Dark Fairy Tales: The Disturbing Stories Behind Your Childhood Favorites

Cannibalism, medieval torture, rape—these all sound like things you would expect from a horror novel or an HBO series, but certainly not your favorite childhood fairy tales… right?

Actually, most classic fairy tales, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding Hood include at least one of those elements, and their original stories are much darker than what you probably read at bed time.

So if you thought wicked stepmothers and poisonous potions were scary, brace yourself, because the original narratives are far more sinister. In this post, we’ll explore the versions that make fire-breathing dragons look tame.

Dark Fairy Tales and Their Origins

Below are 9 dark fairy tales we bet you never heard as a child.

1. Hansel and Gretel by The Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm published this piece of German folklore in 1812. You may remember the already dark tale of a cannibalistic witch who wants to eat children, only to be pushed into her own oven in the end.

But you may not have known that Hansel and Gretel was actually inspired by an equally dark, true history. From 1314–1322, Europe experienced the Great Famine, which scholars estimate could have killed up to 25% of the continent’s population.

It was not unusual for some desperate parents to abandon their unwanted children in the woods, and according to some reports, even eat them.

This history is reflected in the German tale, as Hansel and Gretel get wise to their parents’ plan to abandon them, and make their way to a witch’s gingerbread house, only to find out the witch plans to plump them up and eat them.

2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by The Brothers Grimm

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs started the trend of brightening up and “Disney-fying” dark fairy tales. You’re probably familiar with the story thanks to Walt Disney’s 1938 animated film adaptation featuring singing dwarves.

Even in the Disney version, there are some details that definitely wouldn’t make the cut in today’s Disney movies—like the fact that the evil stepmother orders a huntsman to bring her Snow White’s heart in a box. But in the Grimms’ version, she wanted to devour Snow White’s lungs and liver—oh, and she’s not even 10 years old at the time.

Snow’s “happily ever after” in the Grimm version also comes with a grim side of revenge: the queen is invited to Snow White’s wedding, where the guests heat a pair of iron shoes on burning coals, then force the queen to wear them and dance in agony until she drops dead.

3. Cinderella by The Brothers Grimm

The story of Cinderella appeared even in ancient China, but the Grimm brothers also put their own dark twist that’s nothing like the Disney romantic fairy tale you grew up with.

The basic premise is the same, but much like the Grimms’ Snow White, there’s grim revenge in this version of Cinderella. Here, Cinderella’s fairy godmother is actually a magical tree, with little birds who help her out—little birds who peck out the evil stepsisters’ eyeballs!

Also different is the stepsisters’ desperation to fit into the shoe: one chops off a toe, while the other slices her heel.

4. Little Red Riding Hood by The Brothers Grimm

The premise of Little Red Riding Hood has remained basically the same across its many translations and versions: a young girl, dressed in a red hooded cape, goes off to her grandmother’s house but encounters a sly wolf who gobbles up her grandmother and proceeds to impersonate the old woman. The area where some versions differ is in the details of how the granny gets saved.

In the most kid-friendly versions, a woodsman hears Little Red’s screams and makes the wolf spit out the grandmother unharmed—but that’s not exactly what happens in every version.

For example, the Brothers Grimm version sees both Little Red and her grandmother swallowed by the wolf, before a hunter arrives on the scene and cuts the wolf’s belly open with a pair of shears, allowing Little Red and her grandmother to emerge unscathed.

Then there’s Charles Perrault’s earlier version from 1697, which is even more sinister. An “attractive, well-bred young lady” from a village in the French countryside gets tricked into giving the wolf directions to her grandmother’s house. The wolf eats the grandmother, impersonates her, then when Little Red Riding Hood arrives, he asks her to climb into the bed before eating her too.

The tale was intended as a warning for young women to avoid sexual predators. And in case there was any doubt, Perrault states the moral plainly at the end of the story:

Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

5. Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault and The Brothers Grimm

The earliest known version of this narrative is believed to be Perceforest, written anonymously in France between 1330–1344.

In the Disney version, a sorceress casts a spell on a young princess that will cause her to die at 16, when she pricks her finger on a spindle. A good fairy partially undoes the spell, so that the princess will remain asleep until she is kissed by her true love, the prince to whom she is betrothed.

The Grimm and Perrault versions didn’t diverge much from that premise, but in Perceforest, things were much creepier. Here, the prince returns to find the young woman lying nude and comatose in her bedroom, and rapes her. She becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child, all while still asleep. When her baby bites his mother’s finger, the flax chip from the spindle falls out, causing the young lady to awaken.

