With Halloween just around the corner, in this month’s “Dear Eugene,” we weigh in on whether visiting a place of tragedy for tricks, treats, and ghostly encounters is actually a good idea.
Inspired by our intrepid founder, Eugene Fodor, Dear Eugene is a monthly series in which we invite readers to ask us their top travel questions. Each month, we’ll tap travel experts to answer your questions with the hopes of demystifying the more complicated parts of travel. Send your questions to [email protected] for a chance to have them answered in a future story.
Dear Eugene, I love Halloween and have always wanted to plan a trip to Europe that visits some of its more haunted and creepy places. My partner thinks visiting places of tragedy for Halloween is tacky, but I often see travel publications sharing lists of the most haunted hotels and attractions to visit every October, so it seems acceptable. Is it appropriate to visit places of tragedy for Halloween?
Halloween can be a fun time to travel. Depending on where you’re headed—whether it’s the spooky historical sites of Europe or bucolic New England villages in the full brilliance of autumn—Halloween will almost certainly be a part of your seasonal fun if you happen to find yourself in a region that celebrates it.
Halloween traditions originated in Europe, originally as a feast day for Christians to remember the dead, including martyrs and saints. Early Halloween traditions in Europe were pious, but in the last few centuries, Halloween has become a more playful holiday on both sides of the Atlantic and has been exported to other countries around the world, from New Zealand to Argentina.
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What exactly does it mean to visit a place of tragedy for Halloween? Does it mean visiting in costume? Passing out candy? Or does it simply mean to travel somewhere that happens to be a place of historic tragedy during a period that, in some traditions, is known for being a time to reflect on the souls that have passed from this earth?
We’ll throw out a provocative example: would you visit the memorial and museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp, for Halloween? We certainly wouldn’t advise doing so if you plan on wearing a costume or passing out candy, which Auschwitz prohibits for all visitors on any day of the year. It might also not be the best place to seek out lighthearted tales of hauntings or paranormal happenings.
But it’s also worth noting that the memorial and museum are open on October 31 (they close only on January 1, December 25, and Easter Sunday). Why anyone chooses to visit is ultimately personal, but as long as they’re visiting the memorial in a manner that is dignified and respectful of the mass murders that occurred there, visitors are welcome (although reservations are recommended).
If a museum, historic home, or other place of interest is holding Halloween-themed events or activities, the message is pretty clear: Halloween lovers are welcome.
The most respectful way to visit any attraction, regardless of the time of year, is to take cues from the stewards of the space. If a museum, historic home, or other place of interest is holding Halloween-themed events or activities, the message is pretty clear: Halloween lovers are welcome. The Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston, for example, openly discusses its ghost stories and includes them in a digital version of a self-guided hotel history tour that guests can take. Similarly, New York City’s historic Merchant’s House embraces its ghostly reputation, offering candlelight ghost tours of its space.
Some places, like certain hotels, aren’t as fond of their ghost stories and tend not to publicize them. Some aren’t even ghost stories but, rather, lurid tales of celebrity deaths that happened on the property without any hint of subsequent haunting. Visiting those hotels for Halloween would easily earn a place in the “not a good idea” category. In any case, if you’re visiting a hotel with a legitimate purpose (aside from gawking or seeking a ghostly encounter) and aren’t loitering or entering areas not open to the public, a visit should be fine.
Ghost stories are—by definition—about the spirits of people who have died, and death is usually regarded as tragic for the loved ones of the deceased. At the McRaven Tour Home in Vicksburg, Mississippi, generally regarded to be one of the most haunted historic homes in the south, the reported ghosts’ lives ended in various ways, ranging from murder to death in childbirth to having passed in mysterious circumstances.
They offer a number of historical and ghost tours, and Halloween is unsurprisingly one of the most popular seasons for visitors. The guides even display reverence for the deceased, pointing out that the ghosts are spirits of real-life historical figures, who may simply be curious about, frightened of, or ambivalent to the living wandering through their spaces, but not necessarily malevolent toward any disturbance.
In fact, visiting attractions not typically visited at Halloween could help alleviate some very real over-tourism concerns in cities well-known for their Halloween celebrations. Each year, Salem, Massachusetts, hosts Haunted Happenings, billed as “the largest celebration of Halloween in the world.” Famous for the Salem Witch Trials (which actually happened in neighboring Danvers), and for select exterior locations in the 1993 Disney cult Halloween film Hocus Pocus, visitors swarm Salem around Halloween each year.
So, opting to visit a haunted site in Europe might give Salem a rest. The website for the Salem Witch Museum even notes some of the crowding issues that plague the city during Spooky Season, such as the fact that the entire city has around 4,000 parking spots, but receives upwards of 100,000 visitors per day. Also of note at the Museum is a memorial commemorating the twenty-five innocent people who died during the witchcraft hysteria in Danvers in 1692.
It’s also not lost on us that Danvers and Salem, the site of a tragic chapter in American history, is also one of the largest Halloween festivals on the planet—so there’s at least one community that doesn’t think visiting places where death and tragedy occurred for Halloween is tacky.
It’s ultimately up to you to decide where and during what season you’re comfortable traveling to a place where death occurred, but there’s one maxim that rings true in any season: if you take your cues from the year-round residents of any community you visit, your visit there should be pleasant.
