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[Note: This list includes a competition.] Long before Disney introduced cheerful conclusions and musical kitchenware, fairy tales were grim and brutal narratives meant to impart stern lessons to children. Tales depicted fathers exploiting their daughters, cruel stepsisters mutilating their feet, and mischievous children committing heinous acts against the elderly within their own homes. Though far from suitable for all ages, the presence of a moral attempted to rationalize the tales' brutality—even if it was often overshadowed by excessive violence. Then there are the stories that were not only violent but also completely devoid of morality. Stories such as:
9. The Shadow
The Lesson: Evil triumphs in the end
The Shadow is a grim Hans Christian Andersen story about a kind-hearted writer who loses his shadow. Years later, the shadow returns, having traveled the world and concluded that kindness is for the weak. The two coexist—the writer remains virtuous but grows poorer and sicker, while the shadow thrives, becoming wealthier and more corrupt. Eventually, the shadow proposes a trip to a health resort, offering to cover all expenses if the writer agrees to become his shadow. At the resort, they encounter a princess, and the shadow manipulates her, plotting to permanently replace the writer. How will the writer escape this dire situation?
Spoiler: he doesn’t. When the writer uncovers the shadow’s scheme, he attempts to intervene but is arrested. Meanwhile, the shadow marries the princess. The writer vanishes, and it’s later revealed he was executed. The virtuous man perishes, while the wicked doppelgänger marries into royalty and continues his malevolent ways. Charming.
8. The Good Bargain
The Moral: Jews deserve punishment
The Grimms’ The Good Bargain begins as a humorous tale about a foolish peasant, then shifts into something resembling a drunken tirade. The peasant encounters a money-lender so stereotypical he might as well be named Shylock and decides to play a cruel trick on him. After duping the money-lender into taking a beating meant for him, the peasant steals his coat. Understandably upset, the money-lender reports the incident to the authorities, leading to the peasant’s arrest. When questioned, the peasant responds: “A Jew’s words are always false. Nothing truthful ever comes from his mouth. That scoundrel might even claim I’m wearing his coat.”
When the money-lender attempts to retrieve his coat, he inadvertently confirms the peasant’s accusation and suffers another beating. As absurd as this is, it pales in comparison to The Jew Among Thorns. In this story, popular among Nazis, a servant receives a magical fiddle that compels people to dance. She uses it to force a passing Jew to dance in a thorny bush until his skin is torn to shreds. Her justification? “Jews have cheated others countless times; now the thorns will do the same to you.” It’s no surprise these tales appealed to Hitler.
7. How Abu Hasan Brake Wind
The Moral: Humiliation lasts forever
Do you live in constant fear of embarrassing yourself in front of someone with a smartphone and becoming a viral sensation? Apparently, the ancient Arabs felt the same. In this story from the 1,001 Nights, Abu Hasan gets drunk and accidentally releases an epic fart. Overwhelmed by shame, he flees, only to find his humiliation follows him everywhere, like an ancient version of the Star Wars Kid.
Ten years later, he returns home, only to discover his infamous fart has become legendary, and he’s now the butt of national jokes. The moral? Make one mistake, and you’ll be laughed at for eternity—great life lesson for the kids.
6. The Storks
The Moral: If someone teases you, kill a baby
When not ensuring the villain triumphs, Hans Christian Andersen often dabbled in random infanticide. The Storks begins as a fitting follow-up to his Ugly Duckling—a group of baby storks are learning to fly while local children taunt them. Do the storks persevere, master flight, and rise above the torment? Not quite.
These storks, it turns out, are the same ones responsible for delivering babies. Once they’ve learned to fly and are ready to distribute newborns, they target the child who bullied them the most, delivering a dead sibling as revenge. Keep in mind, the child they traumatize is only six years old. Seriously, Denmark, what’s going on?
