Your Spoiler-Filled Guide to American Horror Story: Murder House

The American Horror Story franchise has had some fairly intense concepts over the years. There was the season set in an insane asylum, the "freak show" season, and the politically charged Cult. The upcoming eighth season sounds like the most horrifying yet, with the ominous title of Apocalypse. By these standards, the very first season, 2011's Murder House, seems downright tame in hindsight.

In this season, the Harmon family moves to Los Angeles to start fresh after a miscarriage and an affair shatter their lives. They move into a creepy old mansion, and get much more than just a great real estate deal when they discover the house's haunted, violent past (and present). The Harmons's story is set to overlap with third season's Coven in the upcoming Apocalypse storyline, so if you're trying to remember all the details of the first season, here's our spoiler-packed guide to the horrors of the Murder House.

A Typical Messed-Up Family
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A Typical Messed-Up Family

Before we even meet the Harmon family, they've been through a lot. Dr. Ben Harmon, a psychology professor, just had an affair with Hayden, one of his students, and his wife Vivien has recently gone through a miscarriage. All this has taken its toll on their daughter Violet, who suffers from depression. They move across the country to try for a new beginning, but soon discover that the house they've bought has a frightening past: the previous owners died in an apparent murder/suicide, the mother-daughter duo, Constance and Addie, who live next door, have some secrets to hide, and Larry Harvey, a former tenant covered in burn scars, keeps giving the family cryptic warnings.

Baby Boom
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Baby Boom

The Harmons are blissfully unaware that their home, the site of nearly two dozen violent deaths, is haunted by ghosts who can (and do) appear like normal humans. One of them, Tate, becomes one of the patients Ben works with out of his home office, and and he also forges a bond with Violet. These ghosts aren't just floating spirits, though — they insert themselves into the lives of the living. Vivien has sex with a man in a latex suit, believing it to be Ben, but it's actually Tate, trying to conceive a child to give to Nora, another ghost who lost a child long ago. Instead, Vivien becomes pregnant with twins: one Ben's, one Tate's.

Vivien's isn't the only pregnancy happening around this time. Ben's ex, Hayden, reappears, claiming to be pregnant with his baby. She lies about getting an abortion and instead threatens to tell Vivien unless Ben leaves his family and raises the baby with her. Larry kills her, but Ben buries her on the house's property, which, unbeknownst to him, allows her to come back as a ghost. Nora and Hayden plot with other ghosts to drive Vivien insane so they can steal her babies.

Halloween
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Halloween

There's always some sort of secret mythology around Halloween when it comes to hauntings, but this is no friendly Halloweentown. When the ghosts walk among the living at the mansion, Violet learns that her "friend" Tate is actually the ghost of a violent school shooter who went on a murder spree after his mother Constance killed his little brother. Addie is killed in a hit-and-run, and Constance doesn't get her body back to the mansion in time for her to return as a ghost.

Horrified by the revelations about Tate — and that she still has feelings for him — Violet attempts suicide. At first, she thinks Tate saved her, but weeks later, she cannot leave the house and discovers that her attempt was successful and she is a ghost. She eventually breaks up with Tate after learning that not only did he rape her mother and kill his classmates, but also murdered the couple that previously lived in the house. All the ghosts become too much for Vivien, and she appears mad to the rest of the world and is committed to an asylum.

Prophecy of Doom
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Prophecy of Doom

Constance summons a medium to try to talk to Addie, but instead discovers a horrible prediction: that the child Tate has fathered with Vivien will become the Antichrist. When Ben figures out the truth about Tate being the man in the rubber suit, he gets Vivien out of the asylum. She gives birth to the twins, but she and one of the children don't survive. A grieving Ben tries to contact Vivien and Violet's ghosts, and when he fails, he considers committing suicide to be with them. Finally, Vivien appears and convinces him to flee with their surviving son.

The Family's Fate
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The Family's Fate

Unfortunately for Ben, the ghosts have other plans for him. When he tries to leave, the evil ghosts of the house, led by Hayden, murder him and stage it to look like a suicide. Hayden tries to take the baby, but Constance gets there first and hides the baby away, telling the police that Ben killed himself in grief and that Violet fled with her newborn brother.

The Harmons, reunited as ghosts, decide to work with the benevolent ghosts to scare off any future tenants in order to protect them from suffering similar gruesome fates. The family blocks out the ghosts of Hayden and Tate, and try to live as "normal" a life as they can.

Even with half the cast dead, this would be a relatively hopeful ending, so of course there has to be a twist. Three years later, Constance returns home to find that her grandson Michael (Tate and Vivien's son) has murdered his nanny, hinting that the prophecy that he would be the Antichrist is starting to be fulfilled.

Rumors are flying about the roles that these Murder House characters, particularly Vivien, Ben, and Michael, will be playing in the upcoming Apocalypse — it won't be long before we find out just what Ryan Murphy and co. have in store!