Realistically, the scariest thing about Halloween is that as soon as it's over, we're all going to be bombarded with turkey bag commercials and endless "Do They Know It's Christmas?" loops. It's not Christmas, mate. It's November.
The only people who should be feeling scared this weekend are those who risk getting STDs from strangers at Halloween parties, and children. Kids scare easy. In fact, by preying on that very weakness, parents the world over have long told their kids all sorts of ghoulish lies to make them stop acting like tiny pieces of shit.
We asked a few of our European editors to share the most terrifying story they were told by their parents as children. It turns out that, in Greece, if you catch your mother having an affair, she'll cook your liver and feed it to your dad.
DECAPITATED GOAT BABIES (ROMANIA)
The Goat and Her Three Kids teaches you that if you don't listen to your parents, you die. This goat has two naughty kids and one nice one. She goes out and tells them to keep the door closed until she returns and they hear her voice. A wolf passing by hears what she says, tries to copy her voice, but fails to convince the kids to let him in. Then he goes to the blacksmith, gets his tongue and teeth sharpened, and tries again. The two naughty kids fall for it and open the door, but all three of them hide, just to be safe. The nice one, who was most wary of the wolf, hides in the best spot, so he survives. The other two get eaten by the wolf—except for their heads, which he arranges at the window, not before modifying their facial expressions to make it look like they are smiling, for their mother to see and believe they are well and happy to see her. Then he smears the walls with blood and leaves.
The goat returns to hear the whole story from her last kid. The goat then calls the wolf to dinner to honor the passing of her children, pretending not to know that he was responsible for their death. She sits the wolf down on a wax chair, lights a fire under it, and lets him die in the flames, while she and her remaining kid throw rocks at him. The end.
The story, written in 1875 by author Ion Creangă, is included in the Romanian educational curriculum from kindergarten on. That means the main recipients of the story are children between the ages of two and five. The story is supposed to teach children the consequences of disobeying their parents. It is also supposed to help them express their feelings better.
A FATHER IS FED HIS SON'S LIVER (GREECE)
The Murderer Mother is a classic folk story/song that Greek grandmothers sing to their granddaughters. The story goes that Constantine, the family's only son, comes home from school and finds his mother sleeping with another man. He threatens to tell his father about the affair and no matter how much his mother pleads, he refuses to back down. Constantine's mother sends him to his room, but soon after that follows him, slaughters him, and cooks his liver.
The father arrives home wondering where his son's gone and the mother tells him that he is still at school. He goes to look for him at the school but the teachers tell him that he'd left earlier. When he gets home, his wife serves him Constantine's liver. At that point, the murdered kid's spirit appears and spills the beans on what's happened. Naturally the father is more than a little miffed about eating his own son's organs and decides to hack the mother's head off with a sword.
Many historians believe that the story was originally written in the 16th or 17th century. The tale pops up in different versions in a lot of local folk story books. It's said that the story was meant to warn young girls about misbehaving. Point taken.
THE LITTLE BOY WITH NO THUMBS (AUSTRIA)
One of the short stories most Austrian kids have had to endure is called The Thumbsucker. As you probably would have guessed, The Thumbsucker is about a boy called Konrad, who just won't stop sucking his thumbs. His mother keeps telling him to stop, but he just won't listen, so she warns Konrad that he might just get his fingers cut off by a crazy-ass tailor. Next thing you know, his mom leaves to run some errands, Konrad keeps sucking his thumb, so the tailor actually shows up, performing a smooth break-and-entry and starts chasing Konrad with his big-ass scissors. He eventually manages to cut the kid's thumbs off.
The Thumbsucker was written in the 19th century by a German doctor called Heinrich Hoffmann, who had more than fucked-up views on child education. This guy wrote a lot of really popular stories—including one about a little boy who drowns because he was daydreaming too much.
TROLLS LIVE IN YOUR MOUTH (DENMARK)
The tale of Karius and Baktus is supposed to teach you to brush your teeth and eat healthy food. Basically, if you don't, menacing tooth trolls will mine your teeth into little troll houses and set up shop in there.
The story goes: A young boy named Jens has shitty dental hygiene and a right, old sweet tooth. Because of this, black-haired tooth troll Karius and his red-haired brother Baktus hollow out Jens' teeth, fashion them into gaudy little troll houses, and start living prosperously in his mouth. These sadistic, pickaxe-wielding, little dickheads spend their days rhyming about their favorite sugary foods and maniacally la-la-la'ing as they hack, hammer, and chisel away at Jens's teeth, while debating the oral real estate potential of Jens's incisor versus his molar. Their greatest fear is—you guessed it—the toothbrush, and as Karius gleefully comments on how Jens "hasn't brushed his teeth in weeks," Baktus shudders while reminiscing about that awful period, when the boy only ate carrots and rye bread. They blissfully rejoice whenever Jens ingests a Danish or other glucose-laden treats, singing about how they're growing "because of all the cake and caramel," and dreaming of a day when poor Jens's mouth will be filthy enough for all of their tooth troll brethren to come and join them. Ultimately, Jens pulls his shit together and goes to the dentist, who purges his mouth of the malevolent tooth trolls once and for all.
