Dark tourism, also known as black tourism, grief tourism, and thanatourism, is a phenomenon only recently categorized, but which has been around for some time in an unofficial capacity. It is an expression of the desire of people to visit locales where terrible or evil events transpired. Such places have a certain dark aura about them and are appealing to tourists on a certain level.
Some of the more prominent examples are the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Chernobyl in the Ukraine, Hiroshima in Japan, and the site of the twin towers of 9/11 infamy in New York. No further explanation of these sites is needed, as the events surrounding them are firmly lodged in the human collective psyche. In the specific Australian context, there is Port Arthur in Tasmania, site of a terrible case of spree killing that almost singlehandedly led to casual gun ownership being banned in Australia. There is the Belanglo State Forest in New South Wales, site of the Ivan Milat backpacker murders, and now there is Snowtown.
It is worth mentioning that the Australian attitude toward gun ownership is the antithesis of the American practice. There is no Australian equivalent of a powerful lobby group like the NRA (National Rifle Association). In fact, after the Tasmanian Port Arthur massacre in 1996, the Australian government experienced intense public pressure to ban casual gun ownership. This was rapidly achieved across the country, with every state and territory government falling into line. Gun ownership is now heavily restricted to farmers on remote properties who need them for vermin control. In the time since Port Arthur and as of this writing, there have been zero gun-related massacres in Australia.
The old disused bank building still stands on Fourth Street today, despite the wishes of some locals for it to be demolished. Over the course of 2019, there has been much public debate in Snowtown as to whether the town should officially attempt to profit from its infamy.
While many locals would prefer to bury the past and ignore it, others hold the opposite view, that like it or not, the very name Snowtown will always be associated with the “Bodies in the Barrels” murders, and the townsfolk should trade on the infamy. As such, there have been moves to turn the abandoned bank building into a grisly museum, hosting props reflecting the murders and, of course, selling all manner of murder-related souvenirs.
Why not? some argue. Whitechapel, in the formerly neglected East End of London, is forever stained by memories of Jack the Ripper and has been cashing in on the fact for decades. Almost every night, dozens of Ripper walking tours plow the streets of the old East End, bumping onto one another, retracing the steps of the unfortunate women who met their terrible end at the Ripper’s blade. This writer has taken one such tour and enjoyed it immensely.
The contrasting view holds that the events in Snowtown still hold tragic memories for many people (though not necessarily those actually living in Snowtown) and dredging it all up again in the form of dark tourism could have a debilitating effect on the mental health of family, friends, and loved ones of the victims. This is also a fair point, which needs to be taken into consideration.
The obvious difference between Snowtown and Whitechapel is that the Ripper mythology was not cashed in on until around a century after the events of 1888. There was no one left connected to the crimes to be upset.
In another report broadcast on air in May 2019, the ABC spoke to several residents and former residents to gauge their opinion on the impact of the murders on their town. One individual commented that the producers of the movie based on the events did not even consult the local community before producing their factual account. This only served to further stigmatize the town and traumatize its residents.
The town suffers a double misfortune in that it bears the mark of the locale of the worst case of serial killing in Australian history and yet only one actual murder took place there. Eight other bodies were transported in to be discovered later. Bunting moved into the remote town and shipped the barrels in just as the police net was closing in. Those barrels could have been discovered in any of the various locations they were previously stored in, but the fact that the case broke in Snowtown will haunt them forever.
Snowtown was established in 1878, its main purpose to provide agricultural crops—cereal, wool, and livestock. It also sits on the cusp of a large salt mine at nearby Lake Bumbunga. Like many rural communities, it suffers the vagaries of distance and economic downturns. As of 2020, Snowtown is battling a persistent economic decline and a resultant dwindling population as young people in need of work move away to look elsewhere.
The town now faces the dilemma of deciding whether it should risk exploiting its dark past to possibly secure a brighter future. The problem stems from the recent proximity of the crimes. At just twenty years down the road, it may be too soon for Snowtown. Jack the Ripper, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, even Chernobyl, are all further in the past.
Every day, remaining locals are slightly perturbed by the numbers of dark tourists who still cruise the town’s main street, gliding by the bank building and taking selfies, much as I did twenty years ago. The question they now ask themselves is not so much how to stop them coming, but rather, whether to cash in on their presence.
A Tragedy in Posorja: When “People’s Justice” Goes Horribly Wrong
Three innocent people were burned and beaten to death by a lynch mob in a collision between a centuries-old method of meting out justice and the lightning speed of social media mass hysteria. This crime has left a quiet town and a largely peaceful country reeling with questions over what it means to live in the twenty-first century.
The brutal tragedy that befell two men and a woman in the sleepy fishing village of Posorja on October 16, 2018, began with the three victims robbing two local women and ended just hours later after a mob of two thousand enraged citizens broke into the police station, dragged them out, and lynched them in the street.
Social media had sentenced the three to death by wrongly convincing people that they were pedophiles who had drugged and abused a local child. It triggered a traditional “people’s justice” that overwhelmed armed police and sowed death and destruction before the army brought the mob under control.
This chillingly complicated story began a few months earlier, but the events of that fateful day began to unfold when two women went to the local school to drop off their children, just like any other day. Outside the school, they were approached by a woman trying to sell them a cheap ring. The two friends declined, whereupon they were drugged, using scopolamine, a tasteless, odorless powder made from the flowers of the borrachero tree. The drug is popular with criminals throughout Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru because it temporarily “zombifies” the victims, putting them at the mercy of the perpetrator. It is not unusual for a victim to wake up hours later to find they have been raped, their bank account drained, or, in extreme cases, that they are lacking one or more vital organs. The drug can be slipped into food or drink or, as in this case, blown into the victim’s face.
Two men appeared and forced the dazed women into a taxi. They were driven to a local park, where they were robbed of two hundred dollars (the US dollar is Ecuador’s official currency) and two cell phones.
One of the women, however, suffered only minor effects from the drug and was able to escape. She called the police, who captured the three perpetrators, identified as Tonny Mauricio Pareja Valladares, forty-four; Jackeline Cecibel Mero Figueroa, thirty-five; and Ronald Gustavo Bravo Rosado, twenty-five; as they tried to leave town. The trio was taken to the local UPC (Unidades de Policía Comunitaria) station where they were to be housed until they could be transferred to the Playas judicial unit, which handles crimes of this nature. Within hours, they were dead.
The village of Posorja lies 120 kilometers (seventy-five miles) south of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s