Alternative Tourism Geographies: Leveraging the Ironic Case of Pennsylvania's Route 666 for Economic Development

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Applied Geography 45 (2013) 109e118

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Applied Geography

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Alternative tourism geographies: Leveraging the ironic caseof Pennsylvania’s Route 666 for economic development

David J. Nemeth a, *, Deborah Che b

a Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toledo, Snyder Memorial, SM 3000, Mail Stop 140, Toledo, OH 43606, USAb School of Tourism and Hospitality Management and the Centre for Tourism, Leisure and Work, Southern Cross University, Locked Bag 4, Coolangatta, QLD4225, Australia

Keywords:Applied tourism geographyRural economic development strategiesDark tourismPhantasmal destination marketingRoutes 666 proposalDavid Zeisberger highway

* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D

scu.edu.au (D. Che).

0143-6228/$ e see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2013.08.009

a b s t r a c t

Our paper reconciles dark tourism with phantasmal destination tourism in order to promote the po-tential for successfully marketing roadways numbered “666” as an economic development strategyappropriate to distressed localities in the USA. We focus our attention on the David Zeisberger Highwayin rural Pennsylvania as a case study. We propose a routes 666 phantasmal tourism promotion thatsocially constructs a “magical reality” with niche tourism potential by tapping into what we identify asthe already latent power of “The Beast” widespread in the public imagination as inspired by the Book ofRevelation 13:18 (“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for itis the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”). We combine the premisesand conceptualizations set forth in dark tourism, phantasmal destination, applied tourism and ruralgeography, and rural tourism research with scientific insights provided by “the fallacy of selectivethinking” to argue that 666 roadways can offer a marketable “looking for the Beast” experience. Our casestudy of Pennsylvania Route 666 envisions the potential of this roadway as a prototype “Route 666looking for The Beast experience”. We find a synergy and new economic potential in the combination ofdark tourism and phantasmal destination tourism concepts that inspire explorations of new frontiers intourism for economic development. Our study is innovative in its conception and proposes a rational andspecific plan for rural economic development involving niche tourism promotion.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count thenumber of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and hisnumber is Six hundred threescore and six.” (Revelation 13:18)

Introduction: phantasmal destination and dark tourism

“Phantasmal destination”, a term coined by Gao (2011) andappearing as the title of a recent academic article sub-titled “A Post-modernist Perspective” (Gao, Zhang, & Decosta, 2012), has beenlinked to the economic potential for marketing perceived or imag-ined places. The authors mine a wealth of post-structural/post-modern theory that focus on both the social construction of“geographical imaginaries” in the successful tourismmarketing of animagined utopian and benign Shangri-La in Yunnan, China. Hillman(2003) describes Shangri-la (a re-named rural county in Daqingprefecture in Yunnan province) as a success story in creative desti-nation marketing designed to reverse local and regional rural

.J. Nemeth), deborah.che@

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economic decline. When farming and forestry were no longertenable local income generators, destination tourism provided thepanacea that resulted in a rapid reversal of fortune. Visits to the re-gion increased dramatically from 43,000 in 1995 to over one millionin 2003 following the county’s name change in the previous year(Netherlands AgriBusiness Support Office Kunming, China, 2013).

As we interpret it, a “phantasmal destination” is any site imag-ined to have supernatural, mystical, or magical allure. Our defini-tion situates the term at the convergence of contemporaryconceptual and theoretical strands including “geographical imagi-nation” (i.e. the imagined world; e.g. Manguel & Guadalupi, 2000),“magical realism” (Bowers, 2004), and “counterfactual thinking”(Birke, 2011). These bodies of literature overlap with phantasmaldestination in encouraging a hypothesis that there is a sharedtendency to imagine place-specific alternatives to reality. Phan-tasmal destination tourism encourages people to actively seek outthese possibilities in order to experience them. A phantasmaldestination tourist arrives at the site “ready to stretch pre-existingframes far beyond actual world possibilities until they includethe unnatural scenario” (Alber, 2010, p. 5). The aforementioned

D.J. Nemeth, D. Che / Applied Geography 45 (2013) 109e118110

Shangri-La fits our definition of a phantasmal destination site as itoffers supernatural, mystical, and/or magical allure for tourists withrobust imaginations.

This new phantasmal tourism can be linked to thanatourismwhich Seaton (1996, p. 240) defined as “.travel to a locationwholly, or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolicencounters with death, particularly, but not exclusively, violentdeath, which may, to a varying degree be activated by the person-specific features of those whose deaths are its focal objects” anddark tourism popularized by Lennon and Foley (2000), and sub-sequently elaborated by Cooke (2012), Sharpley and Stone (2009),Skinner (2012), Stone (2006), and Stone and Sharpley (2008).Lennon and Foley (2000, p. 11) assert that dark tourism is a productof the late modern world’s global communication technologiespresenting death at tourist sites; education at, commodification,and commercialism of such sites; and its “anxiety and doubt aboutthe ‘project of modernity’ induced by the objects of dark tourism”.However, Seaton (2009) argues there has been a thanatopic tradi-tion in Europe as people there have long traveled to churches, ca-thedrals, and monasteries to view Christian relics as well as tomorgues, cemeteries and battlefields.

The term dark tourism has also been criticized and contestedgiven the lack of agreement regarding what makes up dark tourism(Biran, Poria, & Oren, 2011; Bowman & Pezzulo, 2009; Seaton,2009). The dark label would necessitate contrasting it with anopposite “light” tourism (Seaton, 2009). Additionally differentiatingdark and heritage destinations is problematic as tragedy and her-itage are not mutually exclusive as illustrated in the case of ante-bellum plantations in the southern US that depended on slave labor(Bowman & Pezzulo, 2009).

