When we think of a tourist, we generally envision people wearing large hats and moving around in open-top buses with cameras hanging off their necks. Or they could just be sunbathing on the beaches in their bikinis and shorts. But there’s more to travel than just that.

As we are about to find out, there are a bunch of different types of tourism, many of which do not conform to the basic stereotype of a tourist. These forms of tourism can be controversial and even dangerous. And even if they’re not likely to cause uproar or get someone killed, there are some bona fide weird ways to travel out there.

10 Jihad Tourism

When the Syrian war was in full gear and the Islamic State (aka ISIS) controlled considerable chunks of Iraq and Syria, several Western nations faced a surge in citizens leaving to fight for Islamist groups like ISIS. These people are called jihad tourists: Muslim citizens who leave their nation to get involved in a war that is none of their business.

Interestingly, not all jihad tourists fight. Like regular travelers, most are just there for sightseeing. They serve no particular purpose other than to swell the ranks of the terrorist group and maybe brag of being terrorists. Osama bin Laden himself was a jihad tourist. He left Saudi Arabia to fight for the mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The ranks of the mujahideen were filled with jihad tourists.

Most countries remain skeptical of the long-term consequences of having their citizens travel to other countries for jihad. There is the fear that some of these terrorist-tourists will return home when the war is over or when they can no longer cope with its rigors, only to carry out domestic terrorist attacks.^[1]

9 Slum Tourism

Slum, adventure, reality, or poverty tourism refers to a form of tourism by people who only want to satisfy their curiosity. Slum tourists will visit the congested, poverty-ridden slums of a country just to see what they look like. Popular destinations include Manila in the Philippines, Rio de Janerio in Brazil, and Mumbai in India.

Tour operators in the affected countries have noticed an upsurge in slum tourists and have created special tour packages to cater to these people. Nevertheless, slum tourism remains controversial. While supporters say it is a way to raise awareness of poverty, the people on the other side insist it is only an excuse to stare at the poor.

Interestingly, slum tourism used to be popular in the US. During the 19th century, rich and curious Londoners would travel to see the prostitution- and drug-ridden slums of New York and San Francisco. An entire industry sprang up around slum tourism at the time, with tour operators hiring actors to pose as drug users and gang members. Some actors took their act further by engaging in staged shoot-outs right on the streets, just to satisfy the ignorant tourists.^[2]

8 Suicide Tourism

Assisted suicide, the act of helping someone commit suicide, is illegal in some countries. But not in Switzerland. Today, Switzerland is seeing a new kind of vistor: suicide tourists. Suicide tourists are people who travel from their countries to access assisted suicide services in Switzerland.

Suicide tourism is as controversial as assisted suicide and regular suicide, if not more so. Supporters of suicide tourism will often point to the fact that the majority of the tourists are suffering and wish to die. Why else would they travel from a faraway country to Switzerland, where they have no family or relatives, just to be helped to die? Supporters also say suicide tourism can only be prevented if the tourists are allowed to commit suicide in their own countries.^[3]

7 Experimental Tourism

“Experimental tourism” is a catchall phrase for the act of trying something new. There is no hard and fast rule on what qualifies as experimental tourism, as any unusual form of excursion counts. You do not need to leave your hometown to become an experimental tourist. A trip to your city’s airport can qualify as experimental tourism.

If you do decide to leave your city, a trip to the government offices in the nearby city qualifies as experimental tourism. If you want something more unconventional, you could just get a map of a city, draw a line through its streets, and follow that line in the real world. Or you could visit a new city blindfolded and be guided throughout your trip by your friend. You leave blindfolded, too, so you do not get to see the city at all.^[4]

6 Disaster Tourism

Disaster tourists are people who travel to areas that have been destroyed by natural or man-made disasters. This form of tourism is alternatively called dark tourism. The tourists are only interested in satisfying their curiosity and seeing firsthand the effects of the disaster.

Popular disaster tourist attractions in the US include Pearl Harbor, which was bombed by the Japanese during World War II, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Gettysburg was the deadliest battlefield of the US Civil War, amounting to over 50,000 casualties in just three days. Other disaster tourist attractions include the places where Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King were assassinated.

Outside the US, there are Hiroshima, Pompeii, and concentration camps operated by the Nazis. Disaster tourists are not all about history and will readily flock to areas recently affected by disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and, maybe, wars. Lots of people visited New Orleans to see the aftereffects of the devastating Hurricane Katrina.^[5]

In 2015, a tour agency in Russia offered to take disaster tourists to Syria so that they could see the ongoing war firsthand. While most of the tour was to be focused on the rear, the agency said it planned to take people to the front lines if it got the chance. The Syrian government itself wants tourists to come into the country despite the war and continues promoting the nation as a tourist attraction.

5 Sex Tourism

As should already be obvious from its name, sex tourists are those who travel to another country for sex. Most of the time, the tourist will be traveling from a developed nation to a less developed one. It used to be the exclusive province of Western tourists, but more sex tourists are now coming from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

Popular sex destinations include Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. Sex tourism is so important to the economy of countries like Thailand that it already contributes around 12 percent of its gross domestic product. The tourists themselves want to explore sex in total freedom without having to worry about what would have happened if they were in their home country.

