Strangest Children's Books Tales You Won't Believe Are Real

Children’s books are usually filled with fantastical characters going on amazing adventures, all to teach kids wonderful lessons about life! But sometimes, a classic kids story can strike you as really weird, or even a bit disturbing! Like fairy tales with super freaky origins, and old cautionary stories that take punishments way too far. Let's investigate some of the darkest, weirdest, and most shocking children’s tales that you won’t believe are real!

Little Miss Consequence: The Tomboy Who Changed Into A Real Boy

For parents in the 1800’s, nothing was more daunting than having a little girl who didn’t want to act like a little girl. And it was this that led to the creation of Little Miss Consequence back in 1880! It’s a book aimed at young girls filled with cautionary stories about bad manners, like The Tomboy who Changed into a Real Boy. That title may seem pretty self-explanatory, but the story goes into some seriously disturbing details!

It follows the daughter of an Earl, who really doesn’t want to act like a prim and proper young lady. So, instead of learning boring embroidery, she goes off sledding, climbing trees, and playing football with the boys.

That doesn’t exactly sound like a big issue, except, as punishment for her boyish actions, she mysteriously begins to look and sound like a boy. Her voice grows hoarse, her physique looks rougher, until one day she suddenly transforms into a real boy down in the pants department! I’m no doctor, but I’m fairly certain that’s not how this works!

Though the story doesn’t end there. After the transformation, her mortified parents pay off a ship’s captain to take her on as a sailor, and she’s shipped off to sea never to be heard from again! This may have been written to try and stop girls acting like boys, but now it just reads like a tragic tale of bad parenting!

Outside Over There

Maurice Sendak was an author who was adored for writing and illustrating dreamlike children’s books, such as Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. But his story Outside Over There was less like a dream, and more like a nightmare!

Ida, our young heroine, is left at home to watch her baby sister. But as she whimsically plays her horn, evil, faceless goblins sneak in and steal the baby, leaving a terrifying replacement made of ice in her cradle! And if you thought the face of that thing was harrowing enough, believe me, it gets worse.

Later, when Ida picks up the child, the icy infant horrifyingly melts through her fingers! Despite being traumatized, Ida bravely sets off to rescue her sister and eventually carries her home again. There’s nothing like a classic baby snatching story to lull a child to sleep!

Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably

We’ve all slammed a door at least once in our lives, whether it’s out of anger, frustration, or just to make someone jump! But according to Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children, which was published back in 1907, slamming a door could be the last thing you ever do.

The poetic tale of “Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably” is a title that, horrendously, doesn’t leave much to the imagination! Rebecca was a spoilt child who enjoyed slamming doors to startle her uncle. But one day, she slammed a door that had a heavy marble bust above it. As you can guess, the bust fell, and, as the story puts it, it laid her out, just like that.

The tale then morbidly cuts to her funeral, where the pastor uses her tragic passing as a warning to all the kids who’ve turned up to mourn their friend! Should they really be blaming the kid, or the idiot who put that heavy marble bust above a door in the first place?

The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid that most kids know, and love, is Disney’s adorable film adaptation made back in 1989. It follows the story of a young mermaid who falls in love with a human prince. Desperate to be with him, she leaves her family and makes a deal with an evil sea witch, trading her voice for a pair of human legs! Through trials and tribulations, the two eventually fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after.

However, Disney missed out a few key details from the original, harrowing story it’s based on, which was written by Danish children’s author Hans Christian Andersen back in 1837. For a start, before the mermaid trades her voice for her legs, she’s warned that every single step she takes will be filled with pure agony. In fact, the book describes it brutally as like walking on knives.

But that’s not all! Even though the prince does fall in love with her, he’s cruelly forced into an arranged marriage with another girl! Heart-broken and in constant pain, the mermaid’s sisters then pop out of the water, having traded all their hair with the witch for a magical knife.

Can you guess what she has to do with the knife in order to break the spell? If you guessed "assassinate the love of her life as he lies on his marriage bed", you’re completely right! But she just can’t bring herself to do it, and instead, she throws herself into the ocean and, inexplicably, dissolves immediately into sea foam! So, there’s no true love, and no happily ever after, just a cheap and efficient funeral. Maybe Hans Christian Andersen should’ve called this story The Little Mermaid Learns Life Isn’t Fair!