While dark tourism has been debated, we intend to forge a linkbetween phantasmal destinations and dark tourism. Intimations ofpost-modernity in dark tourism have already been discussed in theliterature (e.g. Muzaini, Teo, & Yeoh, 2007) and so a convergence ofpost-modern phantasmal destination tourism and post-moderndark tourism seems a timely topic for discussion. Stone (2006, p.151) argue that dark tourism/thanatourism destinations “can beplaced along a continuum of darkness”, as fits the broad range ofproclivities and expectations of those tourists that seek them out:darkest, darker, dark, light, lighter, lightest. Our “darker” phan-tasmal destination seems to fit the “lightest” category on Stone’s(2006) spectrum, having a “high entertainment orientation” forwhich a “higher tourism infrastructure” adds value to a successfultourism experience. We posit in this paper that there may be asizeable population demographic in search of “an air of realmenace” and who are not at all averse to consuming capriciousrisks and exploring dark thoughts. They are even wont to imaginedarkness and death e perhaps their own death e for example, at aphantasmal destination site. Informed by the dark tourism/thano-tourism literature, this demographic can be appropriately framedfor discussion purposes as “darker” than the aforementionedphantasmal destination tourists visiting Shangri-la. In sum, thesupernatural, mystical, magical, occult allure of a darker phan-tasmal destination appeals to tourists with robust imaginations insearch of “an air of real menace” in which there is the possibility ofexperiencing death at the site.

While Seaton (2009) cogently argues (see also Taillon, n. d.) thatthanatourism is not a post-modern phenomenon, post-modernismmay apply to our conception of a “darker phantasmal destination”,as it refers to the lightest category in Stone’s (2006) spectrum andStone seems to assume that “post-modern” is an epoch instead ofan attitude. We feel that “thanotourism” along with the nomen-clatures and neologisms coined prior to Stone (2006) such as“fright”, “morbid”, and “atrocity” tourisms, “black spots”, and “fatalattractions” represent much darker categories in Stone’s spectrum

than our “darker phantasmal origin” study. Post-modernism asattitude in contrast to epoch includes “putting to the question allbasic assumptions”, “crossing boundaries without a license” and“expecting theworst while hoping for the best”. These elements arekey psycho-spatial traits of our darker phantasmal destinationtourists, who imagine and seek out the supernatural mainly forentertainment, while risking possible personal injury and death.The darker phantasmal destination tourism we envision can offerits post-modern leisure consumers a carefree and guilt-free “camp”aesthetic and experience worth bragging about back home. Manywill purchase, if available, T-shirts with quips that begin with “Isurvived .”. In stark contrast, the Auschwitz concentration campdestination experience on Stone’s spectrum at the locus of thana-tourism is much darker and different than our concept of a darkphantasmal destination.

Consuming “dark” and “extreme” experiences are some of themore provocative post-modern past and present trends proclaimedin the book New Horizons of Tourism and sub-titled Strange Expe-riences and Stranger Practices. These trends acknowledge ever-increasing demand from tourists for extreme and unusual envi-ronments and amazing and bizarre experiences (Seaton & Lennon,2004; Singh, 2004). Death-defying experiences dished up by animagined supernatural at a dark phantasmal destination might bethe next dark tourism trend-setter. As yet, most recent anthologiesof dark tourism/thanatourism research make no reference to“phantasmal destinations” and much less “dark phantasmal desti-nations”. They do show enthusiasm for both thanatourism and darktourism terminology and conceptualizations and for the utility ofStone’s accommodating and inclusive “spectrum of dark tourism”

categories (Hepburn, 2012, p. 122e124).Our paper applies a heuristic device as its method of provoking

discovery by posing the questions, “What if a satisfying phantasmaldestination tourism experience is introduced and promoted alongeconomically-distressed rural roadways numbered ‘666’?” and“What measurable economic recovery could then result?” Heuris-tics are strategies using readily accessible, though loosely appli-cable, information to control problem solving in human beings andmachines. They are devices and mental constructs that can aid orguide discovery. A heuristic model does not answer a question inand of itself, but rather helps create a means for answering aquestion. Applications of heuristic approaches in spatial science arefamiliar to applied geographers, e.g. “we developed a heuristicapproach to calibrate our model which cannot be solved analyti-cally” (Li & Liu, 2012). Heuristics are also used in the social sciencesand humanities, and by geographers, in ways perhaps unfamiliar toapplied geographers in the spatial sciences. For example, counter-factual thinking “posing experience-based what if scenarios” is aheuristic method (see Warf, 2002). In this paper we discuss theproposition of creating a phantasmal tourism experience by firstexamining rural areas as places of consumption for the tourist gaze,dark destinations where the beast/Devil is said to preside such asRoutes 666, and then focus on a case study of an odd juxtapositionbetween God and the Devil on Pennsylvania 666 (The David Zeis-berger Highway).

Everything is real (excepting that which is not)

Several articles appearing in Applied Geography have exploredlinks between rural tourism and economic development. Forexample, Pillay and Rogerson (2013) presented a South African casestudy that promotes the merits of building linkages betweentourism and agriculture in order to promote sustainable ruraleconomic development. Wellings and Crush (1983) focused theirattention on tourism planning for a remote African region longcharacterized by economic stagnation while Gaughan, Binford, and

Fig. 1. The Fremont Troll. This massive public art sculpture lurks under the AuroraBridge in Seattle, Washington. Installed in 1990, the Troll enshrines a character in aclassic Norwegian fairy tale. The site now attracts visitors from around the world. Itexemplifies the successful potential of phantasmal destination tourism applied toeconomically-distressed sites along roadways and bridges. Photo by Philip Nutzhorn.

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Southworth (2009) mapped the changing landscapes surroundingpopular religious ruins in rural Cambodia.

