‘Dark tourism’, also known as tourism, is a growing form of niche tourism associated with dark events, sightings, history, or themes connected to noteworthy death, horror, misfortune, myths, and macabre. Dark tourism is a multifaceted phenomenon only introduced in the 1990s, taking on various forms in natural, industrial, or man-made settings, etc being presented as a tourism attraction for its history, background, practices, and content.

Within the morbid realm of dark tourism, a broad spectrum of subcategories encompassing topics including warfare, conflicts, disasters, imprisonment, graves and tombs, ghosts, paranormal experiences, and icky medical tourism like the Body Worlds tour displaying plastinated bodies. Shedding some light on such dark content posed a range of intensity in the shades of darkness, from the lighter fictional places that focus on entertainment and thrill experiences in dark fun factories through to the solemn sites of holocaust death camps on the darkest edge.

Dark tourism and its subcategories elicit an assortment of emotions and responses due to the linear spectrum of darkness. A person’s perception, imagination, and, for some, connection to reality and experiences will determine whether it will be positive or negative, thrilling or depressing, etc. In this context, dark tourism offers a channel for individuals drawn to an extraordinary physical or psychological experience, where they get to satisfy certain aspects of their needs for an array of probable reasons.