The Travel Nobody Talks About: Finding Hope in Tragic Places | Ep 100

Dr. Chad Scott is a psychologist, author of "Beyond the Darkness," and expert in dark tourism - the practice of visiting places of death, disaster, tragedy, and suffering. From concentration camps to plantation slavery museums, he's traveled to some of humanity's darkest places and found unexpected hope and life lessons.

In this reflective dark tourism conversation, Stacey and Mark talk with Dr. Chad about what dark tourism really is (83% of Americans have visited a dark tourism site), how walking alone through the Auschwitz gas chamber changed his life forever, and why memories of D-Day helped him survive his liver transplant delay. He explains the difference between dark tourism and voyeurism, and how visiting sites of human suffering makes you love life more, not less.

Dr. Chad recommends two lesser-known dark tourism destinations: Whitney Plantation near New Orleans (which tells the slavery story from the enslaved perspective, focusing on children and women) and Glore Psychiatric Museum in Missouri (showing the evolution from barbaric "lunatic asylum" treatments to modern mental health care). He shares how these places become etched in your heart, not just your memory, and come back to speak to you when you need them most.

This conversation explores finding meaning in suffering, the psychology of resilience, why "comfort zones are for couch potatoes," and how stepping into humanity's darkest places teaches you what truly matters in life. Dr. Chad's message: Your darkness can become your greatest strength if you step outside your comfort zone and let these places teach you. Walking through darkness is the quickest way to see the brightness in life.

CHAPTERS: 

0:00 - What Is Dark Tourism? 
2:03 - How Dr. Chad Got Into Dark Tourism 
5:00 - The Liver Transplant That Changed Everything 
6:11 - Finding Perspective in Places of Suffering 
8:04 - Do You Feel Presence at Dark Tourism Sites? 
9:28 - Alone in the Auschwitz Gas Chamber 
10:55 - Two Obscure Dark Tourism Sites Everyone Should Visit 
11:26 - Whitney Plantation: Slavery From the Enslaved Perspective 
12:33 - Does Dark Tourism Change Your View of Humanity? 
13:32 - Glore Psychiatric Museum: The Evolution of Mental Health Treatment 
15:15 - Why He Wrote "Beyond the Darkness" 
16:23 - Resilience: Your Darkness Becomes Your Greatest Strength 
17:48 - The Message: Comfort Zones Are for Couch Potatoes

Connect with Dr. Chad Scott: Book: "Beyond the Darkness" (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores) Website: https://DrChadScott.com Facebook: Chad Scott Author

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Keywords: dark tourism, reflective travel, Dr. Chad Scott, Beyond the Darkness, visiting Auschwitz, places of tragedy, finding meaning in suffering, resilience, liver transplant story, Whitney Plantation, Glore Psychiatric Museum, transformative travel, Holocaust memorials, slavery museums, mental health history, personal transformation

Transcript

Stacey (00:01): 

Today on the show is Chad Scott, and he is an expert in dark tourism. And so my question to you, mark, is do you enjoy traveling? 

Mark (00:11):
 No, I actually don't. 

Stacey (00:12): You don't enjoy 

Mark (00:12):
 Travel? I'm not a big traveler. You go everywhere. 

Stacey (00:14):
 I love to travel. I want to travel as much as I possibly can if I ever do retire, which doesn't look like 

happen anytime soon. I want to want to travel everywhere. 

Mark (00:22):
 But Have you done any dark tourism in your trip? 

Stacey (00:25):
 I have because I went to Auschwitz. 

Mark (00:28): Oh, wow. 

Stacey (00:29):
 And I've seen some other really dark places. I'm actually was born in Salem, Massachusetts. 

Mark (00:35):
 Okay. I'm going to let that one go. 

Stacey (00:37):
 So I mean, I know that Chad does talk about that as being a place that he has traveled before. 