In advanced developed countries, rural areas have increasinglyshifted from being places of production to ones of consumption.Brown (1997) argues persuasively that revitalization of the ruraleconomy in the United States will not occur through attempts torestore and return to the socio-economic agricultural productionsystems of the past, but rather by innovating to create spaces ofconsumption. Likewise on US national forest lands, there has been ashift from top-down, maximized agro-industrial tree production topost-productivist policies promoting amenity-based economicdiversification and local entrepreneurship via decentralizedgovernmental provision of marketing assistance, training, part-nerships, and advice to local entities (Che, 2003). However, agrowing rural tourism and housing countryside that attracts urbanconsumers has viable economic potential (Brown, 1997; Frederick,1992; Weaver, 1986; Woods, 2000). It can be part of an explicitsustainable rural tourism strategy (Bramwell, 1994; Lane, 1994a,b;Frederick, 1992). Branding as opposed to selling generic and‘placeless’ commodity products enable rural places to be marketedas desirable experiences which impart status to visitors (Markey,Halseth, & Manson, 2010). A “mystique of rurality” in places suchas Pennsylvania (Willits, 1993) appeals to those romanticizing na-ture, the past, and the rural; amenity seekers; second homeowners; and/or entrepreneurs cognizant of the marketable attri-butes of the rural landscape. The appeal of forested areas innorthwestern Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest region as‘natural escapes’ however can conflict with traditional extractiveactivities (Che, 2006).

To attract visitors to rural areas, the tourism industry has suc-cessfully innovated and promoted place-specific economic devel-opment using psychology and storytelling to socially constructreality. This “social construction of reality” creates desire througheffective propagandizing, salesmanship and spin (Bernays, 1928;Tye, 2002). A classic case of phantasmal destination tourism pro-motion that predates Gao’s coining the concept involves Jackson’s(1884) romantic historical novel Ramona which also facilitatedthe Southern California real estate boom. As escapist fantasy, eco-nomic boosters have deployed Ramona characters, sites and eventsto attract countless tourists to the far southwestern Americandesert locations in the novel. The Ramona-related phantasmaldestination tourism promotion proved so successful that touristshave been known to grow angry when they discover Ramona is afictional character (DeLyser, 2005). We think those many scientistsand scholars who claim the social construction of nature isdeceptive, dysrational, intellectually dishonest and/or a bankruptidea will find no logical grounds to dismiss our proposal to intro-duce a phantasmal destination tourism that exploits roadwaysnumbered 666 as a feasible storytelling strategy in order to pro-mote economic recovery in financially-distressed rural areas.

Furthermore, what reputable scientist does not already appre-ciate the seductive power of the “fallacy of selective thinking”(a.k.a. “confirmation bias”) over the human mind? Selectivethinking predisposes the human mind to discover exactly what itexpects to find while observing the real world. Selective thinking isanathema to facilitating the scientific advance of knowledge.Ironically, while scientific tourism researchmay avoid the danger ofconfirmation bias in its disciplined search for truth, the tourismindustry in practice deliberately exploits confirmation bias inhumans in order to both nurture and satisfy its customers’ desiresand grow its service economy.

In particular, the tourism industry cultivates practices that stirthe imagination and emotions of its customers while it entertainsand educates them. The industry is always in search of innovativeideas such as the magical Fremont Troll (Fig. 1), constructed under

all-too-real and mundane Aurora Bridge in Seattle. Lifted out ofScandinavian fairy tales, this phantasmal sculpture which is knownas “the troll under the bridge” was constructed in 1990. Today thislarge public art sculpture in a declining neighborhood hasdemonstrated international tourist appeal. “Einen Abstecher wert”(worth the visit) (2012) says a recent tourist fromGermany, and it isamong the top fifty sites to see in Seattle. Germans in particular areparticularly proud to visit the site since it incorporates a Volks-wagen Beetle as part of the sculpture. The success of the FremontTroll validates Gao’s phantasmal destination tourism concept inpractice as a planned method for revitalizing a derelict anddepressed economic site and situation. Such reality-enhancingstorytelling that deliberately adds value through creative decep-tion makes the Fremont Troll “work” and demonstrates thatphantasmal destination tourism can be an exciting avenue forfurther experimentation.

Dark phantasmal tourists who fail to worship “The Beast” at theirRoute 666 destinations risk death (Revelation 20:4). The Book ofRevelation clearly states that a battle is being waged on earth be-tween the forces of Good and Evil to win the hearts and minds ofevery mortal making the journey from birth to death and that “TheBeast” is a force proselytizing for Evil. The prospect of encounteringe in contrast to worshipinge “The Beast” at a Route 666 destinationcan have irresistible allure for many imaginative young, death-defying post-modern thinkers with impertinent curiosities. Cooke(2012, p. 48) comments on one of the darkest writings of thehaunted travel writer W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn. He notes thatof the five categories of motivation for thanatourism cited in Seaton(1996, p. 240), Sebald elaborates on four in Rings, but not the fifthwhich is “travel to watch death”. The dark phantasmal tourist weconjure up in this article does not travel “to watch death”, but ismotivated by “travel to taunt death”. For Routes 666 destinations, thedark phantasmal destination tourist who is located at the “lightest”extreme of Stone’s spectrum is a departure from what is typicallythought to be a thanatourist. Routes 666 tourism can move ruralareas beyond the “the discourse of the rural idyll, which positionsrural places as a utopia of harmony, tranquility and safety” (a“Shangri-la”). Rofe (2013) introduces the darker discourse of a ruraldystopia using the example of Snowtown, Australia, the rural townwhere the “Bodies in Barrels” murder victims’ bodies were stored ina bank vault. Rofe specifically invites “discussion on the limitedtheorization of dark tourism with specific regards to new ruraleconomies”, an invitation to which our own paper represents one

Fig. 2. Gospel Temperance Railroad Map. The allegorical “Gospel Temperance RailroadMap” (1908) by Bula, G. E. The road is a journey through life: many roads begin atDecisionville and lead to City of Destruction; one road e the “straight and narrow” e

arrives at the Celestial City (from Post, 1973, p. 33e35).