Sex tourism is not without controversies. It is basically prostitution, which is the leading cause of human trafficking. Prostitution and sex trafficking rings are often run by criminals. The prostitutes themselves are generally unable to speak out, since prostitution is usually still technically illegal in the destination countries.^[6]

4 Gun Tourism

Unlike the United States, not every country allows its citizens own assault and sniper rifles. In some nations, getting a pistol is almost impossible. Some citizens of Australia and countries in Asia and Europe who wish to lay their itchy fingers on firearms will travel to the US to scratch their itch.

Not every gun tourist comes to the US as a gun tourist. Some are regular travelers who become gun tourists the moment they decide to satisfy their curiosity at shooting ranges. Others are Americans who cannot afford to buy guns or are curious about shooting a particular type of gun. Hawaii and Las Vegas are popular gun tourist destinations.^[7]Hawaii is the more popular destination. Shooting ranges will hire boys to stand by the roadside and share fliers with tourists advertising their services. Interested tourists, many of whom have never fired a gun before, are taken to the indoor shooting ranges, where they can fire up to four different weapons, depending on the package they select.

3 Atomic Tourism

As you probably guessed from the name, atomic tourism is centered around nuclear weapons. Atomic tourists will often visit nuclear museums, areas crucial to the development of nuclear weapons, or areas that have been destroyed by nuclear weapons or nuclear reactor meltdowns.

Popular destinations in the US include the Titan Missile Museum in Tucson, Arizona, where nuclear missiles used to be stored. Here, curious tourists can even enter a missile silo. There is also the Trinity test site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945. Tourists are only allowed in on selected dates twice a year and can even visit the exact spot where the bomb was detonated.

There are also the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the first nuclear reactor was built and plutonium was produced for the first atomic bomb, and the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where it was enriched. Another is the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where curious tourists can learn about nuclear reactors.

Outside the US, there are the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the Hiroshima Peace Site, where tourists can learn about the bombs dropped by the US during World War II. In Ukraine, tourists can visit the areas around Chernobyl, which suffered a nuclear meltdown in 1986. The tour includes a visit to the deserted town of Pripyat, which was abandoned after the meltdown.^[8]

2 Drug Tourism

Drug tourism, the act of leaving your country for another with the sole intention of doing drugs, is increasingly becoming a niche industry in drug-producing nations like Colombia. Western and Australian tourists will often travel to Colombia just to buy and use cocaine.

The niche is growing because cocaine is dirt cheap in Colombia, at least by Western standards. In Australia, a gram of cocaine is sold for $300. In Colombia, it goes for between $7 and $15. It is also easy to buy cocaine in Colombia, where it is sold on the streets.

Sellers will often hang around the areas foreigners visit. Or they could just stand by the roadside hawking sweets and chewing gum but with their hidden stash of cocaine ready for buyers who know what’s up. Police rarely disturb drug sellers, provided they are bribed. Sometimes, the police set foreign tourists up with drugs just to receive bribes as low as $1.^[9]

1 Tombstone Tourism

Tombstone tourists are travelers who love visiting cemeteries. While this usually involves cemeteries containing the remains of famous people or national heroes, absolutely any cemetery with an interesting history can be a destination. Popular cemeteries visited by tombstone tourists include Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC, and Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.^[10]

Pere Lachaise Cemetery is the resting place of singer Jim Morrison. Tourists will often leave half-smoked cigarettes on his grave. Another famous resident of Pere Lachaise is writer Oscar Wilde. He obviously has a lot of female fans because they will always leave him notes and napkins stained with lipstick.

Tombstone tourism is not a new thing. It has been around since Victorian England. The Victorian Brits had a thing for cemeteries and built a good chunk of Britain’s cemeteries. However, people started staying away from cemeteries after the calamities of the World Wars I and II.

From time to time, we need to get away from it all—well, from everything, at least, but our hobbies. More and more, people seek to combine tourism with hobbies as a way to double their fun. While some of us are attracted to the types of hobbies that many cozy mystery writers tend to focus on in their novels, others seek thrills, engaging in hobbies involving high-risk adventures or seek out the unusual and the exotic.

Whether your own hobby is observing sharks swimming past you in the ocean, investigating allegedly haunted locations, chasing storms, tracking killers, visiting battlefields, being freaked out by instruments of torture, exploring castles, wandering burial grounds, scouting film locations, or visiting the mean streets of the world, there’s a type of tourism just for you; it is probably on this list.

Related: Top 10 Iconic Places Pictured From Behind

10 Shark Tourism

If you were a typical tourist, you might not expect to hear the ominous music of the Jaws theme song, signaling the appearance of the movie’s monstrous great white shark. However, if you are a shark tourism enthusiast, the frantic notes might be all you imagine when you encounter one of these fearsome marine “monsters” swimming by your chartered boat.

Shark tourism has become popular off Massachusetts’s Cape Cod, as more and more charter boat services compete to offer tourists a chance to marvel at a great white shark in an up-close and personal manner that is all but guaranteed to thrill. The addition of shark spotting has been added to the established nautical tourist pursuits of whale and seal watching.

