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Introduction
Dark tourism has been a popular research topic for the past 25 years and is now a clearly identifiable research “brand” (Stone, 2013, p. 307). However, the focus of such research has shifted markedly over the past decade. Early research focused on the supply or production of dark tourism, with an emphasis on identifying and classifying the activity. More recently, the focus has shifted to demand and consumption which has foregrounded issues of visitors’ motivations and experiences (Biran and Hyde, 2013; Light, 2017). Although motivations for visiting places of death and suffering appear to be little different from heritage tourism (Light, 2017), recent research has focussed on identifying the distinctive experiences associated with dark tourism (Nawijn et al., 2016; Yan et al., 2016; Oren et al., 2019; Sharma and Rickly, 2019; Prayag et al., 2020; Zheng et al., 2020; Sigala and Steriopoulos, 2021).
In this context, there have been innovative attempts to theorise the dark tourism experience. One of the most influential is the theory of mortality mediation (Stone and Sharpley, 2008; Stone, 2011; Stone, 2012a, 2018). This proposes that, in societies where death has largely been sequestered, dark tourism is one mechanism for engaging with death in a safe context, free from terror or dread. Dark tourism is therefore a means of mediating between the living and the dead. A related concept is “thanatopsis,” defined by Stone (2012b, p. 75) as “the reflection and contemplation of death and dying” (see also Seaton, 1996) although it should be noted that this understanding of the term is contested by some authors (Korstanje and George, 2015). Subsequent research has further developed the mortality mediation model through integrating concepts such as mortality salience (Oren et al., 2019; Prayag et al., 2020) and terror management theory (Biran and Buda, 2018). Yet, while the mortality mediation model is widely accepted, empirical research which explores or develops the model is limited (Stone, 2009a, 2012b; Biran and Buda, 2018).
This paper contributes to the debate by focussing on issues of thanatopsis and mortality mediation within the context of “lightest” dark tourism, itself one of the least-researched forms of dark tourism (Stone, 2009c; Ivanova and Light, 2018; Wyatt et al., 2020). Lightest dark tourism is...