The Origin Stories Of These Fairy Tales Have Been Discovered And They're Actually Horrifying

The real version of these stories are not what you were told.

Elzaan Van der merwe

• Published in Weird
• April 19, 2018

Every night when we were children our parents used to read us bedtime stories to get us to go to sleep. The fairytales always had a happy ending, because what kid wants to hear about a princess being eaten or killed?

Our parents and even Disney did a good job sugar coating the fairytales to make them more kid-friendly. But all fairy tales have an origin because they had to come from somewhere, right?

People wouldn't just think out stories that didn't really happen. Okay, sometimes they do, but let me tell you stories like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and Red Riding Hood all have historic origins and it's way creepier than the stories we were growing up to.

1. Hansel and Gretel

This is an old-time favorite that our parents, parents used to read their kids. Everyone knows it, but do they know the real story? It is actually a true story based on the famine in 1315-1317. You see a lot of parents abandoned their children to avoid starving themselves to death. Everyone got the story right surprisingly, it goes like this. A sister and brother heard that their parents wanted to abandon them so they decided they are going to run away instead. They ran into the woods and met a witch that wanted to fatten them up and eat them.

2. Red Riding Hood

Most people think The Red Riding Hood came from Brother's Grimm, but they are the people that actually sugar-coated the fairy tale a little bit. They decided to add a huntsman that saves the day to soften the blow a little. The real story, however, came from Charles Perrault in 1697. In his story, Little Red Riding Hood actually eats her own grandmother after the wolf killed her and served her to the little girl. In another version, the wolf forced the girl to strip and lay in bed with him.

3. Little Mermaid

In the Disney version of Ariel, she gives up her voice to be able to walk on land. In the original story by Hans Christian Andersen, Ariel actually gave up her tongue to get legs. If that wasn't bad enough, she was tortured further, by experiencing excruciating pain every time she takes a step. They also give her only one day to get the prince to marry her. She danced and danced with him, while in so much pain just for him to marry another woman. Her sister gave her a dagger to kill the prince, but she decided to rather dissolve in sea foam. The End!

4. Sleeping Beauty

Italian poet Giambattista Basile wrote the real version of Sleeping Beauty in 1634 called, "Sun, Moon, and Talia". You see this story is creepier and darker than the story we are used to. In this story, she falls into a deep sleep through a tiny bit of flax that is stuck under her nail. Instead of burying her, her father laid her down in one of his castle's many rooms. A king from another country comes to wake her up but ends up raping her and fleeing from the castle. Poor Talia got pregnant and gave birth to two children while she was lying there unconscious. One of her infants managed to suck out the flax and she woke up. The king that raped her married another woman and when she learned of Talia and her children she decided to cook the children and feed them to the king. The king's cook swopped the children with lamb meat. The king found out what his wife was up to and he burned her alive. He later married Talia and lived happily ever after.

5. The Pied Piper

This is one story that really happened and there is some proof. You see a German village in Hamelin was invested with rats so they hired a man in piper clothes. He leads the rats away with his music. The village people then wanted to kill him, but before they could he lead all the children away to their death. Where is the proof that this happened? Well, there is an entry in the Hamelin ledger in 1384 that reads like this, "It is 100 years since our children left." A gate was also built in the town entrance in the 16th century with a specific message engraved in it, "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 that the princess kisses the frog and it then turns into a prince. But in the original story, there is no kissing! The princess was actually disgusted by the frog, but the prince kept on courting her and tried to charm her. She then smashed the frog into the wall and he turns back into a prince. Another version was created where the princess cuts off the frog's head and it turns back into the prince. It's safe to say the princess doesn't like frogs.

7. Cinderella

Cinderella was an awful fairytale that I'm sure made a lot of little girls cry and the original is not that far off. In the real story, the sisters want to marry the prince so badly that they cut off a piece of their feet so it can fit in the shoe. But the prince married Cinderella instead. She wanted revenge for what her sisters did so she ordered her royal birds to eat out her sister's eyes.

8. Beauty and The Beast

9. Snow White

Snow White was inspired by a noblewoman named, Margarete von Waldeck. She was in love with a prince from Spain, but her parents didn't like the idea of them being together. It wasn't long till she ended up dead and they say she was poisoned. The von Waldeck family was in the mining industry and the dwarves were most likely inspired by the little-deformed kids that worked for them in the mines. The kids were called dwarves.

Elzaan Van der merwe