During a September 2021 excursion, two newcomers to shark tourism, construction foreman Michael Simard and his partner Penny Antonoglou, a civil engineer, found the experience exhilarating. “It’s awe-inspiring, really,” Simard enthused, adding, “I didn’t realize how graceful they were. It does put it into perspective that this is their element, and we just share it with them.”

The local charter boat operators have successfully transformed a negative—shark attacks against humans—into a positive, as the public has begun, albeit “tentatively,” to appreciate the opportunity to scout the waters for sharks. Shark tourism is not hurt by the existence of The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, and its renovated Shark Center, which displays the results of its research concerning local sharks, and by the presence of merchants selling shark-related merchandise, such as jewelry, stickers, and apparel. The stretches of beaches also lure visitors, including shark tourists like Simard and Antonoglou.

Not all local residents are as keen on shark tourism as visiting tourists. In addition to more training and equipment for lifeguards, there is a demand for “proactive shark safety measures, such as undersea detection, land-based warning systems and drone surveillance,” Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo says, adding that, meanwhile, “local surfers have taken to arming themselves with shark repellents, including personal devices that emit electrical fields that supposedly deter but don’t harm sharks.”

Despite the costs of chartered tours, which range from $1,600 to $2,500 per six-passenger boat, shark tourism does not appear in danger of foundering anytime soon.

9 Ghost Tourism

If shark tourism is not for you, maybe ghost tourism is a better fit. If so, you are in luck: lots of cities offer ghost tours. One such metropolis is Washington, D. C. Along with museums, art galleries, theaters, parks, a zoo, a botanical garden, and a host of other amusements, including Congress, the city includes among its attractions a number of ghost tours. You don’t have to go during “tourist season,” either; several of the tours operate year-round.

According to a Washington.org article on the topic, you can tour historic Georgetown, home of the external staircase seen in The Exorcist; historic Oak Hill Cemetery; and the pre-revolutionary Old Stone House, among other sites.

Across the street from the White House, you can visit Lafayette Park, where guides will regale you with conspiracy tales, accounts of “crimes of passion,” stories of duels, and reports of assassinations, each of which has supposedly resulted in a haunting. The spooky stories will likely make your hair stand on end.

The Executive Mansion itself may be off-limits, but a tour of Capitol Hill will alert you to the dangers of legislative wrangling and acquaint you with the “dancing statues” in Statuary Hall and with the mysterious cat that is said to be associated with the Lincoln conspiracy trial. There are plenty of other ghost tours, too, not only in Washington, D. C., but also in other cities across the country and around the world, so ghost tourism, it seems safe to say, is not likely to disappear.

8 Storm Tourism

“It was a dark and stormy night”: the opening sentence of Edward Bulwer-Lytton ‘s novel, Paul Clifford, perfectly summarizes the appeal of storm tourism, which has become quite a boon for places located in regions characterized by inclement weather. A form of ecotourism, it is perfect for travelers bold enough to brave the elements at their fiercest. Storm tourists are driven, suggests Charles McDiarmid, Wickaninnish Inn’s managing director, by their need to experience, firsthand, “huge winds, thirty-foot waves, and driving rain,” for it is, in such moments, that “Mother Nature comes alive.”

The inn, located in Tofino, British Columbia, Canada, on the Pacific coast, offers a view of the ocean that is clear all the way to Japan. The setting is beset by forceful, “battering” weather effects, and each of the inn’s rooms, in addition to a fireplace and a view of the ocean, offers a closet stocked with “a complete storm kit—rain slickers and boots sized-to-fit each guest”—perfect for exploring threatening weather. Once, the area might have been subject to seasonal tourism, but, for weather tourists, as McDiarmid notes, “There is no off-season anymore.”

7 True Crime Tourism

True crime is another form of tourism for travelers with enough intestinal fortitude to visit gruesome crime scenes, and the several Jack the Ripper walking tours in east London’s Whitechapel area are not the only choices intrepid travelers have; a continental destination that true crime tourists will not likely want to miss is the five-day tour of fabled Transylvania, where, according to NBC News, Vlad the Impaler, “who is estimated to have killed 80,000 people,” may have, on one occasion, “dined among a veritable forest of defeated warriors writhing on impaled poles.”

The United States also offers plenty for fans of American true crime television series. In Los Angeles, California, true crime tourists may opt to visit the former stomping—or stalking—grounds—of Charles Manson and his “family.” The serial killer known as The Axman is one of the main draws for New Orleans, where he split his victims’ heads open after breaking into their houses. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is famous for its beer—and infamous for its cannibalistic serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. Tourists can take a walk, so to speak, in his shoes, or, if they prefer, they can tread the ground of New York City’s murderous 19-century gangs.

Not to be outdone by the Big Apple, Chicago, the “Windy City,” offers bus tours of sadistic H. H. Holmes’s unhappy hunting grounds. Other possibilities include tours that trace Ted Bundy’s wanderings around Capitol Hill in Seattle, Washington, and the Museum of Death in Hollywood, California.

