This Old Story

A young mermaid princess trades her voice and her tail for a chance to walk among humans and win the love of a prince—but the price of failure is death. In Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale, the sea maiden's longing reaches far beyond romance into questions of sacrifice, identity, and what it means to possess an immortal soul. The story's haunting ending, in which love does not conquer all, has surprised readers for nearly two centuries.

A poor woodcutter stumbles upon a band of forty thieves and their secret cave of treasure, opened by the magic words 'Open Sesame.' But when greed and curiosity draw others into the secret, it takes the cunning and bravery of a clever servant named Morgiana to outwit the thieves and save the household from deadly revenge. This beloved tale from the Arabian Nights tradition weaves suspense, wit, and moral lessons about loyalty, cleverness, and the dangers of envy.

When the earth splits open and the god of the underworld seizes a young goddess gathering flowers, her mother's grief plunges the world into an endless winter. Persephone's abduction by Hades and the desperate search by Demeter form one of the most powerful origin myths in Greek tradition—explaining not only the turning of the seasons but the fierce, unbreakable bond between parent and child. A fateful pomegranate and a compromise among gods determine whether Persephone will ever walk in sunlight again.

A young man driving home on a dark, rain-soaked road stops to offer a ride to a shivering girl in a white dress — but when he arrives at her destination, the back seat is empty. His search for answers leads him to a doorstep, a grieving mother, and a gravestone that changes everything he thought he knew about that night. One of the most widespread ghost stories in the world, the tale of the vanishing hitchhiker has been told across continents and centuries, always ending with the same chilling question: who — or what — was really in the car?

A young man named Alfred falls in love with a girl named Jenny who always wears a green ribbon around her neck and never, ever takes it off. Through childhood, courtship, marriage, and old age, Alfred begs to know why — but Jenny insists he must wait. When the answer finally comes, it is far more unsettling than anyone imagined. This classic American horror tale, popularized in Alvin Schwartz's retelling, explores the boundaries of curiosity, secrets, and the macabre promises we keep.

This episode of This Old Story - Scary Stories presents a faithful, family-friendly retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of guilt and madness, The Tell-Tale Heart. A nameless narrator insists on perfect sanity while confessing to a terrible deed — driven not by hatred but by an old man's pale, unsettling eye. As police officers sit calmly in the very room where the crime took place, the narrator hears a sound that no one else can hear: a rhythmic, relentless beating that grows louder and louder, until the truth can no longer be contained. The episode explores Poe's genius for suspense, the psychology of guilt, and why this 1843 story still sends shivers down spines today.

A scorpion begs a frog to carry him across a river. The frog fears a sting, but the scorpion argues they would both drown — so the frog agrees. Midstream the scorpion stings after all. As they sink, he says he could not help it; it is his nature.

A farmer loses his horse, then gains a second; his son breaks a leg, then is spared from war — each time the neighbors cry good luck or bad, and each time the farmer answers only "maybe." The tale asks how little we can know of what a turn of fortune will mean.

A merchant accidentally kills a demon's son and must face execution. On the appointed day, three old men arrive, each offering a nested tale in exchange for a third of the merchant's life. Their stories move the demon to mercy — and the merchant walks free.

A miller's daughter is locked in a room and told to spin straw into gold or die. A strange little man appears and does the work for a price — first her necklace, then her ring, then her firstborn child. When he comes to collect, she has three days to discover his secret name: Rumpelstiltskin.

A girl in a red riding hood carries food through the forest to her sick grandmother. A wolf reaches the cottage first, swallows the grandmother, and disguises himself in her bed. When the girl arrives, the wolf devours her too — until a passing woodcutter splits the wolf open and saves them both.