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possible response. Given the blurring of tourism and pilgrimage inthe tourism geography literature (Collins-Kreiner, 2010) which wesuggest that the advent of dark tourism during the past decade hascontributed significantly to, our Routes 666 proposal may furtheraccentuate the ambiguity between tourism and pilgrimage.

The road as a metaphor for life’s journey

Routes numbered 666 interpreted in the context of scripture canall be construed through the power of suggestion to be investedwith sin, to be sinister and to appear sinuous when experienced ormapped. The English word “sin” has its original meaning derivedfrom a Greek word (perhaps associated with archery) that trans-lated as “to miss themark”. To the extent that roads have frequentlybeen depicted in Christian religious texts and tracts as metaphorsfor mortal journeys through life, ultimate destinations loom largeon the mental maps of strict believers as variations on the binary“Heaven” or “Hell”. When drawn on historical maps e moral car-tographies e that were devised as didactic (teaching) and/ormnemonic (memory) devices and visual aids to advance the pur-poses of religious proselytizing, they are depicted as terminals fortwo roads diverging from a common origin (birth) during the life-long journeys of mortal men and women. To arrive at Heavenhaving deliberately taken the straight and narrow path throughoutone’s life journey is to in the end to “hit the mark”.

These maps emphasize that sinners will have “missed themark”to their eternal regret. The road to Heaven is invariably perceived tobe “straight and narrow”, in stark contrast to the circuitous, con-voluted and (sinuous) winding ways that take wicked wayfarers tothe alternative terrible terminus. Typically, morality maps of thissort are peppered with notoriously symbolic and allegorical placemarkers. Their locations which are creatively denoted as “VanityFair”, “Follyville”, “Dissipation Gap”, “Lewd Castle”, “RecklessRidge”, “Last Call”, “Murder Gorge” and “Suicide Tunnel” abut or arewithin the viewsheds of the iniquitous roadways that terminate in“The City of Destruction” (a.k.a. Hell). Inspired by late medievalEnglish-language “journey through life” morality maps originatingas implicit itineraries in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and inJohn Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), this cartographic genreexemplified in the 1908 Gospel Temperance Railroad Map by G.E.Bula in Post (1973) became progressively more graphic and explicitthrough the early 20th century (Fig. 2).

Where “The Beast” presides

Although the “dark” in “dark tourism” remains contested inacademic tourism studies to this day, pilgrimages to supernaturalsites imagined to be outposts of the occult where witchcraft,voodoo, vampires and the like can be experienced and practiced arebecoming a popular culture trend (Rudder, 2011; Russo, 2005). Weare inspired by the aforementioned morality maps to suggest thereis a logical locus for finding and observing “The Beast” at workalong roadways popularly perceived to be leading to Hell.

Like religious pilgrimages to legendary locations associatedwithdeities and important figures in various faith traditions, darkphantasmal destination tourism that invokes the 666 address of theBiblical “Beast” may prove to have similar appeal. We envisionpromoting tourist guides where “The Beast” presides couldconstitute a viable 666 roadways phantasmal destination tourismindustry. Our vision holds that the potential for success lies both inmarketing to the narrow “dark tourism” customer niche andcultivating an existing niche of 666-aware curiosity-seekers into abroader customer base. Hell, Michigan, a small hamlet with 72residents which attracts 50,000 tourists a year illustrates the po-tential of marketing this lightest form of dark tourism to those

interested in 666 (Olander, 2006b, p. 1B, 4B). John Colone, the un-official mayor of Hell, dreamed up a 6-6-6 party, or June 6, 2006celebration to promote the burg known mostly for Halloweenevents and annual celebrations such as the “Blessing of the Bikes”for motorcyclists and Helluva Cruise for classic car aficionados(George, 2006, p. 1A, 6A; Olander, 2006a, p. 3A, 7A). During theparty, over $1000 in $15.99 commemorative black T-shirts with“Hell” on the front and “Once in a Lifetime 6-6-6, June 6, 2006” onthe back were sold every 12 min. While visitors could enjoy 66 centsmall ice cream cones, buy a square inch of land in Hell for $6.66,and enjoy a Bloody Devil Cocktail (evil twin of the Bloody Mary) atthe Dam Site Inn, some self-proclaimed born-again Christiansprotested, noting, “The real hell is not a joke and there is no party inhell” (George, 2006, p. 1A, 6A). Yet 10,000 people attended the 6-6-6 party and received a letter of authenticity saying they celebratedJune 6, 2006 in Hell (Olander, 2006a,b).

Dark destination tourists who take leave of Christian beliefs andvalues as they practice dark tourism and thanotourism troublemany Christians including Rudder (2011) and Russo (2005) whohave respectively written “The Allure of the Occult” and “What’sthe Deal with Wicca? A Deeper Look into the Dark Side of Today’sWitchcraft”. Yet Christian pilgrimages which persisted throughoutEurope for over a millennium share a focus on death with thana-tourism and dark tourism. According to Seaton (2009), thanatour-ism had its origins in the Christian cult of Death as illustrated inChristianity’s emphasis on the crucifixion of Christ and the cross, acult of martyred saints, and the promotion of pilgrimage sites dis-playing relics and ex votos of the saints. Routes 666 as darkphantasmal destinations which echo thewinding travels from birthto death could offer latter-day pilgrimage potential to “The Beast’s”domicile.

Routes 666: few and far apart

Roadways numbered 666 exist around the world, including inCanada, Great Britain and Australia. Six-six-six numbered roadwaysin the US however are rather few and far between. Historically theirnumerical designations spreadwith the expansion of national, stateand local highways. The 666 designations were assigned over thepast hundred years by state government bureaucrats according to

Fig. 3. Pennsylvania historical marker commemorating Zeisberger’s missionary ac-tivity in the Alleghenies. This marker erected on July 29, 1947 approximately two milessouth of East Hickory is one of a number of historical markers dedicated to Zeisberger.

