BEYOND THE DARKNESS

Psychotherapist Scott provides readers with a look at the strange world of “dark tourism.”

This book centers on the kinds of sightseeing travel that seldom makes it into brochures, such as tours of old mental hospitals, scenes of natural disasters, or other sites where many people have died. “Historical sites can feel like open wounds,” he writes, “places where suffering lingers in the air,” which describes his own reaction while visiting Auschwitz’s crematorium and descending steps where “thousands of men, women, and children had walked, most unaware they were moving toward their deaths.” Throughout history, he observes, people have been drawn to such grim places. Scott uses the common term “dark tourism” in his book’s subtitle, but he resists using the term in the text itself, as he feels that it has trivializing implications: “To me,” he writes, “a tourist is someone who's just checking off boxes on a list, while a traveler looks for something deeper—a real connection with the places they visit.” In these pages, Scott chronicles his own memories of visiting such destinations as Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, with its massive tombs, and such spots as the Golden Gate Bridge, the site of nearly 2,000 documented suicides. He relates his visits to medical museums, such as Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, which houses fragments of Albert Einstein’s brain and displays the bodies of conjoined twins, giant tumors, and other biological phenomena; prisons; battlefields; and even museums of death in Hollywood and New Orleans, which he characterizes as “a sensory overload that sensationalizes death with virtually no discussion of the victims.”

Scott’s prose style occasionally veers toward melodrama over the course of this book, as in a description of Alcatraz: “the infamous prison, perched atop a rocky hill, loomed larger and more imposing against the backdrop of the bay.” However, his earnest tone is the book’s consistent bit of magic. When he visited the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, he notes how his thoughts were tempered by his nearly 30 years as a therapist: “Knowing I've helped people find enough hope to choose life,” he writes, “brings me immense fulfillment.” His visits to various medical museums reminded him of the liver transplant that saved his life and gave him a greater appreciation of the medical advances that many people take for granted: “It’s a sobering, enlightening journey through the curious corners of medical history,” he writes, “that left me with a deep respect for the design and diversity of the human body.” In this way, Scott transforms his visits to troubling destinations into opportunities for personal growth. This revelatory element regularly elevates his descriptions of sometimes-depressing places, as he frequently manages to find a thread of hope or optimism. His reflections on how recent some terrible events were—such as that, even just 100 years ago, his liver disease would have been fatal—adds a sobering tone to many of his recollections here.

A powerful and often gripping guided tour through some of humanity’s dark places.