Fairy tales are notoriously dark and chilling. Ghosts, monsters, murder, and spirits from beyond the grave creep their way into so many stories because fairy tales often highlight common fears of the culture they came from. So if you’re looking for something to put you in the Halloween spirit, look no further! Let’s line up seven seriously creepy fairy tales that you might not have heard before.
WARNING: If you have a weak stomach, some of the tales you’re about to read are pretty gory. If horror is not really your thing, perhaps you’d enjoy reading about something happier. Like fairy godmothers perhaps? Just remember I warned you.
1. Blue Beard
No list of creepy fairy tales is complete without this hair-raising French tale from Charles Perrault. Our story features a gentleman with—you guessed it—a blue beard. Blue Beard is hunting for a wife, but he’s been married several times before. And all his previous wives have mysteriously disappeared . . . Despite this ominous detail, his neighbor’s youngest daughter agrees to marry Blue Beard for his riches.
After the wedding, Blue Beard gives his new wife total freedom to explore his vast estate and invite over whoever she pleases. However, there is one closet she’s not allowed to open. Batty with curiosity, she waits until Blue Beard leaves on business to open the forbidden door—and discovers the decaying bodies of Blue Beard’s dead wives. (Read it here)
2. The Shadow
Hans Christian Andersen wrote more than his share of creepy fairy tales, but this one is a real mind-bender. In it, a kind writer wakes up one morning to find that his shadow has disappeared. Several years later his shadow returns, now transformed into a full person. They talk together like friends, but as time goes on, the shadow grows stronger and stronger while the writer diminishes.
The shadow offers to help his master return to health if the writer becomes the shadow’s shadow for a time. The writer agrees to this arrangement, and eventually the shadow falls in love with a princess and becomes engaged to her. He offers the writer a position in his court if the writer agrees to remain a shadow permanently. The writer IS NOT on board with this and threatens to tell the princess everything. So the shadow sets out to get rid of his master forever . . . (Read it here)
3. The Juniper Tree
Here’s an obscure, creepy fairy tale that I absolutely love. In it a pious wife prays for a child under a juniper tree. She falls pregnant and gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, dying in the process. Her sorrowing husband buries her under the juniper tree and marries a second wife. They have a daughter together, but the stepmother is horribly jealous of the first wife’s little boy.
Eventually the evil woman kills the boy by slamming the lid of a chest onto his neck, decapitating him. She tricks her little daughter into believing that she accidentally killed her half-brother (yikes!) and then cooks up the boy’s corpse to feed it to his father (DOUBLE yikes!). His distraught little sister lays his bones under the juniper tree, and the boy’s spirit returns in the form of a white magical bird to wreak revenge on his murdering stepmother. (Read it here)
4. The Dead Mother
This creepy fairy tale originates from Russia. In it, a lovely wife dies tragically in childbirth, and the grieving father hires a nursemaid to care for his baby. The child cries constantly and won’t even eat, but every night at midnight, the old woman hears the door to the nursery open on its own. And suddenly the child stops crying.
When the frightened nurse tells the father, he and the villagers wait in the house for the door to open. When it does, everyone watches in shock as a ghostly figure steps over to the cradle and the child’s cries go silent. Someone lights a candle, and the glow falls across the man’s dead wife, still dressed in the clothes she was buried in and suckling her baby. The moment the light shines on her, the woman sadly stands up and leaves without a word. When the father checks the cradle, he realizes his child is dead. (Read it here)
5. The Three Army Surgeons
Here’s a creepy fairy tale that puts Frankenstein to shame. In it, three surgeons spend the night at an inn, and the innkeeper asks to see their skills. The first surgeon boasts that he will cut off his own hand and reattach it in the morning. The second vows to cut out his heart and sew it back himself. And the third brags that he can cut out his eyes and replace them on the morrow. All three remove the parts they promised, and the innkeeper’s servant stashes all the body parts in a cupboard overnight.
The next morning, Miss Servant discovers that she left the cupboard unlocked and the inn’s cat has made off with all the organs. Her soldier boyfriend steps in to save the day by providing some substitute body parts so the surgeons won’t notice: the hand of a dead thief, a pig’s heart, and the eyes of the inn’s cat. When the surgeons reattach the substitute parts, all of them start exhibiting some strange behaviors they weren’t prepared for . . . (Read it here)
6. The Flayed Old Woman
How about an Italian creepy fairy tale for you? This one is about two haggard old women who both have gorgeous singing voices. The king who lives across the street is so enamored with their singing that he sends a missive begging the beautiful woman at this address to spend the night with him. The older sister writes back that she will only come if he turns out all the lamps in the palace. Then she pins her saggy, wrinkly skin behind her back to complete the ruse.
Of course her deception backfires, and when the king sees her ugliness, he throws her out the window. The sister falls into a gnarled tree, and a gaggle of faeries arrive to mock her. In some versions of the story the tree rips the sister’s old skin completely off; in others the faeries pity her tears and bestow a beauty spell on her. When the king sees the suddenly beautiful woman out his window, he proposes on the spot.
The younger sister is so jealous of her sister’s looks and good fortune that she goes to a barber to cut away her skin as well. The results are horrifying to say the least. (Read it here)
7. The Robber Bridegroom
Apparently frightening arranged marriages were a common fear back then of young women and their families. In this lesser-known creepy fairy tale, a miller’s daughter is all set to marry a suitor who apparently has no flaws. Before their marriage, the man invites his fiancée to visit his house in the woods, leaving a trail of ashes for her to find her way. When the bride arrives, the enormous house is completely empty save for an old woman in the cellar.
The old hag warns the girl that she’s marrying death and hides her behind a barrel. Soon her bridegroom arrives with his band of murderous robbers, dragging a poor kidnapped girl in their wake. They proceed to murder her and chop her into pieces, but the terrified bride escapes the house and shows her family the murdered girl’s severed finger as proof that her fiancé BE CRAZY. The day of the wedding, her family plots their revenge . . . (Read it here) ❧