6 Battlefield Tourism

Not everyone can fight a particular battle, and no one today can fight one that occurred in the past. These may be two motives for travelers who engage in battlefield tourism. By visiting battlefields, they can get a sense of what it might have been like to fight a specific battle in a particular war for a certain reason. Besides, as University of Glasgow graduate student Stephen Thomas Miles points out in his 2012 PhD thesis, battlefields are steeped in the “historic, cultural, nationalistic and moral” elements of a nation’s past, elements which continue, in the present, to resonate “to people on a national as well as a local scale.”

His thesis examines four historic United Kingdom battlefields in particular, those of Hastings (1066), Bannockburn (1314) , Bosworth (1485) and Culloden (1746), and the World War I Western Front in France and Belgium. What do the four UK sites “mean” to the tourists who visit them, he wanted to know, and how does the actual Front stack up to its visitors’ experiences?

The commercialization of battlefield sites, he found, diminished visitor’s “visceral . . . experience,” while the “grief” that visitors associated with the Front “eclipsed” its “deeper meanings,” by which he means, it seems, its “historic, cultural, nationalistic and moral” elements. In short, commercialization expunged the emotional impact of such sites, while battlefields that were not commercialized retained much of their raw, emotional power.

5 Torture Tourism

Devotees of torture tourism need to be on their guard: a lot of the sites that purport to exhibit genuine instruments of torture feature inauthentic items. However, for the discerning torture tourist, the real deal is available. The Tower of London showcases exhibits that replicate the history of the practice of inflicting excruciating pain, a method by which criminal suspects and women accused of practicing witchcraft were “persuaded” to confess. As “Rick Steven’s Europe” points out, “The Tower was a gleaming reminder of the monarch’s absolute power over his subjects.” The “limb-stretching rack” is only one of the reminders of the monarch’s divine right to rule that is on hand in the Tower.

If torture excites you, add these other authentic sites to your itinerary: the Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenberg, Germany, and its “instruments of punishment and execution”; southwestern France’s Maison Forte de Reignac, and its “60 instruments of torture,” which include an iron maiden; and Belgium’s Gravensteen fortress, home to the finger screw and a waterboarding exhibit. Any torture tourist is bound to agree with Huckleberry Finn’s observation that “human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

4 Castle Tourism

Castle tourism, a good adjunct to torture tourism, has plenty of attractions to offer sightseers. There are thousands of castles across Europe. These magnificent edifices, combining residential apartments and administrative chambers with extraordinary defenses, also exist in Africa, Asia, North America, and South America.

One fortification that captures a lot of castle tourists’ attention is Bran Castle, which is better known by its nickname “Dracula’s Castle.” Located in Transylvania, a region of Romania, the castle’s pale-gray stone walls rise from a fountain of rock amid the forested side of a mountain overlooking green fields, high hills, and evergreens. The sight elicits a sense of majesty and history; in its shadow, a tourist is likely to feel that he or she stands in the presence of majesty.

Outside, visitors see the castle’s courtyard and the elevated corridors, staircases, walls, and roofs that surround it. Upon entering the castle, a row of photographic portraits greets visitors: the likenesses of the castle’s owners, from the late Middle Ages to the early 20th century. In both Romanian and English, a display recounts the history of the castle from 1400 onward.

Steep staircases wind their way to upper floors, and tourists glimpse arched doors of rough wooden planks, before, entering the castle’s apartments and rooms, they are presented with sights of ornately carved furniture; finished stone fireplaces; framed tapestries; chandeliers; paintings; and a host of other decorative, artistic, and utilitarian articles.

When it seems that the top has been reached, there are yet more flights of stairs, more floors, more rooms, more exhibits, more artifacts, more surprises to see: fine furniture, suits of armor, shields, maces, lances, swords and knives, gowns and dresses, and lordly attire.

Not all is glamour and beauty, however: there is also the rack; the iron maiden; a wooden chair, the back, seat, and sides of which are equipped with rows of large, sharp spikes; and other instruments of torture just as horrible to contemplate.

Dracula himself is the only exhibit tourists won’t find in the castle. Despite its nickname, Dracula’s Castle was never associated with the Prince of Darkness. As Duncan Light points out in his book Dark Tourism: Practice and Interpretation, “Castle Dracula . . . never existed outside [Bram] Stoker’s imagination,” and, in fact, the association between the vampire and Bran Castle is not something the Romanian government encourages. Still, it is a nice place to visit, even if Dracula never lived there.

There are dozens of tours of the Palace of Versailles. According to the website Viator, the palace has come a long way from its humble beginning as a “hunting lodge”; today, it “features 700 rooms replete with frescoed ceilings and carvings,” as well as its Versailles Gardens, “which brim with geometrically designed walkways and fountains.” The Palace’s beauty and grandeur are beyond words; to be believed, it must be seen. Many tourists would agree that “no visit to France is complete without experiencing the grandeur.”

Fortunately, reasonably priced tours allow visitors to take in the sights of the palace and its environs. One focuses on a tour of the gardens and brings visitors up to speed on the palace’s former resident, King Louis XIV. A second tour takes visitors inside the palace, where they can marvel at the luxurious rooms in the “playground of the French monarchs.” A third alternative includes a tour of the gardens of Claude Monet’s house in nearby Giverny, which inspired many of the artist’s impressionistic paintings. Other possibilities include small-group tours; walking tours; bicycle tours; bus tours; tours by train; “access to the Queen’s Hamlet”; and an “optional fountain show.”