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a rational planning model described by Weingroff (2003, updated2011). The cumulative impact of assigning 666-numbered road-ways has culminated in a pop cultural phenomenonmuch larger (ina geo-psychological sense) than the sum of its parts. When viewedin hindsight, the 666 road-numbering method seems to have beeneither naïve or (in pop culture perspective) the work of a deep,diabolical conspiracy to give “The Beast” an appropriate addressand base of operations on earth.

To the extent the number 666 is perceived by the public con-sciousness to harbor Evil in the vague guise of “The Beast”, it iscapable of creating anxiety and even hysteria. We ask ourselves if666 roadways are so widely perceived to provide place-specificsanctuary for “The Beast”, why not tap into the tourism potentialby manipulating and enhancing a popular public perception of the666 Beastly abodes for profit and prosperity? This exploitation of animagined reality could reap the most public benefit by providingeconomic growth in distressed, at risk counties.

Today the 666 roadways of America represent a variegated lot ofnational, state and county roads. To our knowledge, Nemeth (1997,2010a,b), Nemeth and Howard (1999) is the only academic to havedevised a theoretical context to rationalize venturing out to count,map, and experience them all, and to make a long-term commit-ment to eventually collect them all into a single atlas. One 666-numbered Interstate highway which has been notorious for itsassociation with “The Beast” has attracted nearly all the mediaattention in the history of Routes 666 discourse. Between 1970 and1985 US 666 snaked for over 600 miles through all of the FourCorner States (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona) betweenGallup, New Mexico and Douglas, Arizona. Weingroff (2003,updated 2011) detailed the convoluted story of the rise anddecline of US 666which was established in 1926 as the sixth spur ofthe newly designated US Route 66, the “Main Street of America”that ran between Chicago and Los Angeles. Officially US 666 wasdecommissioned due to complaints by Christians, Navajos, Cham-bers of Commerce and roadside residents about the negative psy-chologies of a 666 roadway address. The decommissioningoccurred despite arguments that emotional hysterias should nottrump the logic of official roadway numbering systems. One of themore imaginative complaints of the anti-Interstate 666 lobby uti-lized cartographic evidence to “prove” that US Interstate 666appeared to strangle the hub of the Four Corners region, where thestate boundaries converged to form a crucifix (Trull, 1996). Thisimaginative and imageable (on maps) “odd juxtaposition” isevident along other roadways numbered 666 in the USA. In Ohio,State Road 666 originates at Dresden in a dramatic diverging fromstate route 208, much as the departure at birth of the wayward lifefrom the life well-lived is depicted on the Gula map. “Odd juxta-position” is thus an exploitable, mappable concept that lends itselfto a routes 666 phantasmal destination tourism campaign. FarmRoad 666 in Texas offers a particularly uncanny rural drivingexperience and is thus another candidate ripe for phantasmaldestination tourism development in search of “The Beast” (not theleast for its odd juxtaposition to Corpus Christi (Latin for the “Bodyof Christ”)).

Another odd juxtaposition 666 roadway is our case study knownofficially as the David Zeisberger Highway. Our case study juxta-poses “The Beast” of Pennsylvania (PA) State Route 666 and “TheGood” of David Zeisberger, the Moravian missionary after whom PA666 has been named. Forest County through which much of PARoute 666 runs has experienced a decline in its traditional blue-collar hunting market given deindustrialization in its majortourism generating areas, the loss of its major manufacturing em-ployers, and declining national forest timber harvests. ForestCounty, which has no traffic lights or four-lane highways and hasbeen marketed as “The Natural Escape”, has thus considered

economic alternatives such as value-added wood products andecotourism.

Development of tourism routes can be another strategy. Tourismroutes can stimulate co-operation and partnerships between localareas and foster tourism development (Briedenhann & Wickens,2004). In the rural US, tourism routes are seen as a way to gettravelers off freeways and increase visitation to bypassed smalltowns. To promote cultural, artistic, and historic resources alongHighway 18/50 across southern South Dakota, the Oyate Trail hasbeen developed which includes the Shrine to Music Museum; aCzechoslovakian arts festival; cowboy poets; the Dakota Territory’sfirst capital; and Native American powwows, museums, and artscenters on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservations(Edgell & Edwards, 1993). Historic attractions can also be found offthe interstate on US 12, the main route between Chicago andDetroit until supplanted by I-94, as less travel and poverty meantlack of new development and more preservation (Dimick, 2004, p.A1, A4, A5). Route 666 tourism development in Forest County couldbe considered given its rustic qualities and the aforementioned oddjuxtaposition between God and the Devil.

God and the devil on PA Route 666 (the David ZeisbergerHighway)

David Zeisberger after whom PA Route 666 is named wasrecognized for his missionary work among Native Americans inPennsylvania and Ohio. In 1767 Zeisberger came from the easternPennsylvania Moravian town of Bethlehem to minister to a branchof displaced Delaware Indians known as the Munseys who hadestablished three refuge towns at/near where the Tionesta Creekflows into the Allegheny River (Fig. 3). Zeisberger’smissionaryworkhowever met with opposition, in particular from the tribe’s medi-cine man, Wagomen. However, this opposition to Zeisberger’smissionary work may be due to earlier Munsey encounters withNative preachers influenced by white frontier preachers. Onepreacher declared “that he had never heard of God on the crosspreached by the Moravians, and did not believe him to be the realGod for his God had no wounds” (Hubert & Schwarze, 1999, p 135).Thus it appeared to Zeisberger that through such earlier encounters“Satan endeavored to rob the gospel of its power over the Indians”(Hubert & Schwarze, 1999, p 136). These preachers apparentlyintroduced the Indians to the concept of the Devil as Zeisbergernoted,

Fig. 4. The David Zeisberger Highway. This sign for the commemorative David Zeis-berger Highway can be found on PA Route 666 near its eastern terminus.