Mark (00:42): 

Yeah. He's traveled to a whole bunch of places that are considered talk tourism, natural disasters, manmade disasters, on and on and on. And I guess his whole angle in this is you see the worst of mankind and the worst of what people go through. And it helps you live your life better, 

Stacey (01:01): 

Lifts you up, give you some perspective. But I think one of the things he says on his website is that he likes to call it reflective dark tourism because he doesn't see it as dark. He sees it as kind of enlightening. So I can't wait to talk to him. 

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It's not just going to see where bad things happen. There's a purpose behind 

Stacey (01:15):
 It. It's not voyeurism. There's a distinction. It's not voyeurism, it's just tourism in a dark place and really 

learning about people and history and stuff like that. 

Mark (01:25):
 I can't wait to talk to him. Can't wait. Hi, I'm Stacey, and I am Mark. And this is the Gurus, a Game 

Changers podcast cast. Dr. Chad. Dr. Chad. Hey 

Dr. Chad Scott (01:39): 

Marcus. I'm so happy to be here. I've been listening to Gurus and Game Changers and it's a great, I love your guys' chemistry, and the guests you have are just amazing and so happy to be here. I wish I could be in studio with you. Thank you. 

Stacey (01:51): 

Thank you, Chad. Let's talk a little more about that. No, just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're going to change. Okay. Okay. So Chad, tell us a little bit about dark tourism. What is it and how did you get into it? 

Dr. Chad Scott (02:03): 

So dark tourism is going to places of death, disaster, tragedy, suffering, and the seemingly macabre, it's a wide spectrum. So on one end is the very dark, where it would be places where it was maybe more recent suffering like Auschwitz and Hiroshima and even slavery types of places. And on the very opposite end is it's more entertainment focused, but you also can learn some things. And I talked about the luncheon dungeon and the Berlin Dungeon and haunted houses and haunted tours. And like I said, I recently stayed at the Lizzie Borden house. But 

Stacey (02:43): 

How did you personally want to start doing that? I don't know. You're the first person that I've met because I've done a lot of research on people. But when I saw that you were into this dark tourism, I'd never heard of it before. And I just dunno how you get into, I could see maybe going on a trip and then let's go. I have been to Auschwitz. Let's go to Auschwitz because we're in the area, but do you seek this out and mostly go to these dark places and why? 

Dr. Chad Scott (03:06): 

So I think I've always been in my parents. I traveled with my parents a lot across the US and we'd always stop at museums and historical sites and things like that. So it was in my blonde and I really gravitated towards history and school. And then when I got to college, I enjoyed history classes. But then I also started getting into psychology when I started traveling on my own. Actually, the very first time I thought like, okay, maybe now I'm a dark tourist type thing is I was in Key West and a guy at Sloppy Joe's Barber, Ernest Hemingway used to go, came up to us and he's like, Hey, you should check out the local cemetery. It's really quirky. So we went there and yeah, it had the quirkiest TTAs. It had a guy shirtless posing with an actual picture of him posing with his muscles. 

(03:49): 

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And one said, devoted fan of Julio and Glaces. And another one said, I told you I was sick. Oh my God, when I was married at the time. So me and my wife went to these different, every time we went on vacations and we went on a lot of 'em, we would end up in places, probably not unsimilar to what a lot of people do. Actually, 83% of all people in the United States have gone to a dark tourism spot and about 10% more wanted to go to a dark tourism spot. So most people have gone or want to go. So it's a really accepted phenomenon. I didn't even really know the actual term of dark tourism, and I wouldn't say I'm an expert in dark tourism. I'm an expert in my experience with dark tourism, and I'm an expert in how maybe you can apply psychology to dark tourism, but I didn't even learn the term until a few years ago. I was in Oslo just after that, and I was getting sick. I was feeling really sick. I had liver disease. I was stuck to my hotel. I wasn't feeling well. And I read an article in National Geographic by this, they're interviewing this Philip Stone that wrote my forward, fast forward two months, I get a liver transplant. I wasn't even on the list until I got back. So it was that I was getting that sick that quick. 