Many of the tours are affordable, but a few are more costly. The most expensive one, which provides an 8- to 12-hour excursion to Versailles and Giverny, is by chauffeured limousine and includes bottled water and lunch at a restaurant selected in advance by the tour’s group, which can number up to four.

3 Cemetery Tourism

Cemetery tourism? Yes, it is one of the relatively new types that has recently captivated the public—or, at least, a portion of the public. As with the other tourism destinations on this list, cemeteries in various parts of the world offer tours of their premises, despite the fact that few, if any, visitors express any interest in buying a tomb of their own so they can become permanent guests.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, or “The Big Easy,” as it is more affectionately known, cemetery tourists often visit St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 for an “educational walk” through the graveyard before checking the allegedly haunted museum, a mortuary chapel, and other points of interest. According to U. S. News & World Report, the cemetery is home, so to speak, to “the city’s famous Voodoo queen Marie Laveau.”

The same cemetery also includes the tomb of civil right activist Homer Plessy and will become “the future resting place of Nicolas Cage.” Other tours of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and other of local graveyards focus on jazz, the tomb’s architecture, ghosts (of course), cemetery history, voodoo, “above-ground burial practices . . . . [and] prostitution, politics and New Orleans folklore.” In death, as in life, there is something, it seems, for everyone.

The distinction of being the most-visited cemetery of the world belongs to Père-Lachaise, the 100-acre park on the northeast side of Paris, France. Its 70,000 tombs make it the city’s largest burial ground as well. As well-known for its history as for its beauty, it opened for business in 1804, but, at that time, it was located on the edge of town, to guard against “the possibility of disease spreading from the other overcrowded cemeteries,” a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio article states.

Napoleon Bonaparte flexed his marketing skills in his promotion of the cemetery by having the remains of Henry III’s wife Eleanor of Provence, poet Jean de la Fontaine, and playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (better known as Molière) relocated to the new graveyard. As the CBC Radio article observes, “Not long after, Père Lachaise became the place to be.”

Since then, many other celebrities from all walks of life have selected Père-Lachaise as their final resting place. Included among this august group are composer Frederic Chopin, minus his heart, which reposes in Poland; opera singer Maria Callas; singer and cabaret performer Edith Piaf; and mime artist Marcel Marceau. A couple of the interred are not French. One, author Oscar Wilde, was Irish; the other, rock star Jim Morrison, was American. It’s not difficult to see why so many tourists flock to Père-Lachaise.

2 Film Tourism

According to Forbes, in 2019, the film industry made $101 billion USD worldwide. Obviously, such revenue suggests a huge international fan base, some of whom are film tourists as well as moviegoers.

Lots of movie locations draw tourists, including, besides Los Angeles itself, pretty much anywhere else a popular film has been shot. New Zealand is no exception. As Jared Cowan’s Los Angeles Magazine article points out, “A number of analyses credit the New Zealand locations from The Lord of the Rings trilogy with bringing film tourism into the mainstream.” Companies are only too happy to offer tours, ranging from the $139 half-day tour to the $5,100 fourteen-day alternative, but, for budget-conscious travelers, “fans can venture to some of their favorite filming locations” free of charge, especially if the sites are located in Tinsel Town.

The house that appeared in Father of the Bride (1991), starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, “has become an attraction in its own right,” the article notes, as has Cassell’s Music, the store featured in Wayne’s World (1992), with Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey. Eckhart Auto Body, of 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love fame, starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, is also a favorite spot on the film tourism circuit, as is the Craftsman house that appears in Neighbors (2014) starring Seth Rogers and Zac Efron.

The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, a filming location for The Fog (1980), starring Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis; the house that doubled for the Marty McFly residence in Back to the Future (1985), with Michael J. Fox; and Nancy Thompson’s house in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), starring Heather Langenkemp, John Saxon, and Robert Englund, all remain hot spots for film tourists.

Plenty of other filming locations are popular destinations for budget-minded film tourists, but many of them are private property, and visitors are expected to respect the owners’ rights and are reminded, Please, don’t eat the daisies!

1 Slum Tourism

Needless to say, some sightseeing pursuits can be controversial. It is safe to say that slum tourism is one such pastime. Having had its start over a century ago, when, as Christine Bednarz points out in her National Geographic article, “rich Londoners began braving the city’s ill-reputed East End beginning around 1840,” the dubious diversion soon spread to rich New Yorkers, who enjoyed checking out the “brothels, saloons, and opium dens” in such areas of the city as the Bowery or Five Points. As Bednarz observes, “Visitors could hardly believe their eyes.”

Since those early days, slum tourism has spread to many other cities, including the “dark alleys and corrugated shacks of the slums” of Dharavi in Mumbai, India; the “racially segregated areas” of South African townships; the towering mazes of mountainside favelas in Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities; and many other such places of poverty and despair, such as the cemetery slums (and others) in the City of Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

Some condemn slum tourism as a haughty and disdainful taking of pleasure in the misery of others, a form of reprehensible schadenfreude based on privilege. Others defend such outings, maintaining that these jaunts increase the awareness of the “haves” who, otherwise, might remain ignorant of the plight of the “have-nots.” In addition, slum tourism may reveal opportunities for the privileged to provide meaningful assistance to the disadvantaged. It is better to know than to ignore, advocates add, and it is better yet, to assist.