The Little Match Girl

Because writing one tragic story about a young girl meeting her end just wasn’t enough for Hans Christian Andersen, he wrote another in the form of The Little Match Girl! It’s about a child who’s so poor, she sells matches to strangers in the street on a snowy New Year’s Eve. But it’s so cold, she begins to light them one by one to keep herself warm.

In the glow of the flames, she suddenly experiences vivid hallucinations where she sees a big holiday feast, a Christmas tree, and even the face of her late grandma! Thoughtlessly, she begins burning all the matches to keep her grandma from fading away. And the next morning, strangers find the girl frozen in the street with a smile on her face. Nothing like a bedtime story based on poverty and hypothermia to give your kids good dreams!

Cinderella

Cinderella is another well-loved Disney film about a princess who finds her prince with the help of talking animals, a flamboyant fairy godmother, and a pair of impossibly small feet! But the original story it’s based on ain’t no family friendly fairy tale!

The Brothers Grimm first put the tale to paper back in 1812, under the name Aschenputtel. Like their name suggests, this German duo produced a variety of gritty fairy tales that were the opposite of Disney in almost every way! For a start, in Aschenputtel, there aren’t any magic fairy godmothers going bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. Instead, the heroin has a magic tree that she’s grown on her mother’s grave by watering it with her tears. The tree provides her with whatever she needs, but that’s still insanely depressing! Though it gets worse.

In Disney’s story, the prince tries to find Cinderella by having all the maidens in the land try on a shoe she left behind at a ball. However, Cinderella’s cruel stepmother locks her away so one of her own two daughters might be chosen. Try as they might, the shoe doesn’t fit, and Cinderella wins. But in Aschenputtel, this scene gets seriously gory.

To make her foot fit in the tiny shoe, the first stepsister slices off her big toe! But upon seeing the mangled state of her foot, the prince realises she’s not the one. So, the shoe is presented to the second stepsister, who cuts off her heel to make her foot fit! However, her ploy doesn’t work either. Eventually, the small-footed Aschenputtel slips on the shoe and rides off into the sunset with Prince Charming.

But the brutality doesn’t stop there! On Aschenputtel’s wedding day, the stepsisters fake their kindness towards her, in order to get on the good side of the future princess. But as they’re walking down the aisle, they have their eyes pecked out by angry pigeons for all their wickedness! No wonder Disney made all those cuts!

The Strange Feast

The Brothers Grimm didn’t just write strange stories about princesses, although their tale of The Strange Feast is so odd that it’ll definitely leave you scratching your head! In it, there are two sausages, one blood and one liver, who are friends. The blood sausage invites the liver sausage over for dinner, but when the liver sausage arrives, she sees some disturbing things on the stairs. Like a broom and shovel fighting, and an injured monkey! She asks the blood sausage what’s going on, but he ignores her and goes to prepare their meal.

Suddenly, the liver sausage hears a voice telling her she’s in a trap and that she must escape. She flees quickly, but when she turns around, she sees the blood sausage with a sharp knife yelling If I had caught you, I would have had you! As much of a trip as that story was, it's unsure which part is more confusing, the anthropomorphized sausages, or the suggestion of sausage cannibalism!

Struwwelpeter

You may think that the Brothers Grimm win the award for most messed up kids tales, but there’s another German author who could easily claim that title. Heinrich Hoffman was a physician who penned many moral tales for children back in the 19th century, but his most famous stories by far were those in his book, Struwwelpeter. In English, that roughly translates to Shock-Headed Peter - and when you look at the cover illustration, you can see why!

But the merry stories and fun pictures this book promises are actually gruesome lessons in etiquette. The story of Struwwelpeter himself, for example, is about a young boy who never bathed, cut his nails, or combed his hair. But the punishment for his slovenly appearance was incredibly cruel, quite bluntly, Peter was unloved by everyone around him. Maybe this helped German mothers convince their kids to bathe, but was the threat of eternal loneliness really necessary? Well, kids, make sure you have good personal hygiene, or no one will ever love you. Goodnight!

Little Suck-a-thumb

Another of Hoffman’s horrifying Struwwelpeter stories is little suck-a-thumb, which is, without a doubt, the most gruesome tale in the entire book.

It follows a young boy called Konrad who, despite his mother’s requests, won’t stop sucking his thumbs. She warns him that a terrifying figure called the great Tall Tailor will come to cut off his thumbs if he doesn’t stop, but he doesn’t listen. So, the gangly figure of the Tall Tailor turns up with a terrifyingly large pair of scissors and makes good on his mother’s promise by cutting off both the kid’s thumbs!

