Fans are two episodes into American Horror Story: Roanoke , and there are still far more questions than answers. Nothing seems clear except that three people were all living in the same house for a while and they saw some really spooky stuff. The spooky stuff isn't new to American Horror Story, but, while AHS is known to scare and shock, it's not known for keeping fans this out of the loop. The few pieces of information that fans do have to work with, however, are enough to sprout some pretty interesting fan theories. One theory in particular links AHS: Roanoke to the history of AHS in a pretty major way — The theory that the AHS: Roanok e mansion and the Murder House are the same house.
There have been theories going around the internet pointing out similarities between Murder House and Roanoke, with many of them claiming that the two houses are connected but not necessarily the same. Both houses have storied histories that seem to house ghosts and attract evil spirits, and both couples move into their houses after suffering a difficult time that involved a miscarriage — but could fans be missing the most obvious clue of all, that these two houses aren't just similar but are the exact same?
At first, the easy response to this theory is simply, "No." The Murder House was in Los Angeles and centered in a neighborhood. The Roanoke mansion is in the middle of the woods of Roanoke, North Carolina. While the similarities between the houses are uncanny, simply looking at the Roanoke mansion is enough for an AHS fan to know it's now the Murder House from Season 1. While it should be as simple as that, there's one big problem: That's not the real house. In fact, we might not even be hearing the real story.
The house that is shown in AHS: Roanoke is all part of a dramatic reenactment of the show-within-the-show entitled My Roanoke Nightmare . Everything that is seen in those dramatic re-enactments are manufactured by the producers of this fictitious show to look like the "real" story told by Shelby, Matt, and Lee in the confessionals. The house seen in My Roanoke Nightmare could very easily be a television producer's idea of what they would like the Murder House to look like for their docuseries.
While the reality show device explains why the house looks different and why some facts don't line up, that doesn't change the fact that the Murder House is based in Los Angeles and not Roanoke. However, this discrepancy can also be explained away with reality television. Anyone who has watched a behind-the-scenes feature on reality television (or seen an episode of UnReal) knows that reality television can manipulate facts into fiction. There was mention of Roanoke in American Horror Story: Murder House, and for the producers of My Roanoke Nightmare, the show within the show, they may have picked and chosen certain details that they ran with.
It's an outlandish theory, there's no denying that, but no other show on television does outlandish better than American Horror Story. Showrunner Ryan Murphy has already explained to Entertainment Weekly that there is going to be a huge twist once the season hits Episode 6, and what bigger twist could there be than discovering that fans were watching a sequel to AHS: Murder House and didn't even know it? Only time will tell what the truth is, and hopefully by then we'll all awake from our Roanoke Nightmare.
Images: FX, Giphy (2)
