4 Well-Known Fairy Tales With Shockingly Dark Real Life Origins

By Simba The Comic King 

Before Playstation, fairy tales used to be a good way to get kids to stop farting, shut the f**k up and fall asleep. Eventually Kratos took the place of Rumpelstiltskin, who wants to listen to imp tales when you can control a Greek god that decapitates people’s heads? Unbeknownst to most though is that some of the fairy tales that were read to us as kids are actually based on real life events that are more chilling than a head decapitating Greek god, fairy tales like….

Saint Barbara was Rapunzel without the Golden Hair

A Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Rapunzel has a strong resemblance to the story of Saint Barbara, who unfortunately didn’t have long a** golden hair to save her from the tower she was locked up in. Saint Barbara was born mid-third century in Heliopolis, Phoenicia. Barbara’s wealthy Roman daddy, Dioscorus, built a tower to protect her from little boys who’d just hit puberty. Since porn wasn’t a thing you couldn’t take chances so the obvious solution was to lock your daughter away in a tower. Barbara also had an annoying habit of helping out the less privileged, this annoyed her daddy as well and locking her in a tower was the mid-century version of, “To your room young lady! Don’t come down until I you stop giving leftovers to the poor!” In those days Christianity was taking over and Barbara’s father, a devout follower of the Greco-Roman religious system, was worried that his daughter might convert. Barbara eventually resolved to follow Jesus and was beheaded by her own father when she refused to  renounce her new faith.

"Goddamn that's cold! My Dad just had me nailed to a cross."

Snow White Is the More Enchanted Version of Margarete Von Waldeck’s Life Story

We all know Snow White who was shortchanged seven times over (that’s a seven Dwarfs pun you imbecile).  She ate a poisoned apple blah, blah, sleeps and more blahs blahs after a dashing young prince falls in love with her. The real life story doesn’t have much of a happy ending. Margarete von Waldeck grew up in a town with the least fairy tale sounding name, Bad Wildungen. Small children worked in mines owned by Margarete’s brother, they were known as “dwarfs” as they were deformed malnourishment and gruesome working conditions of the time. A number of these dwarfs never lived to see their 20^th birthday. Just like the fairy tale, Margarete had a stepmother, Katharina of Hatzfeld, who hated the s**t out of her and  when she turned 16 Margarete was sent off to live in Wildungen, Brussels where her immense beauty attracted turned the head of Phillip II of Spain (I’m not sure which head did the turning). They fell in love and in 1554, at age 21, she was poisoned by Spanish authorities. The King of Spain and Margarete’s stepmother felt marriage between the two of them was literally “politically incorrect.”

"What a load of bulls**t. I just turned 21."

Hansel And Gretel Were Actually Grown A** Adults Who Murdered A Woman For A Recipe Book

In the real life version of Hansel and Gretel there is no witch but a talented baker named Katharina Schraderin instead. She was born in 1618, in the Harz Mountains of Germany. When she grew up she became famous for her tasty as f**k gingerbread cookies. A baker named Hans Metzler (whose name you may recognize as being dubiously similar to Hansel) tried to hit on her not to get into her pants but her recipe book instead. Even after Katharina moved back to her birthplace, Wernigerode, Hans persisted. She relocated to a forest nearFrankfurt/ Main.  Hans denounced her as a witch in an official court she would later be murdered by Hans who was 37 years at the time and his sister, Grete, 34.

"I have a feeling this would have made a better story-line."

The Pied Piper of Hamelin Is A True Story

These days parents need to be more afraid of Justin Bieber than the Pied Piper but back in 1284, the threat of a piper showing up in town and beatnapping your kids was very real. According to an eye witness account recorded in Latin, on the 26^th of June 1284, a piper dressed in a coat of many colors arrived in the rat infested town of Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany. The piper who had a pipe for a mousetrap, offered to alleviate them of their problem. In fact you pretty much know the rest of the story as it goes the way it was read to us. Some theories suggest that the children who were led out of the town suffered from the plague or were willing participants in Pagan rituals. Reading the Pied Piper will never be the same again, I think I'll put on Justin Bieber MP3 instead.

"Nah, no pipe playing for me, just follow me on Twitter kids."

I know you forgot to brush your teeth but don't forget to follow me on twitter or better yet like my page and I'll stalk the s**t out of you on Facebook.