Guided tours are usually sedate affairs around lovely architecture or beautiful scenery. However, around the world, darker options are cropping up, and some of them in dubious taste. Walking tours of murder scenes and day trips to mass graves and disaster sites are amongst some of the more macabre options out there for the traveller that doesn’t mind holding their moral objections in.
Jack The Ripper Tour
Where: London, England.
What could be a better way to spend a foggy evening than walking around the mean streets of London on the trail of a man who murdered and eviscerated five prostitutes?
Jack The Ripper is arguably the most famous serial killer of all time, although his true identity remains a mystery. The gruesome murders in the Whitechapel area of London shocked Victorian Britain, and the case still intrigues today. Approximately every two years, a new book comes out speculating about who the murderer was.
For those wanting to know more, it is possible to go on a tour of the murder scenes, which includes looking at police photographs and documents, and hearing the various theories about The Ripper’s identity.
Tours are led by Richard Jones, who has spent over 27 years studying the case. He promises plenty of information, background details on the suspects and a 1888 atmosphere.
JFK Assassination Walk
Where: Dallas, Texas, USa
For a more up-to-date murder scene tour, Dallas is the place to head to. Dealey Plaza, where American president John F Kennedy was shot in 1963, has been largely preserved as it was at the time of the assassination.
It is possible to do much of it without a guide. The sixth floor museum is in the former Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly popped off the president. It explores the president’s life, but more importantly, his death. Don’t expect too much credence to be given to all the conspiracy theories, however.
To discover more, there are plenty of enterprising locals who have set up walking tours. These offer commentary around the major sites, such as the Book Depository, the grassy knoll and the spots in which the witnesses stood.
Hitler Walking Tour
Where: Munich, Germany
Adolf Hitler, it is fair to say, was not a very nice man. But that doesn’t mean that his story isn’t a fascinating one.
Munich was the city in which he came to power and spent a significant portion of his life. Whilst the city isn’t about to sing this from the rooftops, it is possible to go on walking tours that take in Hitler’s hang outs.
Many buildings and monuments relating to the Nazi regime were torn down after the war, so visiting Hitler’s apartment and the likes is not possible. However, the tours do take visitors to buildings that he had commissioned, courtyards that he painted in his previous career as a rather average artist and restaurants he frequented.
It also takes in the beer hall where Hitler made his first major political speech and the former Nazi party headquarters (it’s now the university’s music and theatre academy).
Though the topic of the tour may seem a little tasteless, Munich Walk Tours employs guides who really know what they’re talking about. And, for two-and-a-half hours, the Third Reich Tour is a gripping insight into the origins of Nazi Germany.
Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Tour
Where: Chernobyl, Ukraine
The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster makes for an unlikely tourist attraction, but it is possible to get not only within the exclusion zone, but within 100m of the deadly reactor.
The rather macabre tour includes a three course meal in the town of Chernobyl and takes in memorials, cooling lakes and cranes that were left in place after the reactor blew.
Eeriest of all is the town of Pripyat, the city that housed the power plant’s workers. It was abandoned, and much is still in place. Visitors get to wander through abandoned schools, hotels and fairgrounds.
The guide is armed with a Geiger counter, while the military screens everyone for radiation on departure.
Hurricane Katrina tour
Where: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Another disaster-related tour takes in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Gray Line’s tour gives a local’s view of America’s most devastating natural disaster, goes through areas that were ruined by floods and takes tourists to the levee that was breached.
The guide also explains the environmental origins of the catastrophe, including the links with America’s disappearing coastal wetlands.
Killing Fields bike tour
Where: Cambodia
Under the Khymer Rouge regime, over 200,000 Cambodians were executed between 1975 and 1979. Having contact with the outside world could be enough reason for the government to send someone to place like Choeung Ek, where they were usually tortured then killed.
Choeung Ek, a former orchard and Chinese cemetery, is now one of the world’s most sinister tourist sites. Visitors are essentially going so that they can see mass graves – bones still litter the site, and the memorial contains skulls of the victims.
The Killing Fields are now a standard stop on the Cambodian tourist trail, alongside the more palatable Anglor Wat. Many companies include the Killing Fields in their tours, but Exodus have an extra novelty factor – it’s in their Cycle Indochina and Angkor Wat bike holiday itinerary.
This article was originally written for Ninemsn.com.au.
Copyright David Whitley
