The iconic Murder House is the alpha and omega of theAmerican Horror Storyuniverse. 1120 Westchester Place was featured in the first season ofAHS, its hotel-oriented fifth season, its apocalyptic eighth season, and in its anthology spinoff series,American Horror Stories. Nestled not too far west from the Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles, the seemingly inoffensive abode has been the location of some three dozen deaths over its tenure; even though the home has stood for nearly a century, the amount of violence enacted within its walls is staggering.
Unbeknownst to casual observers, anybody who has died within the house or on its premises hasbecome a ghostand is tied to its confines for eternity. Because its history is so exhaustive, we’re breaking down the Murder House’s history, from its first appearance to its last. Judging by its death grip onAmerican Horror Story, though, there probably will never be a “last appearance” of this iconic estate.
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The Beginning of the Dark History of ‘American Horror Story’s Murder House
The home that would come to be known as the Murder House was built in 1922 by the acclaimed surgeon, Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), as a gift for his wife, Nora (Lily Rabe). The costs proved to be almost too exorbitant for the pair, and Charles began to provide abortion services within the house’s basement; it later turns out that one of these operations was performed in 1926 on a Los Angeles actress known as Elizabeth (Lady Gaga).
Despite only allegedly being three weeks along, Elizabeth was showing her pregnancy like someone much further along. The operation quickly changed from abortion to birth when it was discovered that her child was alive, albeit deformed. Known as Bartholomew, the child would go on to attack Charles’ nursing assistant and feed on her blood. Despite these terrible circumstances, Charles informed Elizabeth that she had given birth to a boy, giving the child to his mother, who accepted him wholeheartedly.
Sometime later, the acts of Charles Montgomery would come back to burn the family. The boyfriend of one of the women Charles had performed an abortion for ended up kidnapping Charles and Nora’s son, Thaddeus, and mercilessly dismembered him, sending him back to the family in assorted jars. Grief overwhelmed Charles, and he began a secret and insane plan to revive his son in a Frankenstein-style undertaking. Using the still-beating heart of one of his patients, Charles was successful, but his son was no longer the jubilant toddler he once was—he had become a sharp-toothed monstrosity. Though this creature was never named in theAmerican Horror Storyseries, it came to be billed by the cast and crew as the Infantata (Benjamin Woolf/Shane Carpenter). Witnessing what her son had become was too much for Nora, pushing her over the brink and causing her to murder her husband with a gunshot to the head before turning the gun on herself. Their son would continue to inhabit the home in its basement, but the house would not see another occupant for at least another decade.
A String of Killings Solidify the Murder House’s Infamy
In 1947, another young actress made her way to the house by the name of Elizabeth Short (Mena Suvari). The Murder House had been made into a dentist’s office, and Elizabeth was recommended by the office’s owner, Dr. David Curran, for top-notch dental work. Elizabeth made it quite clear to the unusual Dr. Curran that she was short on cash and would do whatever she needed to secure her dental work, so after placing her under anesthesia, Curran proceeded to sexually assault her. However, the anesthetic administered was a lethal dose, killing her and leaving Curran to drag her body into the basement. The spirit of Charles Montgomery was happy to assist with Curran’s dilemma, heavily dismembering the body before cutting Elizabeth’s mouth into the shape of a Glasgow Smile. Curran would leave the body at a nearby park, setting the stage for the investigation of the “Black Dahlia Murder.”
Murder House would then go on to become a sorority house for nursing students in the 1960s, harboring two students in particular named Gladys (Celia Finkelstein) and Maria (Rosa Salazar). After turning down an opportunity to seeThe Doorsperform one night in 1968, Maria answers a knock at the door to find a seemingly wounded man named R. Franklin (Jamie Harris). The two girls would find out too late that the man’s injuries were feigned, and he would proceed to kill Gladys by drowning her and Maria by stabbing her multiple times in the back. After the deaths of Gladys and Maria, it’s inferred that the sorority house was shut down.
