Saif
Who didn’t love bedtime stories as a kid?
I mean, we literally wouldn’t sleep without listening to one with a happy ending in it. Why? Because a happy ending would give us an odd satisfaction. Everyone loves a happy ending but what if we told you that the stories we were told in our childhoods were all sugar-coated? There was absolutely nothing “happy” about those stories and if we were actually told the original versions and where did they originate from, we would have been horrified!
Famous stories like Hansel & Gretel, Cinderella or the Red Riding Hood have historic origins and it’s not pleasant at all. They are way creepier than we thought. It’s understandable who would want their kids to know the creepy versions of these stories but now that we are not kids anymore, we’d love to find out about them. And let us assure you, it’s surely going to surprise you! So, are we ready? Let’s scroll!
1. Hansel and Gretel
Let’s start with this classic that our parents used to read to children. Everyone knows it, but do they know the true story? We are pretty sure that they do not. It is actually a true story based on the famine of 1315-1317. You see, many parents abandon their children in order to avoid hunger. Surprisingly, everyone understood the story well, and that is the case. A sister and brother came to know that their parents were going to abandon them. So, they decided to run away and they ran into the forest where they met a witch who wanted to make them fatter and eat them.
2. Red Riding Hood
So a majority of people think that Little Red Riding Hood comes from Brothers Grimm, but let us tell you that these people sugar-coated the fairy tale. They decided to add a hunter to save the day to ease the blow. However, the true story comes from Charles Perrault’s story in 1697. In his story, Little Red Riding Hood ate her own grandmother after the wolf killed her and served her to the girl. In another disgusting version, the wolf forces the girl to take off her clothes and lie on the bed with him.
3. Little Mermaid
In the Disney version of Ariel, she gave up her voice so that she could walk on land. In the original book by Hans Christian Andersen, Ariel actually gave up her tongue to have legs. To make things worse, she was tortured more and experienced unbearable pain every step of the way. They also only gave her one day for the prince to marry her. While bearing all the pain, she still danced with the prince only for him to marry someone else. Her sister gave her a dagger to kill the prince, but she decided to dissolve in the seafoam.
4. Sleeping Beauty
In 1634, the Italian poet Giambattista Basile wrote the real version of “Sleeping Beauty” called “Sol, Luna y Talia”. You will see that this story is more creepy and darker than the one we are used to. In this story, she fell asleep through a bit of linen stuck under her nails. Instead of burying her, her father placed her in one of the many rooms in his castle. A king from another country came to wake her, but eventually raped her and fled the castle. Poor Thalia became pregnant and gave birth to two boys in a coma. One of her babies sucked on the sheets and woke her up. The king who raped her married another woman, and when that woman came to know about Thalia and her children, she decided to cook the children for the king. The king’s cook brought the children down with the lamb. The king discovered what his wife had done and burned her alive. He later married Thalia and lived a happy life.
5. The Pied Piper
This is a real story, and there is some evidence. A German town in Hamelin is full of rats, so they hired a man in piper clothes. That man used his music to lead the rats away. The people in the town wanted to kill him, but before he had time, he killed all the children. Where is the evidence that this happened? Well, Hamelin had such an entry in the 1384 account book: “It’s been 100 years since our children left.” In the 16th century, the city gate was built with a specific message engraved: “In the year 1556, 272 years after the magician led 130 children out of the town, this portal was erected.”
6. Frog Prince
The story goes like this, the princess kisses the frog and then it becomes a prince. But if we look at the original story, there is no kiss! The princess is really disgusted by frogs, but the prince has been wooing her and trying to attract her. Then she smashes the frog on the wall, and the frog became a prince again. In another version, the princess cut off the frog’s head, and it became a prince again. So, one thing is established and that is that the princess doesn’t like frogs at all.
7. Cinderella
Cinderella is a terrible fairy tale, I’m sure it made many girls cry, and the original version is not far from it. In the true story, the sisters wanted to marry the prince so much that they ended up chopping a piece of their own feet only so that the shoes can fit. But the prince ended up marrying Cinderella anyway. Cinderella wanted to avenge the actions of his sisters, so she ordered her royal bird to eat the eyes of her sisters.
8. Beauty and The Beast
This fairy tale is adapted from a true story. A woman named Catherine married Petrus Gonsalvus, a French nobleman. He suffers from a rare disease called congenital hypertrichosis. This means that his body is covered with hair from head to toe. It was in the 16th century, and people thought he was half beast and half-human. People tend to treat it as an experiment, which is why King Henry II forced himself to marry Catherine to see what his children would look like. It is said that they were very happy, but people have never treated them as human beings.
9. Snow White
Snow White was inspired by an aristocratic woman named Margaret von Waldeck. She fell in love with a prince from Spain, but her parents did not like the idea of them being together. She died before long, and they said she was poisoned. The von Waldeck family is in the mining industry, and the dwarves may have been inspired by the deformed children who worked for them in the mine. The children are called dwarfs.
Well, as the post comes to an end, we bet that you must have had shivers down your spine while you were going through these horrible stories which we once loved because of their happy endings! Anyway, let us know what you think of these stories in the comments section below.