Think it can’t get worse? In Giambattista Basile’s 1634 story, “The Sun, the Moon and Talia,” a king impregnates the comatose girl, who gives birth to twins. When his queen hears about this, she sends her cook to get the children, to kill and cook them, and serve them to her husband as punishment. Fortunately, the cook has a conscience and serves lamb instead.

6. The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

In the Disney animated musical, Ariel, daughter of King Triton, makes a deal with Ursula the sea witch to be temporarily turned into a human in exchange for her beautiful singing voice, which the Ursula stores inside a shell. In the end, Ursula is defeated, Ariel regains her voice and gets to keep her legs, and she and Prince Eric get to live happily ever after.

But in Hans Christian Andersen’s Danish fairy tale, things turn out very differently. Here, the witch silences the little mermaid by cutting off her tongue, and in exchange for legs, she will always feel like she’s walking on knives. Then the prince actually has the nerve to fall in love with and marry someone else!

Part of the deal was that if the prince married someone else, the Little Mermaid would die the next day; what’s worse is that mermaids don’t have eternal souls, so when they die, they just dissolve into sea foam. The witch offers the heartbroken mermaid a dagger to kill the prince; if she does so, she’ll turn back into a mermaid and be reunited with her family. The Little Mermaid can’t bring herself to do this, but because she’s sacrificed so much, she gets to float off to heaven.

7. Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

Beauty and the Beast was a 1756 French fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. In this original version, there’s no happily singing silverware, nor is there a comically arrogant Gaston.

Instead, the real villains are Belle’s two wicked sisters, who are ultimately responsible for the Beast’s demise. Fortunately, de Beaumont’s story does have a happy ending: Belle’s love breaks the curse that was placed on the Beast. However, many other versions close the tale with the with Belle grieving for the Beast.

8. The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning

The legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin originated in Germany around 1300. It’s set in the German town of Hamelin in 1284, where there is a rat infestation (which was partly responsible for the real-life plague in the Middle Ages).

The town commissions a piper dressed in multicolored (“pied”) clothing, who claims he can lure all the rats away from the town with his music.

When the villagers fail to pay the sum they promised him, he lures all the town’s children away as well. In modern versions, he leads the children to a cave, where he keeps them until the town’s parents finally agree to pay him, at which point he sends them back.

But in the darker original, the piper lures the children into the Weser River, as he did with the rats, and they all drown. Some modern scholars argue that there are connotations of pedophilia throughout the story.

9. Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm

This German tale was first recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, based on a 1790 story by Friedrich Schulz, which was itself influenced by an earlier Italian tale, Petrosinella (1634) by Giambattista Basile (remember him from one of the earliest versions of Sleeping Beauty? Yeah, it’s gonna be another twisted ride).

In the Brothers Grimm version, the prince uses Rapunzel’s hair to climb the tower to woo and “visit” her every night, eventually impregnating her.

This infuriates the witch, who apparently considers herself a person of high morals. She cuts off Rapunzel’s hair abandons her in the desert, where she gives birth to twins, alone.

When the prince climbs the tower again (Rapunzel not attached), the witch tells him that he’ll never see Rapunzel again. In his despair, the prince flings himself from the tower and lands in thorny bushes, which pierce his eyes and blind him.

He spends several years wandering as a homeless person, until he happens upon Rapunzel, who’s been struggling along as an unwed mother. Miraculously, Rapunzel’s tears have a healing power, which restores the prince’s sight. They return to his kingdom so he can finally make an honest woman out of her. (But in other versions, the prince simply abandons Rapunzel, clearly never having the intention to marry her.)

Why Were Grimms’ Fairy Tales So Dark?

You might wonder why fairy tales that so many kids adore today have such dark origins, but the reality is that most of them were never really intended to delight children.

The Brothers Grimm, for example, never set out to write fairy tales or bedtime stories; their work started a mission to anthologize German folklore for scholars of German culture. The original folk tales, and their many variations, had been told around the fire for centuries—but the audience was usually adults or older children.

You’ll notice that many of these tales also had a moral or lesson to impart, regardless of how backwards they might seem by today’s standards. Thus, the unfortunate events that befell the protagonists were intended to serve as a warning against everything from premarital sex to the dangers of trusting strangers.

To learn more about new spins on old classics, check out our post on fairy tale retellings, including contemporary books and films.

Do you have a favorite fairy tale from your childhood? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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