Stacey (05:00): And 

Dr. Chad Scott (05:00): 

I ended up getting a liver transplant. And what I found is a lot of these dark places came and really helped me during my darkest times. I went down to the University of Minnesota to have the transplant, and then it fell through and I had to go home. And my reflections were on D-Day actually. So it's like, I think when you go to these places, they're so etched in your brain. They're not just etched in your regular memories. They're etched in a place that really hits your heart. And when you need them, they come back and really speak to you. And when you go to these places, you let them speak to you. And if you do that, I think amazing things can happen. And one is you're carrying the torch for these people that may have not made it through these spots. So it's the living embodiment of never forget. And because you're living that these people didn't die in vain. And we don't necessarily have to repeat history if we remember history. 

Stacey (06:01):
 Is it sort of a thing where it gives you perspective, so you're going through a really hard time, but then you 

think about all the people who died in Auschwitz and you're like, okay, well compared to that. 

Dr. Chad Scott (06:11): Yeah. Right. 

Stacey (06:11): Well, 

Dr. Chad Scott (06:12): 

Yes and no. I think it's impossible to go through some of these places and not compare yourself. And sometimes I'll even feel guilty if I do compare myself because what they went through is so different. It's so horrifying. But at the same time, you do, I feel like you're gifted when you go to these places. So for example, with the Normandy, they had a delay of a day because of weather, so they knew what they were getting into and then they were delayed. I had a delay in my transplant and I didn't know at the time, my S around my lungs was filling up 

Speaker 4 (06:47): And 

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I could hardly breathe. I was turning yellow, my eyes were very yellow and I was itching all over. I felt awful. And there's so much meaning in suffering. Suffering can be a teacher. And when you go to these places, even though you weren't the one suffering, you kind of vicarious in a way live through them because you see little reflections of yourself when you go to these places. And I think, for example, with my transplant, the delay in Normandy, I mean they made it, their job was to get to that beach and get to the cliffs and fight on. And mine was to get to that transplant and fight on. And that helped lift me through that really dark time in my life. And I had almost no fear because I felt like I had soldiers right with me. 

Mark (07:37): 

So you've gone to places, I mean, there's natural disaster places, right? There are historical places of slavery and the other ones that you mentioned. And then there's not that they're mutually exclusive, but evil, human action, Auschwitz, the killing fields of Paul Pott, those type of things. When you go to those places, do you feel any kind of presence, negative, different? Do you feel different at those places? 

Dr. Chad Scott (08:04): 

When you're sitting on a place of suffering and you're reflecting on that suffering, you start asking the big questions, what's the meaning of my life? I knew what the meaning of my life was, but I never really felt it. I am crystal clear what the meaning of my life is now. It's my family, friends, loving them and helping people. That's what I live for. That's what drives me. And yeah, 

Stacey (08:26): That's amazing. 

Dr. Chad Scott (08:27): 

It comes into perspective when you go through suffering. The answer to that is yes. Again, is it a spiritual type of thing? Maybe I can tell you when I walked down the steps into Auschwitz, into the crematorium one, which is still the gas chamber that, and I know Stacy, you've been there and you've probably walked through all those same exact steps. And you think of the men, women, children. I remember my tour group went into the next room room, which happened to be the ovens, the furnaces. And I remember sitting in that gas chamber all by myself, and yeah, I could feel that place. Just the sadness seeping through the walls and it was horrifying. You could picture the men, women and children dropping and the whore, but at the same time, I knew my life would never be the same in that room. My life is different now and 

(09:28): 

Getting emotional talking about it, because it was such a life changing moment. And you walk out, you feel such relief before you walk out though. Then you do see those ovens and they call them ovens. They're furnaces, but they call them ovens. And there's rail tracks going to 'em. And then you think of, this is the industrial size of this. It just mean we read about those things. And maybe I didn't allow myself to feel 'em enough until I got into that room, but get out the other side. You felt such relief getting in the other side. But yeah, life was different. I loved more you going into these places. Ironically, walking through the darkness is the quickest way to see the brightness in life. And Churchill used to had this saying, when you're going through hell, keep going. It teaches you that 

Stacey (10:17): 

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Mark (10:38):
 We could all probably come up with the same 10 most common memorials and dark or spots to go to visit 

for dark tourism. What are numbers 20, 21, 20 ones people don't know about? 