After decades of horrible acts committed within the house’s confines, it was finally left abandoned, though this didn’t stop the violence. In 1977, two twin boys named Troy and Bryan Rutger (Kai and Bodhi Schultz) broke into the house and vandalized it for fun. Against the wishes of their friend, Addie (Jamie Brewer), the twins demolished the interior of the house before entering the basement. Upon finding the jars of severed body parts left by Charles Montgomery, the two attempted to flee but were murdered and consumed by the Infantata. Like so many of the other victims,their spirits live on in the house, unable to depart its boundaries.
The Langdon and Harmon Families Enter the Murder House
From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, the house was inhabited by a woman namedConstance Langdon (Jessica Lange)along with her husband, Hugo (Eric Close), and their four children: Addie (Brewer), Beauregard (Sam Kinsey), Rose (Raina Matheson), and Tate (Evan Peters). One day, Constance witnessed her husband having an affair with the family housekeeper, Moira (Frances Conroy/Alexandra Breckenridge), and she was driven into a rage, murdering both Hugo and Moira. She fed their bodies through a meat grinder, giving their remains to the family’s dogs. Later, their bones were disposed of in the backyard in an attempt by Constance to hide the deed from her children and the police. She and her children would leave the property afterward.
Constance would return to the house once more to seduce a man named Larry Harvey (Denis O’Hare), who owned the property and lived with his wife, Lorraine (Rebecca Wisocky), and their two daughters. Larry wasn’t a man who beat around the bush, deciding to send his wife and daughters to his mother’s residence in order to live in the house with Constance. When Lorraine discovered the affair, she was driven mad with hopelessness; she went into her daughters’ room and set it ablaze with all three of them inside. Larry would go on to live with Constance, but her children reviled him.
Nothing ‘American Horror Story’ Does Will Be Weirder Than This Moment
It doesn’t get any weirder than this.
In the mid-1990s, Constance had Larry smother her son, Beauregard, due to his physical deformities. Tate, guided by the vengeful spirits that had accrued in the house, took revenge for the death of his brother by burning Larry alive at his workplace; Larry survived but became horrendously burned as a result of it.Tate didn’t stopat his mother’s lover, though, heading to his school of Westfield High to kill 15 students from the school, attracting the attention of the police, who followed Tate back to the house. As he fled inside, a S.W.A.T. team shot Tate to death in his bedroom, consigning his spirit to the Murder House permanently. Constance would once again leave the property, but moved nearby in order to stay connected to the house’s ghosts, three of which were her own children.
In 2010, a new set of faces purchased and restored the house to its former luster, as Chad Warwick (Zachary Quinto) and his boyfriend, Patrick (Teddy Sears), were drawn to the house for its still-intact decor, hopeful about what they could turn the house into. Sadly, they were both butchered on Halloween night by a mysterious figure known as the Rubber Man (Riley Schmidt). The BDSM-themed killer’s costume was originally purchased by Chad, thinking he could rip Patrick from his online sexual fantasizing. The suit was never used by Chad or Patrick, though, which left a major question: who donned the suit and took their lives?
Who Really Is the Rubber Man in ‘American Horror Story: Murder House’?
In 2011, the Harmon family would come to own the house, kicking offAmerican Horror Story: Murder House. Psychiatrist, Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott), his wife, Vivien (Connie Britton), and their daughter, Violet (Taissa Farmiga), only lasted a year within the house. Like many of the house’s former owners, things were anything but sunshine and rainbows: Ben was having an affair with one of his former students, Hayden (Kate Mara), and Violet was carrying on a peculiar relationship with the ghost of Tate, though she is unaware that Tate is actually dead.
