Dark Tourism as ‘Spectacular Death’: Towards a new era of showcasing death in the early 21st century

Abstract

Ghosts are returning to the feast and are resurfacing and multiplying in a multitude of dark tourism sites across the world. Therefore, this paper reviews a history of the Western deathbed and, consequently, locates dark tourism as a modern way of mediating significant Other death. In so doing, the paper offers a thought-provoking account of dark tourism as ‘spectacular death’ whereby issues of (re)ritualization, visualization, and commercialization are secular hallmarks. The paper argues that dark tourism helps usher in a new death mentality where death is now revived in the public domain and consumed as a commodity. Ultimately, dark tourism means that we do not face the Grim Reaper directly but, instead, we consume the mortality spectacle of significant Others.