Stacey (10:53):
 Oh, obscure, obscure, dark. 

Dr. Chad Scott (10:55): Oh, man, good question. 

Stacey (10:56):
 That is a good question, mark. 

Dr. Chad Scott (10:57): 

So I'm going to bring up two museums in the United States that I think everybody should go to. One at least everybody has to go to. And that's the Whitney Plantation down. It's near New Orleans. It's about 45 minutes from New Orleans. You can get on a tour bus and go there and you drive past all these fancy plantations. You drive past the Django Unchained Plantation. And I've always thought, why would anybody want to go to a plantation? But I saw a brochure that it tells the story of a plantation from the slavery point of view. 

(11:26): 

I'm like, okay, I can do that, I can do that. And that's what it is. I mean, the main house is a walkthrough. There's nothing in the main house. And it's intentionally set up because of that. And you see all these memorials and then you hear a lot of stories about the children there. And I think that was my biggest reflection that I walked away with, is I think about slavery. I think of the guy getting whipped on the pole and it's a man, but you go there. It's not just a man, it's the children. It's the women. Oh 

Speaker 4 (11:55): My God. 

Dr. Chad Scott (11:55): 

So there's a big memorial with, I don't remember how many are on there, but maybe 20 heads on pikes that are memorialized now. And they had buried people and some of the people were buried alive. Some of these people had scratched out their own eyeballs because they were going. So, and I think that's important to know because we cannot let injustices happen here. Walking through the darkest darkness that humans have done to humans makes us realize what humans are capable. If you think of it, that was a couple hundred years ago. That really is not that long ago. 

Mark (12:33):
 That was actually one of my questions. Does doing this change your perception of people of humanity to 

where you just 

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Absolutely. Absolutely. There is such a difference between good people and not so good people. And the thing is those not so good people. And it's interesting, you had the moonies on there the other 

Speaker 4 (12:53): Day, 

Dr. Chad Scott (12:54): 

And people can get brainwashed so easily. And I don't think that people realize how easily they themselves can get brainwashed. Psychological warfare in North Korea was unbelievable where, I mean any, every war, but I think it really came to focus there where they had whole units on psychological warfare, and it's because people can be brainwashed so easily. 

Stacey (13:18):
 Yeah, I just don't want you Wait before you go. He said there were two. That's what I was going to do 

obscure places. So I want to hear the other, what's the other obscure place? 

Mark (13:27):
 Oh my God, I thought you were changing the 

Stacey (13:29):
 No, no. I wanted know the second one. 

Dr. Chad Scott (13:32): 

So many people are interested in psychology. It's getting to be the self-help movement, which there's pros and cons to that, I think. But the history of psychology is so interesting. So the galore psychiatric museum in St. Joseph, Missouri is amazing. And it tells the history of this, it was called the Lunatic Asylum. It talks about the history of it in how from the lobotomies and where they do this treatment, they cooled their head in ice, but then they put boiling water on their feet. So that's what the types of things they did there. And then it gets to the point where it's like, okay, we recovery from mental illness is possible. People would bring their relatives there in the clothes that they wanted them buried in because a lot of people didn't make it through places like that. 

(14:30): 

But now, mental health treatment, the stigma of mental illness has gotten so much better. But now mental health is really good for the most part. It can be better, a hundred percent better, but things are moving in the right direction. So it tells that story, but it also tells the story of mental health from even a societal and where they have a human hamster wheel in there where they're enclosed. And when somebody was psychotic or manic, they'd put 'em in this human hamster wheel and they would just run it out of 'em and they wouldn't let 'em out until they would run it out collapsed. Wow. Yeah, just these barbaric treatments. 

Stacey (15:11):
 Wow. What made you write the book Beyond the Darkness? 

Dr. Chad Scott (15:15):
 These places have really impacted me, and I'm always in these places. I need to tell the world about this. 

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So what is the book about? 