This wholesome tale was originally spun by Norwegian children's playwright, songwriter, and illustrator Thorbjørn Egner in 1949. It was first published in Denmark in 1958, and quickly became an essential component of Danish bedtime lore for generations of children to come.
THE OLD MAN RUBBING CHILDREN'S GUTS ON HIS CHEST (SPAIN)
In Spain we have a story called The Sack Man. It's not a complicated tale: It's about an old, ugly dude roaming the streets with an empty sack on his shoulders. He wanders about at night collecting lost children, children who've misbehaved during the day, and children who don't want to go to bed at night. He puts them into his sack and from there nobody knows what the hell he does to them or where he takes them.
The most worrying part of this story is that the man really existed—kind of. It all began in 1910, in Almeria in the south of Spain. Police documents of the time attest that a man called "El Moruno" paid a quack doctor a bunch of money, hoping he'd cure his TB. The "doctor" recommended drinking the blood of a child and massaging the kid's guts into his own chest. El Moruno obliged; the quack and two other men kidnaped a boy, kept him in a sack, cut his armpit in order to extract the blood, served the blood to El Moruno so he could drink it, and then they crushed the kid's skull with a rock. Then came the slaughtering: They opened him up, extracted the fat and the guts, and spread them on El Moruno's chest. The job was done but a money disagreement drove one of the men involved to the police station, where he told the whole story to the authorities. Everyone was sentenced to death.
Some people in Almeria still remember the old songs that people of the time sang about this horrific story. It was all so fucked up that we still frighten our kids threatening them with a visit by "the sack man."
A LITTLE GIRL GOES UP IN FLAMES (GERMANY)
Just like most terrible bedtime stories, The Dreadful Story of the Matches has one meaning: You'll die a terrible death if you don't listen to your parents. The protagonist of the story is a young girl named Paulinchen, who is left alone with her two cats. Her parents are out and she gets pretty bored. When she stumbles upon some matches, she decides that they make a fantastic toy and tries to light them. The family's two cats try to intervene and remind her that her father prohibited her from doing so, but she won't listen. She lights up a match and dances around with it, impressed by how beautiful the flames look when she moves. Naturally this doesn't end well. She manages to set her dress on fire, and only a few seconds later her whole body stands in flames. Her cats are crying desperately for help, but no one can hear the terrible screams of the child or the animals. Finally, Paulinchen dies, reduced to a pile of ashes. The only part of her that remains unharmed is her shoes. Her cats just sit there, crying, asking "Where are the poor parents? Where?" as if they were the real victims of this situation. The story ends with the author making some strange remark on how the cat's tears remind him of small creeks on a field.
The Dreadful Story of the Matches is part of Struwwelpet—the Saw of children's books. It was written in 1845 by psychologist Heinrich Hoffmann. His collection of short, scary stories make The Shining look like Minions and might be one of the reasons why Germans aren't known for their humor. Despite its gruesomeness, this story is told to children at an early age. Apparently you're never too young to learn that the most important thing in life is to listen to your parents.
SCARY, BLIND RUSSIAN LADIES (Poland)
Baba Yaga is an evil witch found in many Polish children stories. The most common premise is that if you quarrel with your parents and decide to leave home, you'll eventually end up lost in the woods—which is where the child-eating Baba Yaga dwells atop either a chicken's leg (pretty cool) or in a gingerbread house (pretty standard). She flies around in an iron "stupa" (a sort of urn or mortar), has a skeletal leg, and is usually accompanied by her cat, crow, owl, or snake. She's also blind (either completely or to some extent) but navigates unfailingly with her amazing sense of smell.
It's impossible to pinpoint the exact origin of the story, but researchers agree that Baba Yaga was an important deity in the Slavic mythology. The Baba Yaga is present in most Slavic cultures, but in Poland it always serves a malevolent character. Her role is a bit more ambivalent in Russia, where she often presents the protagonists with help and advice. But hey, here in Poland we somehow always assume that Baba Yaga is Russian (probably because of her "un-Polish" name)—there's never any love lost between the two countries. The sad truth might be that we're just scaring our children with a Russian old lady who owns a cat.
SANTA'S BEST FRIEND IS HALF GOAT, HALF DEMON (ITALY)
According to the stories Northern Italian grandparents tell their grandchildren, Saint Nicholas (i.e. Santa) has a devilish friend, called Krampus. Around Christmas, the wicked hairy devil—half goat, half demon—appears on the streets wielding a few chains and bells, a bundle of birch branches, and carrying a wooden tub on his back.
Unlike Saint Nicholas, who rewards well-behaved children with gifts, Krampus takes the streets to beat misbehaving kids with sticks. Sometimes he'll come through the window at night and get his claws and fangs stuck into the skin of particularly naughty kids as a way to release the anger he's pent up after a year in isolation. Eventually, he will throw misbehaving children into his wooden tub and take them back to his lair to punish them—and encourage good behavior in their friends.
Part of the German-speaking Alpine folklore, the origin of the Krampus remains unclear, although many agree on the story's links to pre-Christian traditions. In some Alpine areas, Krampus night takes place on December 5 and involves young drunk men parading around town dressed as the demon.
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