You’d think his mother would be distraught, considering a creepy man just mutilated her son. But, no, she effectively says Konrad just got what he deserved. The end! This terrifying tale was clearly designed to scare young children into breaking their thumb sucking habits back in the 19th Century. But it’s so horrifying by modern standards that it actually served as inspiration for Tim Burton’s disturbingly gothic film, Edward Scissorhands!

The Cry Baby

Hoffman didn’t just write morbid moral stories for a German audience! His book Slovenly Betsy was marketed to parents in the United States as the American Struwwelpeter. And unfortunately for American kids, it was just as horrifying.

One story was written about a young girl who just won’t stop crying. Her mother berates her for tearing up unnecessarily and warns her that if she keeps crying, she’ll go blind. That’s some questionable parenting right there!

Understandably upset by her mother’s words, the girl keeps crying, until she notices her eyesight is, in fact, getting worse. Scared and confused, she gets even more upset! But suddenly, she realizes it’s not tears dripping from her eye socket but her actual eyes! She literally cries her eyes out!

Well, the story ends with Hoffman telling kids to try and be cheerful all day, and just not cry. That’s right kids, swallow that sadness and plaster on a smile, or your eyes will drip out of their sockets like big, gooey marshmallows!

Phoebe Ann, the Proud Girl

Another horrendous Hoffman story from Slovenly Betsy follows this unfortunate looking girl, called Phoebe Ann.

Although with those big-headed proportions, she looks more like a smug mushroom than a young girl! Anyway, Phoebe Ann’s supposed sin is having too much pride. She sticks up her nose all the time, thinking she’s better than everything and everyone around her. So much so, that she won’t even look at the ground!

But she holds her head so high that it begins to stretch her neck out freakishly, until she’s left looking like a giraffe. And she still refuses to look down! That’s until her neck becomes too weak to support her head, and she’s forced to push her noggin around on a wagon for the rest of her days! You don't need to be a scientist to know that just holding your head up doesn’t cause your neck to stretch like taffy!

The Little Glutton

Snacking, grazing, and boredom eating are all habits that are really hard to break. But if you do find it hard to put down the snacks, you’ll probably empathize with the next poor kid that hideous old Hoffman wrote about. In a story called the Little Glutton, there’s a young girl called Mary who just can’t stop snacking. She sneaks food from the pantry morning, noon, and night, and even though she’s told off by her mother, she just can’t stop eating!

Until one day she spots some beehives and has the bright idea to stick her hand in and scoop out the delicious honey. Apparently, no-one taught Mary that messing with bees is a bad idea, and she’s immediately swarmed by the entire hive!

Stung from head to toe, she’s bed ridden for weeks and, in a weirdly cruel move by her parents, is only fed medicine! But this apparently puts a stop to her constant need to eat, meaning she’s cured! Although cured might be the wrong word here, how about traumatized or scarred for life?

The Green Ribbon

The story of The Green Ribbon is nestled inside a kid’s book called In A Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories, by Alvin Schwartz, which doesn’t sound ominous at all! The tale starts off innocently enough with a little girl named Jenny, who makes friends with a boy called Alfred. He notices that Jenny always wears a green ribbon around her neck, and when he asks her why she wears it, she answers cryptically “Someday, I’ll tell you”.

The two grow up, fall in love, and get married, but despite Alfred’s constant questioning, Jenny never reveals why she wears the ribbon. That is, until one day, when she gets very, very sick, and is told by the doctor that she’s dying. Nice light theme for a kid’s book, there! So, she beckons Alfred to her side, and tells him he can finally untie the ribbon! But when he does, his wife’s head tumbles to the ground. It turns out, he’s been married to a headless zombie all these years!

First of all, Jenny tricked Alfred into marrying an undead corpse! That’s horrific! And as for Alfred, how did he never notice that his wife’s head was loose? If it was only being held on by a ribbon, surely, he must have seen her adjust it once or twice. Did he really not notice? Or maybe he was just into that kind of thing.

Coraline

Many of you probably know Coraline as the stop-motion, fantasy film released back in 2009. But this story actually started out as a kid’s book written by Neil Gaiman; an author renowned for his nightmare inducing writing. And even though it’s a children’s book, Coraline is no exception to this.

For those who don’t know the story, it features a young girl named Coraline who moves into a new house with her family, where she finds a mysterious, tiny door. It leads to a parallel universe where the food is amazing, the adults pay attention to her, and she essentially has everything she could ever want.