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“They (Indians) seem to have had no idea of the devil until inmodern times (Zeisberger’s day) preachers arose among themwho proclaimed that there was such a being, having securedtheir knowledge from the whites. They have no very definiteconception of him but consider him to be a very powerful spirit,able to work much harm and unable to do any good. Many sayalso that Indians would never be claimed by the devil, howeverwicked they might be in the world, because he existed only forthe whites who wrought evil. They declare that he is not tofound among the Indians but only among thewhite people, for ifhe were among the Indians they would long since havediscovered him, and their ancestors would have told them abouthim. They did know, however, about good and evil spirits whichappears from this: when crimes had been committed, the guiltyones laid the blame on an evil spirit who had seduced them.They have also been accustomed to admonish one another intime of war not to give ear to the evil spirit but to the good spiritwho counseled peace” (Hubert & Schwarze, 1999, p 130).

As understood by Native Americans, this devil would causegreat problems along life’s journey. Such preachers who appearedthirty years earlier than Zeisberger among the Indians said “noone could enter heaven without great danger, for the road, saythey, runs close by the gates of hell. Here the devil lies in ambushand snatches at every one who is going to God. For the first timeIndians were informed by preachers that there was a heavenwhere was the dwelling of God and a hell that of the devil,knowledge presumably gained from whites” (Hubert & Schwarze,1999, 133). For Native Americans, the route to heaven wasparticularly circuitous as noted by the earlier preachers who

“.marked off on a piece of parchment made of deerskin tworoads, both leading to heaven, one designed by God for the In-dians, the other for the white people. They claim that the latterhad to go a great way round about and the road for the Indianswas at that time the shortest, but now, since the white peoplehad blocked up the road for the Indians, they were obliged tomake a long circuit to come to God” (Hubert & Schwarze, 1999, p133).

Such preaching fomented conflict between whites and NativeAmericans. Despite the earlier influence of earlier Euro-Americanand Native American frontier preachers, Zeisberger had impor-tant conversions, including that of the blindMunsey chief, Allemwi.He also remained among the Munseys from 1768 to 1769, buildingthe first church west of the Alleghenies in 1769. In recognition ofDavid Zeisberger’s missionary work, representatives James K. Davisof Forest County and AllenM. Gibson ofWarren County submitted aproposal in 1939 to rename Route 666 from East Hickory in ForestCounty to Barnes in Warren County as the David Zeisberger High-way given the former town was the site of the mission he estab-lished in 1769 (Childs, 1989). In the 1950s, the highway wasofficially re-named in honor of the Moravian missionary (Fig. 4).

The odd juxtaposition on PA Route 666 did not end with DavidZeisberger’s missionary work in the late 1700s, but continued withlater Euro-American settlement and resource development. Duringthe water transportation timber harvesting phase (1830e1890)large Yankee timber interests acquired large tracts of land andorganized lumber companies. Two of the most prominent timberowner-operators along the Allegheny River in Forest Countyincluded Wheeler and Dusenbury and T.D. (“Teddy”) Collins(Wilhelm, 1953). Both Collins and Wheeler and Dusenbury differednot only from the typical lumber companies both in paternalisti-cally taking care of their employees, but also in tightly controllinglife in their company towns. The religious timber barons banned

the sale of alcohol in their company towns and lumber camps andconstructed churches for their employees in those towns alongTionesta Creek which parallels Route 666 (Casler, 1976; Wheeler,1960; Wilhelm, 1953).

Teddy Collins also contributed to Methodist missions worldwide,erecting missionary schools in Korea, in Peking (Beijing) andNanking, China; Montevideo, Uruguay; and in Barilla, India (Childs,1989). While initial timber harvesting continued until approxi-mately 1939, the cutover Collins Pennsylvania land was never soldeven after operations moved to the US timber frontier of the PacificNorthwest. When Teddy Collins’ son, Everill Collins passed away in1940, his will provided that his and his father’s commitment to theBoard of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Church would continue,guaranteed by a fiveeeights’ ownership in most of the Collins’ landsin the eastern and western US (Clinger, 1970, p. 2). 23,000 acres ofPennsylvania lands including those along Route 666 (Fig. 5) were putinto a trust with the proceeds frommanagement of the land going tothe Methodist Church to support world missions. Their secondgrowth forest lands are managed for timber production under thisarrangement (The Collins Companies, 2011). Thus, the odd juxta-position of God and the Devil continues today onwinding Route 666.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphilia, selective thinking and Route666 tourism

Strecher (1999, p. 276) defines magical realism as “.what hap-pens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by some-thing too strange to believe”. Given the mass perception that 666-numbered roads have been “invaded by The Beast”, they may bepromoted for their site-specific phantasmal destination tourismpotential. In spite of all the negative connotations that might beassociatedwith 666 roadways, we suggestmanymore peoplewill beattracted to them than presently are repulsed by them. In otherwords, the philia for them seems far more widespread than anyextant phobia against them. A philia manifests as an emotional needto possess a certain object, experience, or place. In contrast, a phobiamanifests as an emotional fear or aversion for an object, experience,or place. Providing pleasurable and satisfying place experiences arethe primary goals of successful phantasmal destination tourism.Satisfying a hungry curiosity to discover or engage “The Beast” (inwhatever shape or form one might perceive it to be) is the specificgoal for building a successful hexakosioihexekontahexaphilic desti-nation tourism industry.

Fig. 5. Route 666 and Collins Pine lands map. (Cartographer: Anne Gibson).

