This is not a children’s fairy tale at all: what details from “The Wizard of Oz” will scare even an adult

You don’t believe me? Then imagine…

In the seventh book, The Patchwork Girl from Oz, a glass and completely transparent cat, Bungle, appears, whose brain and heart are visible to all. Bungle is angry, unpredictable and arrogant, but he often becomes an ally of Dorothy and her friends. However, the wizard does not like the cat’s wandering, and he… removes his brain and replaces it with another – completely transparent one. After that, Bungle becomes affectionate and obedient – just like American housewives of the 50s, who were often lobotomized due to insufficient obedience.

Princess Langwidere is the heroine of Baum’s third book. Like any spoiled aristocrat, she has a closet full of jewelry and dresses. But most of all, the princess loves other accessories: on the shelves she keeps the severed heads of the most beautiful girls from neighboring kingdoms – the princess can wear them instead of her own. Of course, Langwider also tries to add Dorothy’s head to her collection, but she fails to acquire a new trophy.

Do you know what the Tin Woodman’s main useful skill was? Yeah, that’s exactly it: he was great with an axe! When the witch sends a pack of wolves after Ellie and her friends, all hell breaks loose, and the Tin Woodman ends up beheading them all and celebrating his victory while standing in a pool of blood.

In the musical, when Dorothy and the Scarecrow first meet, they are dancing together on the yellow brick road. In Baum’s book, the Scarecrow uses his newfound freedom for something completely different: he begins to take revenge on the crows that have been harassing him and breaks the necks of hundreds of birds before Dorothy’s eyes. A great traveling partner, right?

Let us leave here the description of these strange characters: “Dorothy quickly turned around and noticed a very strange man on the path. He did not walk, but rolled on all fours and his arms were the same length as his legs, which made him look like an animal. Instead of feet and palms, the creature grew wheels around it. The girl then learned that they were made of the same solid substance as human fingernails.

In one chapter, Dorothy and her companions find themselves in Banbury, a village where the floor is made of flour and the houses are made of crackers and breadsticks. The inhabitants of Banbury are also edible and try to hide, not without suspecting what may be done to them. Alas, not everyone manages to escape – Toto manages to find several of them.

This episode also didn’t make it to the big screen – in the very first book, Dorothy and her friends find themselves in a land inhabited by intelligent porcelain dolls. Some of them are beautiful, but many are covered in cracks that can’t be repaired. The tale describes many inhabitants with mutilated bodies, ugly faces and unnaturally curved necks. A young Tim Burton would be delighted, wouldn’t he?

One of the characters in Baum’s books is Jack Pumpkinhead, who is very reminiscent of the character from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack’s head is a pumpkin that, as befits a decent vegetable, begins to rot over time, making Jack even more terrifying to look at. When the pumpkin finally disintegrates, he must search for a new one, which slows down his journey considerably.

In one of the books, Dorothy and her friends find themselves in a land where all living creatures – humans and animals – are made of wood. The forest dwellers are very warlike and forbid the company to enter their land, and then Dorothy and her companions, without even trying to negotiate, burn everyone.

Read also: Boy’s soup, pregnant Rapunzel: shocking details from Grimm’s fairy tales

The Tin Woodman became like this after he fell in love with the assistant of an evil witch: in order to disrupt the wedding, the witch bewitched his ax, and the woodcutter began to unwittingly cut off his limbs, which the blacksmith gradually replaced with metal ones. In Baum’s twelfth book, it turns out that the same fate befell another admirer of the girl – he turned into the Tin Knight. As it turns out, from parts of their bodies, the master creates another person – and the witch’s assistant marries him.

Even more interesting materials can be found in our Telegram channel.