Over the course of their year in the Murder House, the Harmons would be subjected to horrors unimaginable from both the living and the deceased. Copycat killers named Dallas (Kyle Davis) and Fiona (Azura Skye) attack the family in the hope of reenacting the R. Franklin murders. The presence of the Infantata and Rubber Man would make the house a dangerous place to tread, as would Larry Harvey, who had begun murderous deeds against the family. In the end, the family didn’t survive, becoming part of the house’s ghostly inhabitants. Vivien would die delivering two children: one passed away, joining the house’s spirits, and the other became the unholy creation of a human and a ghost. Tate had raped Vivien, and his living son, Michael (Cody Fern), would go on to become the Anti-Christ and antagonist ofAmerican Horror Story: Apocalypse.
On Violet’s front, she had come to the realization that Tate was not only a ghost but also the Rubber Man, who had killed Chad and Patrick, along with forcing himself on her mother. In her grief, she overdosed on sleeping pills, never learning of her status as a ghost until much later on when Tate showed her where she had died. Unable to come to grips withTate’s actions, Violet breaks things off with him. Ben, overcome with grief at the loss of his daughter and wife, contemplates taking his own life, but Violet and Vivien appear before him and tell him to escape with the child who survived. Unfortunately for Ben, he was murdered by the spirits of Hayden, Dallas, and Fiona, becoming one of the house ghosts to spend eternity with his daughter, wife, and infant child. The non-malicious spirits of the house then do their utmost to ensure that no one returns to the house to suffer another terrible fate. A family known as the Ramos’ would move in temporarily, but the house’s ghosts would scare them off and ultimately spare them from the dark influence of the Murder House.
The Return to Murder House in ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’
In 2017, the Salem Coven of witches purchased the Murder House while investigating Michael, as he was temporarily in line to become the next head of the coven. This is a major call-back to the third season of the series,American Horror Story: Coven, while also blurring the lines with the OG season ofMurder House. The witches—Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts) and Behold Chablis (Billy Porter)—would also remark that due to the coven owning the house, no more people would have to die and become ghosts within it.
This was unfortunately undone, as the witch, Mallory (Billie Lourd), travels back in time and kills Michael due to his advent as the Anti-Christ. By killing Michael in the past, Madison and Behold never arrive at Murder House; it’s unknown whether the house ghosts were affected by this change in the timeline, as the spirits were said to not be held by time in the same way mortals were.
The Rubber (Wo)Man Rises in ‘American Horror Stories’
While this ends the main continuity ofAmerican Horror Story’s time in Murder House, the spinoff,American Horror Stories, would revisit the estate during its two-part debut. In the series, a couple, Troy and Michael Winslow (Gavin CreelandMatt Bomer), would move into the house with their daughter, Scarlett (Sierra McCormick). Scarlett’s violent and sexual impulses intertwine, and she’s confronted by her parents about her interest in sadistic porn. As Scarlett begins to embrace her darker side, the influence of the malicious ghosts in the house returns.
Infidelity also rises again, as Troy cheats on Michael with the renovation contractor, Adam (Aaron Tveit). Scarlett dons the Rubber Man costume, becoming the titular “Rubber Woman” of the episodes, and proceeding to enter a murder spree alongside her girlfriend, Ruby McDaniel (Kaia Gerber). Troy and Michael are among the victims, as well as many others. Scarlett eventually leaves the house, but returns on nights like Halloween to keep the spirits company. After all, the Murder House is crowded, and Scarlett didn’t mind taking her killing spree on the road.
With so much story packed into a few seasons and nearly a century of in-universe lore, it’s no surprise thatAmerican Horror Story’s showrunners have returned to Murder Housetime and time again. With so many memorable characters that phase in and out of the plot much like their incorporeal forms, there’s something for longtimeAmerican Horror Storyfans every time the showrunners double back to the house’s otherworldly foundation. It’s almost like returning and seeing old friends after a long time apart; the world may have changed, but they’re still there and happy to see you. It’s doubtful that this familiarity has built a great rapport with longtimeAHSfans, and it likely always will be.
American Horror Storyis available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