Fig. 6. Fools Creek Store. This old retail sales establishment along PA Route 666 has aname reminiscent of a way marker along a road leading to the City of Destruction onthe allegorical Bula map (see Fig. 2 above).

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Although psychologists have identified and named a phobia ofthe number 666 “hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia”, there seemsalso to be a real but small-scale hexakosioihexekontahexaphilicculture (or cult) or a sub-group that can be significantly expanded innumbers through a successful tourism promotion campaign.Judging from the Internet posts in response to a casual “routes 666”search, this cult(ure) seems to have a sizeable but inchoate and asyet diffuse membership. We suggest there is great potential for it togrow by focusing on its shared object of interest in an organizedwaythrough “routes 666” phantasmal destination tourism promotion.

Official 666 road signs are already prized “collectibles”, to theextent that highway departments consider their replacement costsexorbitant. They have lobbied government (sometimes success-fully) to change the route numbers. Weingroff reports that whileinterminable and emotional protest campaigns by hexakosioihex-ekontahexaphobic Christians and allied ethnic groups are mostoften credited by the media with achieving the US Interstate 666number change in 1985, the state highway departments of NewMexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona provided rational cost savingsas the reason for doing so. Ironically, elimination of 666-numberedroadways poses a serious challenge to our proposal to create asuccessful revenue-generating routes 666 phantasmal destinationtourism economy for distressed locations throughout the USA.Judging from our blog searches, increasing numbers and activitiesof routes 666 aficionados encourage us to elaborate here on thepotential of the David Zeisberger Highway for “looking for ‘TheBeast’ phantasmal destination tourism.

PA 666 already offers selective thinkers “reason to believe”. Forexample, phantasmal destination tourists/selective thinkers insearch of “The Beast” along the Zeisberger Highway will encountera “Fools Creek Store” (Fig. 6), a seemingly magical manifestation ofthe “Follyville” way marker from the Hull map somehow relocatedto the reality of the Zeisberger Highway. This Fools Creek is sonamed because residents expected the small run to come down thehillside and empty into Tionesta Creek at a logical place, but itdisappeared underground and then reappeared in an unlikely spot

(Badenoch, 1976). While now a private residence, the former storewhich was in operation for around 100 years originally suppliedTeddy Collins’ mills and logging camps in the Minister and FoolsCreek areas. With the decline of the lumbering industry andnumber of local residents prior to World War II, subsequent storeowners succeeding Collins found as the logged over lands becamereforested, seasonal fishermen, hunters, and campers who came tothe Tionesta Creek Valley along Route 666 to enjoy its wildlife andits natural beauty generated over 80% of their business (Fig. 7). Astraight, high-speed Federal highway project was proposed in thelate 1960s for PA Route 666, but was opposed by those concernedthat it would alter the nature of the valley which drew theimportant camper trade (Forest Press, 1967). The high-speed Fed-eral highway project that would straighten out the curves of PA

Fig. 7. Tionesta Creek Valley along PA Route 666.

Fig. 9. Old bridge along PA Route 666 heading into the woods. A warning is scrawled inlipstick. Are those eyes glaring in the darkness at the end of the bridge? The bridgeleads to Mayburg, a “ghost town” whose Mayburg Chemical Company once producedwood chemicals. The plant closed with the liquidation of the forest and the shutteringof the railroad line running through the Tionesta Valley. The dismantled town has beenreplaced by seasonal hunting camps.

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Route 666 and affect its beautiful and beastly character was notimplemented, although recently roadwork has realigned andwidened it as well as leveled its curves in order to get rid of the‘roller coaster’ effect which the Forest Service saw as limiting accessto the heart of the ANF for recreation, hunting and resource man-agement. Yet its beauty that has provided another odd juxtaposi-tion on PA Route 666 remains. For Tall Oaks, the “magical shopping”tourist destination, its location on Route 666 across the road fromTionesta Creek, one of the best trout fishing streams in the area, andnestled amidst thousands of acres of the ANF, is a major selling

Fig. 8. PA Route 666 and Tall Oaks stores signs.

point. Although some customers nervously joke about 666, thestore’s website notes, “The stretch of highway from Barnes toHickory that takes you right past Tall Oaks has been called the mostbeautiful autumn drive in Pennsylvania” (Tall Oaks, 2012) (Fig. 8).

Across Tionesta Creek is this bridgewith defaced signage (Fig. 9)that indicates PA 666 is indeed a “journey to Hell” as depicted onthe Bula map. The construction of a Fremont Troll-like featureunder this bridge in the shape of “The Beast” is the sort of invest-ment appropriate to PA 666 in order to support a “home of ‘TheBeast’” tourism marketing story. To emphasize our argument thatanyone who deliberately comes looking for “The Beast” along aroadway numbered 666 will have his or her expectations met dueto confirmation bias, we draw the reader’s attention to the two“eyes of ‘The Beast’ that appear in the darkness at the end of thebridge. This photo taken by the first author has not been Photo-Shopped. The magic just manifests itself through the power ofwishful thinking (confirmation bias).