Dr. Chad Scott (15:22): 

It's about, it's a travel memoir about going to places around the world, dark places. And again, it talks about what dark tism is, and it goes through the whole spectrum. It's ghost tours to the most profound sites of genocide and everything in between. So it's stories about those places, but it's also the story about me and my darkness. So I went through a horrible divorce where I was just in love with this person who just didn't want to be married anymore. 

Stacey (15:53):
 I'm sorry. Yeah, it's hard. 

Dr. Chad Scott (15:56): It's okay now, but it's 

Stacey (15:57):
 Hard. No, it's good. Now, I'm sure. 

Dr. Chad Scott (15:59):
 And that's kind of the point of my book though, 

Stacey (16:01): Going 

Dr. Chad Scott (16:01): 

Through hard times, you can find meaning and suffering. So part of my meaning is I suffered. I couldn't have been in more of a failure in terms of how I got through that. I did not do well, but that was part of my story, which the greatest trait in a human I feel, is resilience. 

Speaker 4 (16:22): And 

Dr. Chad Scott (16:23): 

I think your darkness can become your greatest strengths, your greatest weaknesses can become your greatest strengths if you step outside of your comfort zones. And you got to go through what I would call the reckoning phase of life. And I did that. I did it intentionally and some of the things I even did not intentionally where I'd go to these places and I didn't realize how much they were coming back and helping me. 

Stacey (16:47):
 If you could tell our audience, this is why you need to read my book, what would it be? 

Dr. Chad Scott (16:53): 

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Well, I think when you go to places, you learn about them, but you really need to listen and let them speak to you. And you only do that if you get outside of your comfort zone. I have this saying, comfort zones are for couch potatoes. Nothing grows inside of a comfort zone. Depression, anxiety, breed grow inside of comfort zones, but nothing good really grows inside of a comfort zone and your world becomes smaller and smaller the more you're in that comfort zone. Going to dark tourism spots definitely does that. Keep stepping outside of that comfort zone because there is meaning and suffering no matter how horrible it is. If you believe there is greater purpose and that that suffering is just temporary, which it is, life is short, we're all going to end up in the same place eventually. And as long as you have freedom, you can live the life you want to live and do it. And I guess that's really what underpins my book. 

Mark (17:48):
 That's cool. Very cool. Very cool. That's a great message. Where can people buy your book 

Dr. Chad Scott (17:53):
 Anywhere? If your bookstore doesn't have it, you can certainly order it from them likely. So yeah, your 

typical Amazon, Barnes and Nobles. But support your local bookstores if you can. And 

Mark (18:06):
 If somebody wanted to reach you, how would they get ahold of you? 

Dr. Chad Scott (18:09):
 You can find me@drchadscott.com or Facebook. I'm on Chad Scott. Authors. 

Stacey (18:16):
 Well, this has been such a cool conversation and I really appreciate you and bringing this kind of new 

thing for me. Was this something, was 

Mark (18:22):
 This new for you? I heard the phrase, but I didn't really understand the details of it 

Stacey (18:26):
 Because it's not dark really. It's dark. Tourism is the name of it, but I don't see it as dark. I see it as kind of 

enlightening, actually. 

Dr. Chad Scott (18:34): 

Yeah. That's why I like calling it reflective dark tourism. I like that. And had I gone back and actually reflecting on my book is where I come up with that, where it's like, I wish I would've talked about reflective dark tourism because that's really what I was doing. 

Stacey (18:47):
 That's your next book. 

Dr. Chad Scott (18:49): Hey, thank you. 

Stacey (18:50): 

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Dr. Chad Scott (18:51): I got it. I got it. 

Stacey (18:54):
 Hold on. Well, thank you so much for your time. Yeah, 

Mark (18:57): Thank you. 

Stacey (18:58):
 We really appreciate you. 

Mark (18:59):
 Thanks so much. Great conversation 

Stacey (19:00):
 For having, yeah, good energy. This is fun. All right, 

Mark (19:04):
 We will see you guys again. Thank you again for at tuning. Thank you everybody. Bye. 

Stacey (19:13): 

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