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.
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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.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.
DECAPITATED GOAT BABIES (ROMANIA)
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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)
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THE LITTLE BOY WITH NO THUMBS (AUSTRIA)
TROLLS LIVE IN YOUR MOUTH (DENMARK)
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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.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.
THE OLD MAN RUBBING CHILDREN'S GUTS ON HIS CHEST (SPAIN)
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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)
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