Quotation Mark Issue With \ Marks Showing

having an issue where, in 3.5, for some strange reason…all my quotations are now unescaped. Magic Quotes are OFF in htaccess, and i’m still having the following problems:

“Winter Classic” turns into \”Winter Classic\” — same goes for single apostrophes where they’ve will turn into they\’ve.

thoughts on how to fix? could it be a plugin causing it after updating?

thanks!