To many, radiation is a modern specter of death, an invisible killer that withers once-healthy victims down to nothing. This technological boogeyman has taken lives and rendered places uninhabitable for generations. Of course, we’re exposed to various forms of radiation every day, but, as is true of many things, too much of it is lethal, exacting a devastating toll on the body.

SEE ALSO: 10 Of The World’s Deadliest Tourist Destinations

With the fearful associations of radiation in mind, it may seem counterintuitive that some locations which have seen a greater-than-average amount of the stuff draw tourists. Nevertheless, that is precisely the case in a number of spots around the world. For various reasons, nuclear test sites, radioactive mines, disaster zones, and more receive visitors regularly. Here are five distinct examples.

5 Stunning Blue Water

Australia’s Mary Kathleen uranium mine opened in the northwestern part of Queensland during the 1950s. Situated 3.7 miles (6 km) away was the eponymous mining town. At one time, its population numbered roughly 1,000, and the community featured a school, post office, movie theater, bank, and more. The mine operated until 1963, supplying the UK Atomic Energy Authority until Mary Kathleen Uranium Limited’s contract with the former was fulfilled. The mine reopened in 1974 and supplied several foreign power companies until 1982, when the mine ran dry.

It was subsequently closed, and the town’s buildings were removed. All that was left were foundations, a sign in the former town square, and a pit flooded with dank, green water. Somewhere along the line, due to various chemicals being released from the rock, that water turned a brilliant, vibrant blue. As a result, Mary Kathleen has a new population of sorts: Instagram users. Much like a similarly colorful site near Novosibirsk in Russia, the picturesque water in Mary Kathleen’s pit is motivating tourists to trek out to the site in order to obtain images that will be the envy of their friends on social media.

Is it safe to do so? According to Dr. Gavin Mudd of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, radiation levels at the site are higher than typical background levels, but four-wheeling out there for a few eye-wateringly azure selfies won’t cause any real radiological harm. All the same, he advises trying to minimize the time spent at the pit, and certainly don’t swim in the water or drink any of it. The water’s slight radioactivity aside, that blue color is due to a soup of chemicals that aren’t recommended for ingestion.^[1]

4 Hike Up A Sarcophagus Of Nuclear Waste

Standing in stark contrast to the green landscape around it is a barren, gray mound of rock near Weldon Spring, Missouri. The mound and surrounding lands have a storied history. During World War II, explosives were produced here. During the Cold War, uranium for nuclear weapons was enriched at the Weldon Spring Site. This went on until the late 1960s. After the fact, piles of uranium, radium, TNT, asbestos, and more were left behind. Ultimately, the solution was to encase the radioactive and chemical waste in a large, man-made hill. Today, it’s a tourist attraction.

The hill is officially called the Weldon Spring Site Remedial Action Project Disposal Cell, though it is also referred to as the “Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail.” Visitors can walk a set of stairs to the top of the mound, which offers a good view of the surrounding areas, given the flat terrain around the hill. The top is also popular with amateur astronomers at night and birdwatchers during the day. Nearby is a small museum with information about the mound and surrounding site. You might be relieved to know that more went into the disposal cell’s construction than simply covering a pile of nuclear waste with rocks.

According to two former security guards at the Weldon Spring Site, some visitors are afraid to climb the hill, given what’s encased below. The fact that absolutely nothing grows on the mound probably doesn’t inspire confidence, either. (The lack of vegetation was very much intended by the hill’s builders.) On the other hand, one of the guards noted that he worked there for 11 years and suffered no ill effects.^[2]

3 Tour A Nuclear Test Site

From 1956 to 1963, the British government conducted nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga, a site in South Australia. Seven devices were detonated, the largest of which was 27 kilotons. The late 1960s saw an early attempt at cleanup in the form of turning over the surface layers of soil, thus mixing them with the uncontaminated soil below. Twenty-two pits were filled with leftover bits of nuclear firings and capped with concrete. It is estimated that these pits contain a total of 8.8 pounds (4 kg) of plutonium. During the late 1990s, a much more thorough cleanup involved the removal and burial of hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of radioactive soil. The vehicles used for this operation were also buried.

The land was eventually returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja people. Having no desire to live full-time on land which was ground zero for several nuclear blasts, they instead made it a place for tourism. Today, you can take a bus tour of the Maralinga site. Highlights include the abandoned military village and airfield and, of course, markers denoting the locations of several nuclear detonations. Bits of sand fused into glass remain strewn about the desert terrain. Tourists can also visit the pits where the vehicles from the final cleanup were buried. (They’ve been capped with 16 feet [5 m] of clean soil.)

