Half a century ago, members of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple in San Francisco embarked on establishing a rural settlement in Guyana, South America. The Jonestown venture concluded four years later with one of the most sorrowful and peculiar mass deaths in American history. On November 18, 1978, over 900 individuals perished, including U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan. As Guyana contemplates a proposal from a state-supported tour agency to open the now-neglected site to tourists, it sparks a compelling discussion on the allure, ethics, and sensitivities of "dark tourism"—the act of visiting places linked to tragedy.

Why do sites of past atrocities, natural disasters, notorious deaths, and imprisonments attract visitors? What does our fascination with these epicenters of disaster and malevolence reveal about us? What responsibilities do governments have in granting or withholding access? Who has the authority to determine how history is presented to visitors? And what are the effects of such events and subsequent visits on local residents? There are no straightforward answers, yet it's crucial to delve into these questions.

During my inaugural cross-country journey in college, my girlfriend and I visited the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, the site of a battle where nearly 200 individuals lost their lives, including former U.S. Congressman Davy Crockett. A week later in Los Angeles, relatives took us on a drive-by tour that included the crime scene of the recently murdered Nicole Brown Simpson. The former visit seemed like an American history lesson, while the latter felt like ghoulish rubbernecking. Dark tourism (also known as memorial tourism, or thanatourism, derived from the Greek "Thanatos" meaning death, or pejoratively as morbid tourism, or grief tourism) exists in various forms. Gettysburg, the deadliest battle of the U.S. Civil War with 51,000 casualties, attracts countless school trips and, according to the National Park Service, 1.5 million visitors annually. Is that dark tourism? What about visiting the French beaches where 8,000 to 14,000 soldiers died in the D-Day landings that shifted the course of World War II for the Allies? And what of the Ground Zero and Flight 93 memorials commemorating over 3,000 who perished on September 11, 2001?

I have visited Cambodia's Killing Fields with a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide, which claimed between 1.5 and 3 million lives (in the four years following the Jonestown tragedy). Isn't it essential to visit such atrocities and former Nazi concentration camps? The purpose of visiting these places is to feel discomfort, to bear witness, and to share your experiences and emotions. Travel transforms us, sometimes through exposure to the darkest aspects of human nature. You've heard of the Disneyfication of locations; dark tourism is the antithesis. These are the most sorrowful places on Earth. Yet, they are places we must never forget. Visiting them honors the deceased, their memories, and their suffering.

There are instances where the line seems less clear, and bearing witness to past events feels more like slowing down to observe the aftermath of a fatal car crash. The first time I visited Savannah, Georgia, I took a "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" tour. This was shortly after the best-selling book of the same name was adapted into a Hollywood film, documenting a real double murder that occurred less than a decade earlier. On the tour, I kept pondering, "The people living next to these sites may actually remember the victims, may have even been friends with them." Just last month, we reported on how the Los Angeles mansion where Lyle and Erik Menendez murdered their parents has become the latest "dark tourism" hotspot.

The brothers are back in the news and the subject of a recent documentary, but it's challenging to envision what visitors learn by merely staring at a crime scene. It reminded me of my Simpson murder scene visit, or the time I attempted to locate LA's Cielo Drive, the site of the 1969 murders by the Manson "family." But how many degrees separate those stops from touring Ford's Theatre in Washington DC, where a president was assassinated, or the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas from which another was?

Is it acceptable to view thousands of Mount Vesuvius' victims in Pompeii, Italy, because they were killed 2,000 years ago? How about embarking on an entertaining tour of Jack the Ripper's victims in London from the late 1800s? Or paying a substantial amount to dive deep underwater for a view of the Titanic—where visitors themselves perished last year while exploring a shipwreck where approximately 1,500 died just over a century ago? Does time desensitize us to these crimes and tragedies? In the early 2000s, while visiting friends in Gloucester, Massachusetts, I felt drawn to the Crow's Nest, the local pub made famous in a book by Sebastian Junger and the subsequent film of the same name, "The Perfect Storm."

They document the 1991 storm and final days of six fishermen from the small, tight-knit community who frequented the Crow's Nest. On one visit, I was walking along Gloucester's small harbor when I noticed a new ice cream shop had opened called The Perfect Scoop. I thought it rather distasteful, a description I've never before or since used to describe ice cream, and it left me feeling embarrassed for having wanted to visit the Crow's Nest. I decided to leave the salty bar to the locals.

However, I've enjoyed the murder-heavy night tour of San Francisco's Alcatraz prison island; walked through the "Bloody Sunday" neighborhood of Derry, Northern Ireland; visited Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam and was equally moved by The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, inside the old Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. This summer, I'm planning a family trip to Japan and have added Hiroshima to the itinerary because I feel it's crucial for my daughters to connect with the violence our country inflicted on another nation, killing at least 66,000 in that city alone. And I've long wanted to visit Jonestown.

When I lived in San Francisco, just before attending a show at the renowned Fillmore auditorium, I detoured to see the location of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, the last stop before Guyana. I feel compelled to follow that nightmare of a story into the real world, where it has been sitting in place since the mass deaths. I want to converse with those who live nearby, understand the events more clearly, bear witness, and delve into the heart of darkness. Perhaps the key question to ask oneself before planning such a trip is: What is the intention? Is it to learn and comprehend? Or is it merely to satisfy a morbid curiosity? Consider the locals, the friends and family connected to the tragedy, and ask whether visiting honors a legacy or exploits a tragedy. Ultimately, you may be the sole judge of the ethics of visiting these places.