Graham's Junk Drawer of History

    cult sites and the rising popularity of dark tourism

    By

    shannon.graham98

    Originally an idea for my master’s thesis, the concept of preserving unusual, taboo or ‘negative’ sites was something that fascinated me.

    Warning! This post mentions cult history and places tied to harm. Please read with caution.
    Some terms to know:
    • Negative heritage sites are spaces that can be considered traumatic or associated with disaster. These places have always existed and can be controversial.
    • Dark tourism is the tourism associated with death or tragedy and commonly include negative heritage sites.

    Within the past decade, there has been an increased interest in dark tourism due to media attention and public fascination, with more sites with dark pasts becoming the subject of public attention.

    Think places like Chernobyl in Ukraine, Alcatraz in San Franscisco or the Catacombs in Paris. These sites, along with others such as prisons, places of genocide, and asylums have all been historically preserved.

    What does it mean to historically preserve a site?

    Preserving a site means to protect, conserve and maintain places and buildings that have historical significance. The goal of historic preservation is to maintain places and spaces for future generations.

    This can be done in a variety of (somewhat confusing) ways that won’t be discussed here.

    Essentially, making sure no one destroys the site so that people in the future can experience it and understand why it’s important to our history.

    What are the ethical implications to preserving sites associated with death or trauma?

    This question is especially relevant when we consider the preservation of sites related to cults. Cults have long been a subject of public fascination, however, very little is discussed about the spaces that cults use and what happens to those spaces after a cult leaves or members die. Can we preserve them? If we could, should we?  

    In sites of mass murder or shootings, there is controversy about public policy (like gun rights or government practices) surrounding the event, but generally, there is a definitive victim and perpetrator. Public sympathy normally leads to either a memorial created or increased public awareness about the places where these crimes have occurred. However, in the case of death in cults, the public is either unsure, uncaring or unaware of the implications of the event. Why?

    The sometimes-gross misinterpretation of some religious minorities or the characterization of the organization based solely on their leader (instead of focusing on the overall group) lead to negative media coverage, the public’s unwillingness to hear the stories of members of the group, and the general shunning of these people (sometimes even in death) by the broader population.

    Because of this, the characterization of members’ deaths is widely publicized, but the lives and importance of individual people are not discussed. The sensationalism of the story and the scandal of a abnormal belief system overshadows the gravity of their lives being lost.

    Therefore, after a murder or death has occurred amongst a cult group (or in some cases the entire cult) and the event is over, public fascination recedes, no wide public sympathy is given, and no immediate memorialization takes place.

    Jonestown

    An example of this would be the death of members of the People’s Temple cult and mass suicide and murder at their compound named Jonestown. I won’t go into detail about the cult and their beliefs, or the events that led to what happened at Jonestown, but it’s important that public reaction following their deaths is highlighted.

    Following the deaths of those at Jonestown in Guyana, members’ bodies were sent back to Delaware in the United States. While some of the bodies were claimed by family members, over 400 bodies went unclaimed (this was partially due to finances and partially because of the taboo nature of the deaths). The government refused to bury them on Delaware soil, fearing that the burial of the members would create a pilgrimage site for little remaining members. Those that died at Jonestown were buried at Oakland’s Evergreen Cemetery in California.

    Eventually a memorial stone was placed in the cemetery by family members and survivors who were impacted by the tragedy, but there have never been efforts to preserve the Jonestown site.

    Something that really struck me when I was researching Jonestown was a lack of individual narrative. The only individual that was widely covered in relation to Jonestown was Jim Jones himself.

    I wonder if the preservation of the Jonestown site would lend itself as a place of memorialization for those individuals who died or would create more hardship for the families affected.

    Here’s the point:

    Dark tourism sites are becoming increasingly popular. This popularity increases visibility and potential efforts to preserve the site for future educational use. Types of negative sites are not evenly represented in dark tourism, with the preservation of cult sites being almost non-existent.

    So… here are some questions that I had back in 2023 that still remain unanswered:

    • What are the effects of preserving controversial sites (more specifically cult sites) on society and should preservation begin to focus more on negative sights given the rise in public interest?
    • What would that look like in practice?  
    • How do cult sites fit into preservation? What makes a cult site different from any other controversial site? 
    • Should we (as a society) preserve these spaces and how?

    Fact Check Me!

    Foote, Kenneth E. Shadowed Ground America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy  / Kenneth E. Foote. Rev. and updated, rev. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.

    Harper, Charles L. “Cults and Communities: The Community Interfaces of Three Marginal Religious Movements.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21, no. 1 (1982): 26–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385567.

    Halbwachs, Maurice, and Lewis A. Coser. 1992. On Collective Memory. The Heritage of Sociology. University of Chicago Press. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=cat06564a&AN=uga.9913219563902959&site=eds-live. 

    Kenan, Randall. Let the Dead Bury Their Dead and Other Stories  / Randall Kenan. First edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1992.

    Korstanje, Maximiliano E., and Bintang Handayani. Gazing at Death : Dark Tourism as an Emergent Horizon of Research  / Maximiliano E. Korstanje and Bintang Handayani, Editors. Edited by Maximiliano E. Korstanje and Bintang Handayani. New York, [New York: Nova Publishers, 2017.

    LaCapra, Dominick. 2014. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=cat06564a&AN=uga.9944404943902959&site=eds-live. 

    Maaga, Mary McCormick. Hearing the Voices of Jonestown  / Mary McCormick Maaga ; with a Foreword by Catherine Wessinger. 1st ed. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1998.

    Price, Rebecca, and Mark Shores. “Dark Tourism: A Guide to Resources.” Reference & User Services Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2017): 97–101. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90017127.

    Tunbridge, J. E., and G. J. Ashworth. 1996. Dissonant Heritage : The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. J. Wiley. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=cat06564a&AN=uga.9915223613902959&site=eds-live.

    White, Leanne., and Elspeth. Frew. Dark Tourism and Place Identity : Managing and Interpreting Dark Places  / Edited by Leanne White and Elspeth Frew. Abingdon, Oxon ;: Routledge, 2013.

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