In the latest recap for ‘American Horror Story’, Matt and Shelby recount the night they found out what happened in the house they bought and Lee makes an ill advised move with her daughter….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Through six seasons, Ryan Murphy has managed to reinvent ‘American Horror Story’ in new and creative ways that has continued to make the show one of the most watched series on all of television.
When Jessica Lange decided she no longer wanted to be part of the show, he replaced her with Lady Gaga, which seemed like a strange move at the time and then the singer turned in a Golden Globe winning performance in an outstanding season.
Now this time around, Murphy managed to keep the theme of ‘American Horror Story’ season 6 mostly a secret until the show debuted a week ago and the revelation was partially delicious and also equally creative as he unveiled a tale of “true American horror” told by the people who lived it.
It’s an interesting twist because the three main people involved in the story — Matt, Shelby and Lee — are obviously still alive and telling what happened when they moved into an old farmhouse in North Caroline before any number of haunted atrocities befell them. So instead of waiting for the axe to fall on one or all of them, we know from the start that they survived. What we don’t know is what happened to them while they lived in that house and if the end of episode 2 is any indication, there were casualties from this horrific experience.
With that said, let’s recap ‘American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare’ episode 2 titled ‘Chapter 2’….
Pig Roast
Picking up from last week’s episode, Shelby is running through the woods after hitting a mysteriously dressed woman with her car who then just got up and walked away from the accident. Shelby’s best intentions to check on the woman are clouded by the fact that why the fuck would you follow somebody like that into the deep, dark woods?!?
Regardless — Shelby follows and eventually stumbles upon a chanting tribe of ghastly people we must assume are some of the lost Roanoke tribe, who are now sacrificing one of their own for stealing and abandoning them. The punishment is being crucified, a pig’s tail nailed onto the guy’s body and then a full pig’s head being placed over his before he’s placed over a full fire and set ablaze. His tortured screams spook Shelby, who has been watching from the shadows and at that moment Kathy Bates’ character spots her and sends the tribe after her. Amongst the tribe is her right hand woman — played by Lady Gaga — who give chase before Shelby ends up back on the road and passes out in front of a car.
The next day it seems Shelby ended up in the hospital and the police didn’t find a trace of any human sacrifice, much less the bonfire that supposedly took place in the woods the previous night. The cops believe Shelby is just hallucinating on some really good drugs but her blood tests come back clean.
Matt has decided enough is enough and it’s time for them to go but Shelby insists that they stay. She’s now convinced it’s the hillbillies who tried to buy the property in the first place trying to drive them out. So now she’s digging her heels in and making this house a home no matter how many spooky things happen.
Totally a good idea, right?
Fed Up
Following the night full of human sacrificial terror, Shelby is not scared so much as pissed off and she’s determined to hold onto this house no matter what. So when she hears some strange pig squeals outside, rather than call the cops or run and hide, she grabs the baseball bat and heads outside to investigate.
Matt follows and of course they get separated and he’s finally spooked when a real pig goes scurrying by his leg but then he hears the panicked screams of his wife in the distance. When he finds Shelby she’s standing in front of a scarecrow like structure set on fire with a slaughtered pig’s head on top, pieces of dripping meat dangling from the branches and all all together creepy “warning sign” to get out.
This time the cops have no choice but to investigate because this wasn’t some figment of their imagination so they leave a deputy in the driveway to keep an eye on the house until they can get to the bottom of these really sick practical jokes (or at least that’s what the cops believe are going on).
The strange occurrences continue the next night when Matt wakes up to the phone ringing downstairs and he stumbles down half asleep to answer. When he picks up, there’s a woman’s voice on the other end begging for help but when Matt looks down at the wire he notices that the phone isn’t even connected!
That leads Matt to the dining room where he finds a horrific scene as two nurses try to get an elderly woman to take her medicine. When she refuses, one of the nurses shoots her in the head as they both begin to cackle in pure joy. One of the nurses paints a giant ‘M’ on the wall and says that’s for Margaret, the woman they just killed.
Matt shrieks in terror and runs out to get the cop currently sleeping on the job. When he gets inside the house, Shelby and Lee have no idea what’s happening and the officer doesn’t either when he gets into the dining room and there’s nothing out of place.
At this point, Matt is now scared just as much as his wife and he can’t discount her visions considering he just had one of his own.
Hello Priscilla
Despite the haunted ass house she’s living in currently, Lee decides this is a good time to get a visit from her daughter Flora, who comes to stay with her mother during one of the visitation times set up by the court after she was divorced from her husband Mason.
Inside the house, Flora seems to be enjoying herself and she even finds a new friend — and invisible little girl who wears funny clothes named Priscilla. Now Lee just chalks this up to typical behavior exerted by a child after their parents break up, but it’s clear that’s not exactly what’s going on.
When Mason comes to pick Flora up a day later, she’s playing a special game of hide and seek that she invented. It seems Flora likes to hide while she waits to see how long it takes her parents to figure out she’s gone and then to come find her.
