Double, double toil and trouble; haunting Kentucky tales and tourist dollars bubble

Part of Kentucky's After Dark campaign highlights rural areas with
chilling legends and haunts to share. (KY After Dark photo via DY)

If you're hankering for good scare, look no more; Kentucky is investing in dark tourism that'll deliver chills and thrills. "Thought to be the first of its kind in the country, the Kentucky After Dark campaign provides visitors with passports and encourages them to visit the small towns and big cities in Kentucky that are home to tales of the supernatural and unexplained," reports Liz Carey of The Daily Yonder. "Tourism directors hope that the campaign will not just bring people to cities like Louisville and Richmond but to smaller towns like Cadiz, Kelly, and Simpson."

Robbie Morgan, director of the Lawrenceburg/Anderson County Tourism Commission, told Carey, "Rural communities don't have the money to advertise like larger cities do. This is one-in-a-lifetime money. . . . We're really small. We're hoping that [Kentucky After Dark visitors] would come early enough to maybe dine with us and that they may even spend the night with us. Any of those dollars that are left here in our community is something that has a positive impact."

"Promoting scary events during Halloween makes sense – and cents," Carey reports. "According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent a record $10.6 billion on Halloween last year. A 2022 study of 937 tourists by Passport-Photo Online found that 82% of tourists have been to a dark tourist site in their lifetime, and of the 18% that haven't, nearly two-thirds (63%) said they had a dark site they wished to visit."

Chilling rumors of unexplainable or paranormal happenings often live on "in small towns that dot the landscape across the country," Carey reports. "In Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, the community sees an influx of tourists during the fall who come to the Anderson Hotel – a haunted hotel in the middle of town, Morgan said. In the spring, visitors come for the Wildman Festival – celebrating the area's many bigfoot sightings."

Dark tourism has worked in other areas of the country. For instance, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, "the Mothman Festival and the legend of Mothman draw in nearly 50,000 tourists a year to the town of just over 4,000 people," Carey writes. "Officials with the West Virginia Tourism Department said the Mothman legend and other paranormal sites, like the TransAllegheny Lunatic Asylum, the Moundsville Penitentiary, and the Flatwoods Monster Museum, draw in tourists all year round."

The campaign, Morgan said, "will help more than just the 12 communities the passport leads visitors to," Carey adds. "In Lawrenceburg, it's not uncommon for visitors to the city's haunted hotel to book hotel rooms months in advance, Morgan said. And when those rooms fill up, neighboring rural counties benefit."