5. Bluebeard
The Moral: Do what your man tells you
You’re likely familiar with the tale of Bluebeard. A woman marries a man with a peculiar blue beard, who grants her access to every part of the house except one locked room. Predictably, forbidding something only makes it more tempting. She opens the door and discovers the gruesome remains of his former wives. Bluebeard attempts to add her to his macabre collection, but her brothers arrive just in time to save her.
The chilling aspect of Bluebeard is its alignment with the toxic rhetoric of abusive partners: “obey, and you won’t suffer.” The moment the woman defies his orders, she nearly loses her life. Fortunately, Angela Carter later reimagined the story as a powerful feminist allegory, giving it a much-needed twist.
4. Molly Whuppie
The Moral: Repay kindness with genocide
Molly Whuppie is a classic Scottish folktale that encourages repaying hospitality with mass murder. After being abandoned by their parents, Molly and her sisters find shelter in a home. The woman there agrees to feed them, but only if they leave before her giant husband returns. Unfazed by the threat of a flesh-eating monster, Molly lingers and is still there when the giant arrives.
While the giant’s wife pleads for their lives, what does Molly do? She robs the house, tricks the giant into killing his own children, and then manipulates him into murdering his wife—the same woman who begged for her safety. Talk about gratitude, right?
3. How the Children Played Butcher . . .
The Moral: You can get away with murder
The original Grimm’s Tales included two versions of How the Children Played Butcher . . . . Both begin with children witnessing a pig’s slaughter and deciding to mimic the butcher’s role. In both, a child ends up slitting another’s throat during the game. One version spirals into a Death Wish-like scenario, where the victim’s mother kills the perpetrator, accidentally murders another child, and then takes her own life. The other version sees the killer-child arrested but ultimately released without consequences. Both tales are excessively violent and were banned in post-war Germany for allegedly contributing to Hitler’s rise.
It’s true; Allied forces believed these stories played a role in fostering atrocities, leading to their prohibition alongside most of Grimm’s works. In his analysis of German nationalism, Louis Snyder argued that the tales promoted authoritarian, nationalistic, and violently racist morals. The Nazis even used them as propaganda. German author Gunter Birkenfeld claimed the roots of Auschwitz could be traced to these stories. While many question the influence of violent fiction on behavior, it’s hard to ignore the chilling connection. In any ranking like this, the most disturbing moral is the one that leads to Hitler.
2. Red Riding Hood
The Moral: You can prevent rape by stripping
The familiar version of Red Riding Hood features a big bad wolf devouring a grandmother, then her granddaughter, before being rescued by a woodsman. Older versions omit the woodsman, leaving Red Riding Hood dead, while even earlier tales depict her eating her grandmother and performing a striptease. Yes, you read that correctly.
It sounds like a plot from a Rob Zombie movie, but early folktales often carried sexual undertones. Red Riding Hood dates back to the tenth century, with some versions showing her undressing before being eaten by the wolf (a metaphor for assault). Others involve the wolf engaging in, let’s say, self-gratification, allowing her to escape. Some even include bizarre elements like defecation. The common thread? A terrible moral: if someone kills your grandmother and tricks you into cannibalism, strip naked. It’s a surefire way to please a serial killer.
1. Big Claus and Little Claus
The Moral: Necrophilia will save your life
In this story of feuding farmers, Hans Christian Andersen truly surpassed himself. Amid the chaos, one scene stands out, overshadowing the extortion, murder, and suicide with its unsettling hints of necrophilia.
For reasons too convoluted to detail, Big Claus decides to kill Little Claus. He waits until midnight, sneaks through the window, and hacks at the figure in the bed with an axe. It seems he’s succeeded—until we learn the figure isn’t Little Claus but his deceased grandmother.
The lack of explanation leaves much to the imagination, and it’s hard not to assume the worst. When Andersen mentions Little Claus sleeping beside the body “as he had done many times before,” it strongly implies he’s the Norman Bates of fairy tales. To make matters worse, Little Claus is portrayed as the hero.
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