Maralinga saw far fewer nuclear explosions than other test sites around the world, so most of it is considered safe. One zone remains off-limits and is expected to be so for 25,000 years, but the tour buses do not come near this area. Visitors to the unrestricted areas are advised not to dig into the dirt, however. Those who abide by this rule should receive less than 1 millisievert of radiation during their visit.^[3]

2 A Healthy Dose Of Radon?

Radon is widely considered to a harmful gas. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and radioactive. The US Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization regard it as a carcinogen. Despite this, some people swear that radon is a viable treatment for certain conditions, such as arthritis. As such, a number of caves and mines which people deliberately enter in order to be exposed to high concentrations of the gas exist around the world. One such location is the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder, Montana.

The facility began as a uranium mine in 1949 but switched to offering radon therapy three years later. Visitors can descend 85 feet (26 m) below the ground to relax in the mine, inhaling radon-rich air. The temperature averages 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13 °C), so warm clothing is a good idea. Heat lamps are also available. If one is claustrophobic, an aboveground “inhalatorium” can be accessed, into which radon from 105 feet (32 m) below the surface is pumped.

As far as most are concerned, you should ideally be exposed to no radon, though if the level in the air is below 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) action doesn’t necessarily need to be taken. Inside the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine, you’ll be exposed to 1,700 pCi/L on average. A typical run of radon therapy entails between 30 and 60 hours in the mine across ten days.^[4]

1 Visit Chernobyl’s Control Room

If you’re a regular reader of, you probably know that tourists can visit the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (LV LINK 2) and take tours. The popularity of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl has only increased travelers’ interest in the Exclusion Zone. And now, tourists can even enter the control room of Reactor 4, the site of decisions that led to the worst nuclear disaster in history. Beforehand, access was limited to cleanup workers and the occasional researcher or journalist.

This isn’t exactly the same thing as taking a walk around Pripyat. Radiation levels in the control room are reportedly as much as 40,000 times higher than normal. Visitors to the control room will have to wear hazmat suits and industrial boots. They can only stay for five minutes and must undergo two radiation screenings afterward.

This new excursion option comes on the heels of Ukraine declaring Chernobyl an official tourist attraction in July. While tours certainly occurred before that, they hadn’t been officially authorized. Around 85,000 people were believed to have visited the Exclusion Zone for the year as of October 2019. Day tours of the zone typically cost around $100. It’s not clear what a visit to Reactor 4’s control room will cost.^[5]

We all like to get away from time to time. To visit the places we have never seen before or to return multiple times to our own favorite locations. Whether for rest, exploration, or just to immerse oneself in another culture, traveling to different places undoubtedly enriches a person’s life.

However, for some, there is a whole other type of getaway, one that might see a person on the edge of a warzone or at the scene of a recent disaster. Dark Tourism has been around for a long time and still looks set to continue well in the future.

Related: 10 Macabre Tourist Attractions

10 It’s Been Going On for Over a Hundred Years (at Least!)

While it might be tempting to think that dark tourism is a recent fad, the fact is it has been going on for over 100 years. In the book Dark Folklore, Mark and Tracey Norman document this point. They detail wealthy people taking trips in the late 1800s to such areas as Whitechapel in the East End of London, the location of the Jack the Ripper murders. This was largely to observe how the masses lived in poverty. Similar tours also took place in the Manhattan areas of New York around the same time.

As we will explore over our next few points, there are many off-branches of dark tourism that cater to an individual’s desires. The underlying detail, though, is no matter what type of destination you wish to go to and why, there will be a way to go there. And it also shows there has been a long-held desire, at least among some in the wealthy community, to visit locations of the darker kind.^[1]

9 Locations Of Battles and War

Perhaps some of the first examples of war tourism can be dated to the early 1860s. During that time, many wealthy citizens would buy tickets to picnic within sight of the battlefields of the American Civil War. What is even more intriguing—several of these wealthy citizens came together to buy the land on which several of the battles took place. They planned to then sell tours of the battlefields once the war was over—which many of them did.

The previously mentioned Mark and Tracey Norman documented even earlier cases of war tourism. Many of noble standing happily paid “good prices” as far back as 1815, for example, in order to sit and dine while observing the Battle of Waterloo unfold.

Perhaps most bizarre of all—at least from a modern perspective—are the tours offered by Thomas Cook. For a price, they would offer to take people to the battlefields of the Second Boer War. Interestingly, the same company also offered what we would call “bus trips” to public hangings around the same time.^[2]

8 A Discreet Tour of the Slums

There are, of course, many modern examples of what is known as slum tourism that took place in the late 1800s and early 1900. Gaining underground popularity during the 1990s and 2000s, many people would travel to poverty-hit areas in Brazil, India, and South Africa.

What is particularly ironic about the South African slum holidays is their origins lie in an official program. This program was designed to educate white Africans on how the black population lived. As the 1990s unfolded, many people from other countries around the world also wanted to take part in these tours. And while this was largely for educational purposes, an increasingly distasteful element crept in. More and more people were appearing to take such tours for no other reason than spectacle.

As the twenty-first century has gone on, many cities around the world that have notorious poorer areas have experienced this slum tourism. However, there is a particular part of dark tourism that appears to be increasing in popularity. And it is there where we will turn our attention next.^[3]

7 Fascination with Scenes of Disasters

If there is one other niche location within dark tourism, it is the desire, by some, to visit areas recently hit by a disaster of one sort or another. Although they are perfectly legal, we might look at the tours of Pripyat in the decades since the Chernobyl disaster as a good example.

