Shades of Darkness Below Ground: A Systematic Literature Review of Dark Tourism in Mining Heritage

Research on dark tourism and industrial heritage has largely evolved in parallel, despite their shared focus on sites shaped by death, suffering, and socio-environmental transformation. This study aims to map and synthesise the empirical and conceptual literature at this intersection in order to clarify how the darker dimensions of industrial and mining heritage are conceptualised, experienced, and interpreted, and to develop an integrated framework for their analysis. Following the PRISMA 2020 framework, it systematically reviews 33 peer-reviewed studies published between 2009 and the first quarter of 2026. Three main findings emerge. First, sanitisation—the marginalisation of suffering and exploitation in favour of narratives of technological achievement—is a dominant feature of industrial heritage interpretation and research. Second, visitors consistently experience emotional responses to dark heritage, with distinct affective profiles linked to environmental damage, human suffering, and labour histories. Third, labour exploitation remains under-theorised despite its centrality, reflecting its structural and long-term character, which challenges event-based dark tourism models. Building on these findings, the study proposes a tripartite typology of industrial darkness and introduces the concept of the evidence landscape to explain how sites communicate difficult pasts beyond formal interpretation.