Difficult definition: what is thanatourism?
Thanatourism is a difficult word to define because it is rarely used. So when we do use it, what exactly do we mean? The most accepted scholar is probably A.V. Seaton. In his 1996 article, From...
View ArticleNew York City’s Hart Island: ghost town, military base, cemetery
This is an interesting story (with photos) of a tour on June 15, 2000. The site toured was Hart Island and the tour was provided by the New York Correction History Society. Hart Island is said to be...
View ArticleArlington National Cemetery tourist attractions and burials
Arlington National Cemetery is a good example of a popular tourist attraction that can be called grief tourism. It’s certainly a place where people go to feel grief, from the Tomb of the Unknowns to...
View ArticleGhost tourism in Scotland
Here’s an article describing some ghost tourism in Scotland. This is actually the 5th page of a mini-series but it talks about a haunted room in Drovers Inn (in Inverarnan). You can also download a...
View ArticleDisaster at Sea – Wilhelm Gustloff
Through the years, countless ships have been lost at sea, the Titanic being the most familiar and much later the Andrea Doria. Yet, there were other lesser known, but even greater disasters that...
View ArticleDrancy – The Tragedy, the Grief, & the Embarrassment
We are all familiar with the Holocaust, known as the Shoah or the Hebrew word for calamity, and the unspeakable tragedies that occurred at concentration camps. Unfortunately, there were other places...
View ArticleIslands of Salvation: Diable, Royale, and St. Joseph
Three islands, Diable, Royale, and St. Joseph, are collectively known as the Iles du Salut, an obvious misnomer for islands that offered no salvation or rehabilitation for prisoners. Located about 6...
View ArticleGettysburg National Military Park – Preservation of Sacred Ground
The Gettysburg battlefields had little significance as a tourist attraction, visited primarily by relatives of the Union soldiers, until Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in November 1863 and the dedication...
View ArticleDescription of a sky burial
If memory serves, our first post on this site was an article by Sharon Slayton about Thanatourism and sky burials in Tibet. Recently I came across a description of a sky burial by Chinese author, Ma...
View ArticleThe Transition of Angola From Plantation Slavery to Prison Confinement
We hear and read about the misery and grief within maximum security prisons in other countries and often find it hard to believe that such torture, abuse, and inhumane living conditions really do...
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