So this time, Lee and Mason search the house until the finally find their daughter sitting inside a small closet where she’s talking to someone. When Lee opens the door, she surprise Flora like she just played the game but instead her daughter asks why she scared off her new friend Priscilla. It seems Flora was trying to make a trade with her invisible friend. She would give Priscilla her doll and in exchange Priscilla wouldn’t kill everyone in the house.
There’s just something about a child relaying that kind of ominous message that makes it even creepier. Flora then tells her parents that this ghostly friend promised to kill them all and then kill her last as punishment.
Mason is appropriately freaked out and he grabs Flora and makes a run for it and tells his ex-wife that she won’t see her daughter again until she moves out of this haunted ass house. Seems fair.
Helter Skelter
Finding out that she might be losing her daughter sends Lee flying off the wagon and deep into a bottle of booze. When her brother and sister-in-law discover her, she’s laying on the floor barely able to slur two words together. Never mind the fact that there are six butcher knives stuck in the ceiling that Lee doesn’t remember putting there, Matt is more concerned with getting his sister upstairs so she can sleep off this latest bender.
When Matt and Shelby get back downstairs, they spot a woman dressed in colonial garb standing outside and instead of only one of them spotting the ghost, they finally both see the same image together. They rush outside but the girl is gone — but where she was standing are two doors leading into an outdoor, underground shelter.
Meanwhile inside, Lee wakes up half sauced and still dazed when she sees the two murderous nurses standing next to her bed. She freaks out and makes a run for it and then spots several pigs tails nailed to the wall and still wiggling. When she turns around and looks in the mirror, Lee sees the image of the pig man coming towards her before she looks and he’s gone again. Sounds a lot like the piggy, piggy nightmare from season one doesn’t it?
Outside, Matt and Shelby go down into the dungeon looking shelter where they find canned food, supplies, a bed and a television along with a video camera.
They take the camera inside and that’s where they discover the previous resident of the house.
Dr. Elias Cunningham is an academic and writer who moved into the house to write a “Helter Skelter” type book about a murderous pair of sisters who once occupied this same dwelling. Miranda and Bridget Jane spent every waking moment together and they actually worked together at an assisted living facility before a couple of elderly patients wound up dead. Before anyone could investigate, Miranda and Bridget quit and moved to North Carolina where they purchased this house and turned it into their own assisted living facility. There, Bridget and Miranda welcomed elderly people into the home where they were cared for and then eventually killed as the two slaughter sisters carried out ritualistic murders to satiate their own evil desires.
Each victim killed spelled out the sister’s favorite word — MURDER — except after five deaths, they both disappeared. When the cops finally came to investigate, the sisters were missing, five patients were dead and their favorite word was left reading MURDE. They weren’t able to finish the job and the cops believed the sisters fled the country but Dr. Elias Cunningham believes the malevolent force that haunts this house took them out before they could finish the job.
Matt now realizes that the vision he saw was the murderous sisters at work and when he tears down the wallpaper, he finds the word MURDE still spelled out in spray paint after they killed their victims.
The house was so haunted that Cunningham ended up living in that shelter outside but as of this recording, he was making one last trip inside to investigate and he didn’t expect to make it out alive. When he got in there, Cunningham shot his footage on a shaky camera with night vision to make it all look very “Blair Witch”. Finally at the end, Cunningham runs into some sort of creature that jumps out at him and the camera goes blank.
At this point, Shelby and Matt are both really scared and also rather pissed off that the bank didn’t bother to tell them they were moving into slaughter central. Unfortunately, the bank has no intention of refunding their money because they bought the house “as is” and that means no questions asked.
So Shelby and Matt are determined to make this place work for them if for no other reason than they don’t have a choice.
Amber Alert
As if all this wasn’t enough for Matt and Shelby to deal with, the next day Lee comes home with Flora in tow. It seems she went to pick up her daughter to bring her back and didn’t bother to tell Mason that she was doing it. Lee says she panicked and thought she would never see Flora again so the simple solution was to kidnap her.
Makes total sense.
Shelby calls Mason and calms him down before telling him to come to the house to pick Flora up without calling the cops. Unfortunately while all of this is happening, Flora is in the other room by herself doing homework when she spots the same ghostly figure that lured Matt and Shelby out of the house and to the underground cellar.
Flora decides to give chase and when Lee comes into the room to check on her daughter, she’s gone. The trio looks all around the house but doesn’t find her anywhere. Finally, Lee runs outside when she spots the door wide open and her screams of terror are heard a moment later.
Outside, Lee, Matt and Shelby stand in front of a tall tree with fresh blood smeared all over the bark. High up in the sky, seemingly hundreds of feet away sits Flora’s yellow hoodie at the top hanging from a branch. Lee is horrified because her daughter is missing and it appears she’s become the latest victim of this murder house.
‘American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare” returns with a brand new episode next Wednesday night at 10pm ET on FX
