Did you know, in the original story, it was a terrifying story of cannibalism and child abuse, which thankfully ends happily for the protagonists, this tale of the Brothers Grimm also has all the elements of an exciting adventure for children, including gingerbread houses, talking geese and hidden treasure. As well as being a tale of a man being forced to abandon his children at the command of his manipulative wife, the details of Hansel and Gretel’s captivity at the hands of the witch (Hansel using the bone of a previous victim to trick his captor, for example, and Gretel eventually shoving the witch into an oven) are as alarming as they are compelling. Some of these events are still present in ‘sanitized’ versions, but many omit the more grisly details involved in the children’s escape from the gingerbread house.
I thought this back road deserved some caches