While dark tourism aimed at adults reminds them of past tragic fights, faults and follies, thousands of children and youth also consume inherent memorial messages at dark tourism sites. This paper addresses these unnoticed childhood encounters, about which scholarly discourse remains conspicuously silent. At present, dark tourism research focuses almost exclusively on adults and does not adequately explain young tourists’ experiences. How children experience dark tourism sites has much to do with their understanding of death. Because younger children may not possess an adult-like knowledge of death, they are unable to experience a site as dark. Other theoretical disparities include children’s limited agency in choosing their destinations and their unique and often playful exploration of dark places. To address the inadequacy of current dark tourism conceptualisations, we propose a new framework to encourage scholarly interrogation of children’s experiences at dark tourism sites. Drawing from multiple sources including archival studies and original research with youth, we offer a rationale for considering four major, intersecting influences on a young tourist’s experience: understanding of death, visit preparation (at home or in school), site and interpretation features and dynamics of the specific visit (e.g. group membership, norms and itinerary). Ultimately, this paper uncovers potential research avenues to bring children’s perspectives and experiences to the core of dark tourism research.

尽管针对成年人的黑暗旅游使他们想起了过去的悲惨战斗，过失和愚蠢，但成千上万的儿童和青少年也在黑暗旅游景点中吸收了固有的纪念性信息。本文针对这些未引起注意的童年时代相遇，对此，学术话语仍然保持沉默。目前，黑暗旅游研究几乎只针对成年人，而不能充分解释年轻游客的经历。儿童如何体验黑暗的旅游胜地与他们对死亡的了解有很大关系。由于年幼的孩子可能不具备成人般的死亡知识，因此他们无法体验黑暗的地方。其他理论上的差异包括儿童在选择目的地方面的能力有限，以及他们对暗处的独特且通常是嬉戏的探索。为了解决当前的黑暗旅游概念化的不足，我们提出了一个新的框架，以鼓励学术界对黑暗旅游景点儿童的经历进行审问。我们从档案研究和与青年人的原始研究等多种来源中汲取灵感，为分析对年轻游客体验的四个主要交叉影响提供了理论依据：对死亡的理解，访问准备（在家中或在学校中），现场和口译功能以及动态具体访问的时间（例如，团体成员，规范和行程）。最终，