More recently, in the years following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many companies offered to take tourists around the flood-hit areas. What made these particular tours even worse (the moral aspect aside) is that many claimed these tours were actually getting in the way of recovery efforts and programs.

The fact is, wherever a disaster hits—be it natural or man-made (such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill)—many will pay good money to see the devastation for themselves. And with floods, wildfires, and even volcanic eruptions happening (relatively speaking) all the time, these destinations will likely continue to increase in number.^[4]

6 People Do It Without Realizing It

In many ways, it could be argued that many people take part in dark tourism without even realizing they are doing so. Perhaps the most obvious way to demonstrate this would be to highlight the many millions of people who visit Auschwitz in Poland or the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in Holland. Both are locations that have experienced significant horror and distress. And while both are important visits from an educational experience, each could very much be described as dark tourism locations.

Perhaps another good example would be the many locations of the former Soviet Union, particularly sites with a direct connection to the Cold War, such as abandoned military facilities. Some would even argue that trips to Venice in Italy are a form of dark tourism known as doom tourism. This is primarily because it is a certainty that Venice will sink into the sea one day in the future.

These tourist trips, it could be said, have an educational purpose to them. Perhaps, then, some good comes out of dark tourism. We will return to this notion a little later on our list. Next, though, we will examine one of the most popular dark tourist sites of recent times.^[5]

5 The Golan Heights Tourists

Perhaps one of the best examples of dark tourism can be found in the organized trips that venture to Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border. And these tourists arrive there “armed with binoculars and cameras, eager for a glimpse of smoke and even carnage.”

One of the people who take these tourists on such grim journeys is retired Israel Defense Forces colonel Kobi Marom. He would claim in an interview with The Atlantic in 2014 that these tourists “gaze down on Syrian’s bloodletting.” He would even state that during one particularly bloody battle when rebels captured a United Nations checkpoint, many there that day were eager to see the event unfold and “gaped down at the action below…safe beyond the buffer zone.”

These tours to the brink of the battle zones are identical in nature to those of the 1860s on the sidelines of the American Civil War. And Golam Heights is far from the only example in our modern world of dark locations, as our next point examines.^[6]

4 It’s Still Happening Today–In Many Ways!

As we know from some of our previous points, dark tourism is very much alive and well in the twenty-first century. What’s more, while we have examined some of the examples of dark tourism above, as the 2000s unwind, there appear to be more and more grisly locations that people are willing to spend good money to see.

Many people, for example, often travel to see locations where cults have been based. Or to buildings where serial killers might have lived while committing their crimes. Even places such as abandoned medical facilities that still have medical jars with all manner of remains inside on site.

In short, if there is a dark edge to it, you can guarantee that at least some people would wish to see it close-up. And for those who are willing to take people there, there is, and will continue to be, a lot of money to be made.^[7]

3 A Future of Many Dark Locations Available

With our last point in mind, we might think that the future for such an industry will be a grim one, and well, it might be. With various tragedies and disasters unfolding around the world at any given time, there is certainly no shortage of locations to choose from. Indeed, might we see such tourist trips to Afghanistan in the near future? Or to Ukraine after the conflict ends there? The chances are, we would.

In short, locations of genocide, mass murder, areas of great conflict, and both man-made and natural disasters are many. And all are locations that some people might wish to visit. And with the world ultimately becoming increasingly smaller as technology develops, the ways in which these somber vacations can be delivered will also increase and diversify.

Before we move on to where dark tourism might go as the 2020s unfold, we will return to a point we made earlier—that there could be a good side to these morose holidays.^[8]

2 A Bizarre Need For It?

Might it be that not only can some good come out of dark tourism but also that there is a need to have people visit these locations? The previously mentioned Auschwitz camp and Anne Frank House are great examples of this. After all, most would agree that the horrors of the Second World War, particularly the Holocaust, must not be forgotten. To see such locations first-hand certainly plays a part in this.

There are, though, many other locations around the world that could serve in an educational way. For example, such places that have suffered environmental disasters would only show the potential consequences of our collective actions. Visits to the Chernobyl plant and its surrounding areas could serve in a similar capacity.

If dark tourism does continue, for good or bad, there is one area where it will undoubtedly grow, and it is there we will turn our attention for our final point.^[9]

1 Virtual Dark Tourism

It is perhaps no surprise that in the modern age in which we live that one could take part in dark tourism without actually leaving their living room. Virtual tourism, rightly or wrongly, is likely to increase over the years. In 2017, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, intentionally or not, made this idea a reality. He would go on a virtual tour of recently flood-hit Puerto Rico. This tour was live-streamed, leading to much criticism. This was mainly due to an apparent lack of empathy on the Facebook founder’s part.

An argument, though, could be made that such virtual tours to areas hit by tragedies could be used for good. They might be a good way to raise funds if people can see the distress for themselves, for example. And, once more, they would also perhaps serve as an educational tool.

Whether we can expect to see such virtual tours being offered anytime soon, though, remains to be seen.^[10]