Discussion and conclusion

In areas of rural America that are economically distressed butrich in natural and cultural attractions, tourism has been seen as anavenue for economic diversification. In 2003, Governor EdwardRendell established the Pennsylvania (PA) Wilds initiative to coor-dinate public and private sector efforts to conserve the natural re-sources and foster economic development and job and businesscreation in 12 northecentral counties (including Forest) of theCommonwealth of Pennsylvania (Econsult Corporation, 2010). ThePA Wilds region has 2.1 million acres of public land, the largestblock between New York City and Chicago, and offers some of thebest opportunities for outdoor recreation and wilderness adven-ture experiences in the eastern US (Kane Republican, 2009). Givenits geographic isolation, dependency on manufacturing, and lowrepresentation in recession-proof sectors such as health care, thePA Wilds region has had lower per capita income growth andhigher unemployment rates than the Commonwealth as a whole(Econsult Corporation, 2010). Thus as part of the initiative, the stateprovided $120 million in upgrading public infrastructure such asinteractive visitors centers at state parks and signage, over $5million in marketing the region (Wells, 2009), and internet re-sources on loans, grants, community assistance, building design,

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etc. (Kane Republican, 2009). Since the implementation of the PAWilds initiative, the region has seen growth in its annual GrossDomestic Product, overnight leisure travel and leisure overnighttrip length, visitor spending, and attendance at its state parks(Econsult Corporation, 2010). According to Ta Brant, PAWilds SmallBusiness Ombudsman, the region aims to capitalize on emergingtourism trends such as bird watching, wildlife viewing, canoeingand kayaking, driving tours, heritage culture tours and niche mar-kets to increase tourism traffic into the 12 counties (Wells, 2009).Dark tourismwhich encompasses Route 666 tourism can be amongthe niche markets in the PA Wilds.

Route 666 tourismmay also be a good fit for the growing area ofexperiential tourism. Experiential tourism is based on an area’snatural, cultural and historical resources and helps people learnabout the environment, their world and themselves. Authenticity isalso a primary theme in these travelers’wants and needs, with over40% saying their experience is better when they can see and dosomething authentic as opposed to manufactured (Fermata Inc.,2005). Godbey (2006) has argued there is nothing more authenticthan death. Route 666 dark tourism can bring the reality of deathback into the social consciousness as a way to confront its inevi-tability, but in a formwhere terror has been neutralized. In the past,the Christian cult of death produced anxiety that could only berelieved by belief and practices such as pilgrimages (Seaton, 2009).In an increasingly secular world in which life and death have beenprivatized, Stone and Sharpley (2008) assert that people without ameaningful ritual regarding death have been left feeling vulnerableand socially unsupported when contemplating it. Thus even back tothe 19th century morgues were popular destinations in cities suchas Paris and New York, and the 27-year display of the unclaimedbody of an Italian immigrant who committed suicide in 1911attracted over 50,000 visitors to a funeral home in Garden City,Kansas (Bickel, 2010). In addition to corpses, sites of natural di-sasters and mass casualties were tourist attractions which offeredvisitors visceral and visual experience that both attracted andrepelled. Immediately after the 1889 Johnstown, PennsylvaniaFlood, gawkers came to view death and destruction. Within a fewweeks after the disaster the B&O Railroad sold round-trip excursiontickets to Johnstown (Godbey, 2006). While it is unacceptable todayfor morgues and funeral homes to be tourist attractions, the touringBody Worlds exhibition of real human corpses provides the op-portunity for one to face death. Routes 666 tourism may provideanother opportunity.

We have suggested that roadways numbered 666 in the USA andelsewhere around the world can be profitably marketed as offeringa death-taunting, “looking for ‘The Beast’ experience” as in “If youlook for ‘The Beast’, you are sure to find It!” Inspired by Revelation13:18, the locus of “The Beast” is place-specific and accessible. Thisassertion is based in the “fallacy of selective thinking” (also called“confirmation bias”) that argues anyone with a hypothesis will belooking to confirm it and ignore all evidence to the contrary. Wemeld this concept of selective thinking with Gao’s “phantasmaldestination” concept. Both conceptual threads convenientlyconverge in our study to explain how people along the Routes 666will encounter “The Beast”, because that is what they are expecting(fearing, perhaps). From descriptions in the Book of Revelation it ispossible to piece together a profile of “The Beast”. It is red and re-sembles a leopard with bear-like paws, the mouth of a leopard anda seven-headed horned crown head. Above all, “The Beast” isimplied to be a shape-shifter, which conveniently renders all theaforementioned specifics for the purposes of identification irrele-vant. To the 666 selective thinker, a raven might be “The Beast”, buta Rottweiler more likely so. Our meld creates a “darker phantasmaldestination” than that previously considered by Gao, yet a moreadventurous and less morose dark tourism experience than that

offered by death-oriented/centered thanatourism (Stone, 2006;Stone & Sharpley, 2008).

With increased tourism resulting from a successful phantasmaldestination promotion campaign as well as one based on the nat-ural beauty of the areas, we envision how commercial establish-ments and creative entrepreneurs along the Routes 666 will satisfythe demand of these “dark” tourists by supplying their “desires”like those businesses in Hell, Michigan have done. In anticipation ofa “Looking for the Beast” campaign that employs and deploys cre-ative stories of “provenance”, including those inspired by Scripture,to jumpstart, then grease the wheels of this popular and profitablenew phantasmal tourism phenomenon. New social networkingmediums can take thesemessages to the people and attract them totour economically-distressed rural 666 roadways.

“Getting there is half the fun” holds true for dark phantasmaldestination tourism. As indicated above, dark phantasmal touristexpectations of the destination are paved by the informed imagi-nation. At present, exposure to supernatural, mystical and magicallearning modalities (advantaging personal communication, printand visual media, Internet sources, and the like) have alreadymelded some like-minded individuals into cultish communities ofinterest, predisposing them to discovering the allure of traveling toand along routes numbered 666 in search of “The Beast”. At presenta haphazard discovery leading to a peculiar pastime for a few,orchestrating the social construction of this offbeat allure canpromote local and regional economic growth. In sum, we hope toboost the economic potential of routes numbered 666 whenpopularly perceived and promoted as phantasmal destinationtourism, in particular the ironic e if not yet iconic e David Zeis-berger Highway (Pennsylvania 666) phantasmal destinationtourism case study.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Jay Gatrell and the anonymous re-viewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of thismanuscript, which clarified and strengthened this paper. Wewouldalso like to thank Anne Gibson for cartographic assistance andPhilip Nutzhorn for permission to use Fig. 1 photo.

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