for free

Eastern State Penitentiary /  Eastern State is considered to be the world's first true penitentiary. operational from 1829 until 1971. now a working ruin / museum.

On tour / commercially made signs placed through out the prison.

Dark tourism is defined as "the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme."

It's human nature to want to be an eye witness to these events. We often don't like to admit that we are at all interested in these activities even while participating in them on a daily basis. Rubbernecking at a car wreck on the highway, watching crime shows & war movies on TV reveals our natural curiosity of disasters and human suffering, as long as we are merely onlookers and not participants.

Often denying our fascination with death and depravity, we like to think that by participating as an observer, we can help alleviate the pain of the experienced drama through education & understanding, although a fine line exists between curiosity and exploitation. While acknowledging the attraction that brings visitors to the prison in the first place, these signs connect the prison to this larger phenomenon by offering it up as an imaginary station or portal of egress to other infamous dark sites. Encountering the signs as they travel through the prison enables the viewer to experience the act of visiting all of these sites simultaneously, giving the viewer a denser experience of this phenomenon.

.

On May 13 1985, an all-day standoff and gun battle between Philadelphia police and the radical group MOVE ended with the police dropping a bomb on the house. The subsequent fire killed 11 people and destroyed 62 homes.

.

The Rwandan genocide, was a genocidal mass murder of Tutsi in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government. An estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994, constituting as much as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population. The genocide and widespread slaughter of Rwandans ended when the Tutsi-backed and heavily armed Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took control of the country. An estimated 2,000,000 Rwandans, mostly Hutus, were displaced and became refugees.

.

The Battle of Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg Maryland and Antietam Creek. It is the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing

.

Arbeit macht frei is a German phrase meaning "work sets you free". The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other labour camps.

.

Manifest Destiny is the 19th-century doctrine that the United States had the God given right and duty to expand throughout the North American continent. A policy of imperialistic expansion defended as necessary and/or benevolent. This concept eventually lead to the destruction on the the Indian Nation(s) then grew into global interventionism, from the Spanish American War to Iraq.

.

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. the test was conducted in the Jornada del Puerto desert in New Mexico at 5:29am on July 16 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test far exceeded expectation and opened the Pandoras Box of the Atomic Age. 

.

The latitude & longitude of the remains of the RMS Titanic. The British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of 15 April 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southhampton to New York City. 1517 people perished. In the 100+ years since the disaster the myth of the Titanic has only grown,creating a highly profitable cultural industy.

.

Peoples Temple Agricultural Project AKA Jonestown, Guyana was the scene of one of the most harrowing tragedies in American history. On November 18, 1978, at the direction of charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, 909 members of the People’s Temple died, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in what Jones called a “revolutionary suicide.” It included 304 children. While some refer to the events in Jonestown as mass suicide, many others, including Jonestown survivors, regard them as mass murder. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others, including Congressman Leo Ryan, by Temple members at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. It was the largest mass suicide/murder in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until September 11, 2001

.

these coordinates mark the spot in Dealey Plaza in Dallas TX where President John F Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22 1963.

.

The street address of the house that Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent were murdered by members of the Manson Family on August 8, 1969.

.

The siege of the Mt Carmel Center compound belonging to the group Branch Davidians by American federal and Texas state law enforcement and US military happened February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians, a sect that separated in 1955 from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, was led by David Koresh and lived at Mount Carmel Center ranch just east-northeast of Waco. The group was suspected of weapons violations, causing a search and arrest warrant to be obtained by the Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

The incident began when the ATF attempted to raid the ranch. An intense gun battle erupted, resulting in the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians. Upon the ATF's failure to raid the compound, a siege was initiated by the FBI, the standoff lasting 51 days. On April 19th the FBI launched an assault and initiated a tear gas attack in an attempt to force the Branch Davidians out of the ranch. During the attack, a fire engulfed Mount Carmel Center. 76 people died. A total of 82 people died as a result of the events at the compound.

.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a sociopolitical movement that took place in China from 1966 until 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, its stated goal was to preserve 'true' communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. The movement paralyzed China politically and negatively affected the country's economy and society to a significant degree. Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, sustained harassment, seizure of property and sometimes execution. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural areas. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked. Estimates of the death toll, including civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly. the generally accepted minimum is 400,000. the high end is in the millions.

.