The only disturbing difference is that the people in this world all have buttons for eyes, but, for some reason, this doesn’t bother her. That is, until she learns about the price she must pay to stay in this world, she too has to sew buttons into her eyes.

Coraline Button Eyes Scene by DuhDuhDonovan

And when she refuses, as anyone in their right mind would, she’s kidnapped and trapped with the ghosts of three button-eyed children, who once clearly took the deal. It turns out the main villain, called the Bedlam, quickly gets bored of the children it traps, leaving them to starve! But Coraline eventually outsmarts the Bedlam and escapes, removing its right hand in the process.

Coraline vs Other mother by Wes

We all love a scary kid’s story, but the sheer amount of mutilation in this tale is terrifying. And on top of that, you might have just developed a deep fear of buttons!

Goosebumps

True 90’s kids will remember the sleepless nights that reading a Goosebumps book would bring! This series was created back in 1992 by children’s author R.L Stein, but his empire of family-friendly terror contained some seriously questionable tales!

Let’s start with Night of the Living Dummy, which follows two old, creepy looking ventriloquist’s dummies that are picked up by a pair of twin girls. While the twins argue over who the better ventriloquist is, one of the puppets comes to life! But he claims the two girls are now his slaves and tries to choke the family dog!

Like puppets weren’t creepy enough already! The girl’s eventually destroy him, but for a kid’s book, the sinister overtones of slavery and animal cruelty are pretty unsettling at any age! Although, several other Goosebumps books take horror to much weirder depths, like the painfully punny Bad Hare Day. It tells the story of a kid who wants to learn magic, so he steals a box of tricks from his favorite magician.

But, to his horror, one of them accidentally turns his sister into a rabbit! Ashamed, he seeks out the magician to turn her back, only to discover that the real magician is a talking rabbit who got cursed by a sorcerer long ago! The rabbit then offers the boy a chance to be in his new act, but when the boy accepts, can you guess what happens? Yes, he too is turned into a fluffy white rabbit!

It's not so scary about being turned into a rabbit, unless you’re allergic to carrots. But it gets even weirder, and stickier, in the choose-your-own-adventure book, Beware the Purple Peanut Butter! In it, you, the reader, are playing hide and seek when you get hungry, and decide to snack on some weird, purple goo you found in an old refrigerator. But the strange slime suddenly shrinks you down, and you’re faced with being locked in the ice box, being flushed down the toilet, or fighting a big mouse!

Somehow, the series gets even stickier in the Monsterblood Saga. These books follow the evil trail of a thick, sentient slime as it consumes everything in its path, including people and animals! It also has the power to turn animals like hamsters into ferocious, gorilla sized goons! And it even becomes an aquatic military super weapon that multiplies when it’s exposed to water!

But the creepy crown jewel of the Goosebumps series has got to be the Curse of Camp Cold Lake. It follows a young girl who really, really hates her summer camp - mainly because there’s someone watching and stalking her every move. One by one, her camp mates meet awful, deadly fates, until one day she does too! Like trying to get kids to go to camp wasn’t hard enough already!

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Almost a decade before Goosebumps started offing children with creepy dummies and mysterious purple goo, Alvin Schwartz wrote a children’s book that makes full grown men cry for their mommies! Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a collection of 82 truly terrifying tales, which you can tell just by looking at that cover art.

It was all powered by Stephen Gammell’s ghastly illustrations, which were nightmarishly unforgettable, like those in the classically unnerving story of Harold. It begins with two farmers innocently building a scarecrow that they name Harold, but they begin to use him as an outlet for their anger.

They do horrible things to the scarecrow, although unbeknownst to them, Harold has actually turned into a very vengeful human being! And what’s his payback? Why, he skins the farmers and spreads them out to bake in the sun, of course!

Although, if you thought that was grisly, it’s nothing compared to The Haunted House. This story starts off with a preacher spending a night in a house where no one has ever stayed because it’s supposedly haunted. He begins to hear footsteps when, all of a sudden, this haggard ghost of a woman wanders in and nearly frightens him to death!

We won’t spoil the ending for you, by which we mean we're too scared to finish the story! With scary illustrations, these tales are just too disturbing to read in the day, never mind in the dark!

If you were amazed at these strangest children's books tales you won't believe, you might want to read about mysterious books you should avoid reading at all costs! Thanks for reading.