropriateness of so doing left aside, Sawyer rightly remarks that if they build it, people will come.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0One chapter which I have to single out as personal nightmare fuel was \u2018The Underwater Cort\u00e8ge\u2019, dealing with the 1991 shipwreck of the Salem Express. If you\u2019re claustrophobic, or afraid of drowning or darkness, then this chapter will make tough reading indeed, both in respect of the events causing the wrecks and Sawyer\u2019s (typically excellent) sideways look at the divers who have lost their lives exploring them.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0However, what I haven\u2019t yet mentioned is how personal and moving I am the Dark Tourist<\/em> can be \u2013 and in juxtaposing this element with his wry humour or the dark macabre details, the narrative sometimes provokes an uncomfortable emotional whiplash. Sawyer excels at finding the poignant, human note in the horrors underlying the sites he visits, and there isn\u2019t a single chapter where this deeper engagement isn\u2019t apparent. His entire visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, in particular, is filtered through his obvious love and affection for Sissy, a Slovakian Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who \u2013 he works out later \u2013 must have been imprisoned for some time at that very camp. She asked him to visit \u2018for her\u2019. Her utterly heartbreaking story is threaded through this chapter, presented for scale, to allow us to better appreciate the monstrous darkness of the mass murder done there.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0The book takes in two more controversial \u2018black sites\u2019, in which dark tourism is far from promoted or appreciated, and this is where the book heads into its most interesting \u2013 and new \u2013 territory. \u2018Yellow-San\u2019 deals with Aokigahara, made increasingly visible through the distasteful antics of \u2018influencers\u2019 or YouTubers trying to find a story in the Suicide Forest. Sawyer both visits the forest and goes off-trail looking for bodies, which some will find crosses a significant moral boundary. (Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the immediacy of the death and how necessarily personal it is \u2013 not filtered through the distancing lens of time and mass casualties).<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0Sawyer explains his intentions with reference to the 2016 documentary Aokigahara \u2013 Inside the Suicide Forest<\/i>, which asks the question: \u2018Does one really need to see this with your own eyes?\u2019 and Sawyer answers: \u2018The answer was that I did, if only to see what happened when I was within the trees, and to discover what I felt as a result, even if that might admittedly be self-revulsion. As Friedrich Nietzsche also noted, \u201cThe doer alone learneth.\u201d\u2019 What he finds is haunting, poignant, and crept so close towards voyeurism that I genuinely found it hard to keep reading. The chapter ends with details of crisis lines, and if there\u2019s one criticism I have of this volume\u2019s generally excellent presentation, it\u2019s that a set of trigger warnings \u2013 and those crisis lines \u2013 might usefully have been presented up-front.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0The final \u2018black site\u2019, and \u2013 in my view \u2013 the most difficult to justify visiting, was Aberfan in South Wales. This small community has made it plain that they do not welcome casual sightseers, and many survivors and bereaved families still live there. In \u2018The Village\u2019 Sawyer presents the story of the horrifying disaster and its aftermath, but given the lack of any tourist infrastructure or anything to \u2018visit\u2019 beyond the village memorial and the local library, this assumes a greater weight than in previous chapters. As he remarks: \u2018The continued protection of the dead from any form of exploitation allows the community to hold a mirror up to reflect any visitor\u2019s true motives for being there in the first place.\u2019 Given that the only thing to do in Aberfan is pay your respects, any \u2018ghoul\u2019 will feel uncomfortable and out of place, and it\u2019s testament to the strength of Sawyer\u2019s writing that this transmits to the reader.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0Throughout the book, Sawyer intensely examines his own motivations for visiting these sites, and his lifelong fascination with death and the dead. It all comes together in \u2018Skeletons\u2019, offering an unexpected and very personal conclusion: dark tourism as coping mechanism and catharsis. I ended the book with the urge to interrogate a lot of my own interests (this book would make an exceptional double-bill with Peter Laws\u2019 The Frighteners<\/em>) and feeling like I\u2019d been taken on a very difficult \u2013 dare I say it? \u2013 journey. This book won\u2019t be for everyone, and it deals with topics which will make many people upset or uncomfortable: Sawyer notes on the last page that \u2018There\u2019s little value writing about a subject unless there is someone who would prefer it if you did not.\u2019 But it\u2019s intensely fascinating, and begs to be read \u2013 then put down \u2013 then picked back up again.<\/p>

Purchase a copy of I am the Dark Tourist by clicking the image below…<\/p>

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Ally (she\/they) is Horrified\u2019s Book Reviews Editor, which is very fitting for someone so obsessed with books and horror. A Greenwich-based writer of ghost stories, cosmic horror, and the weird, Ally's debut novel ALL THE WHITE SPACES (supernatural horror set in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration) is coming in January 2022. Screamings on Twitter @UnheimlichManvr<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Tales From The Crypt 1972 \/ Freddie Francis Where does one start with examining arguably Amicus\u2019 greatest portmanteau film? Well, for me, wiping away the<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Horrified\u2019s Ally Wilkes reviews I am the Dark Tourist by H. E. Sawyer, a thought-provoking, uncomfortable and chilling look at the appeal of \u2018dark tourism\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2030],"tags":[480,1612,1613],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/i-am-the-dark-tourist.jpg?fit=1002%2C663&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122714,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions\/122714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}