American Horror Story Keeps Adding Purgatory Locations: Is This A Clue?

A common theme in American Horror Story across its various seasons is that the dead don’t stay dead – while this could be just an attempt to keep certain characters’ longevity outside of the mortal coil, Ryan Murphy’s continual addition of these Purgatory locations could also be a clue.

Since the show has been renewed through a thirteenth season, there’s tons of potential for where American Horror Story could go in future seasons. Murphy has already confirmed that all the seasons are connected, has had a crossover season with Murder House (season one) and Coven (season three), and has discussed bringing Coven‘s witches back for another appearance. While Murphy seems to be incredibly dedicated to connections between the separate worlds he’s building in his anthological series, season nine’s inclusion of another location where ghosts rule the roost in the afterlife has certainly brought up another possibility for obvious connections, but might lead to a much bigger expansion of the universe on the whole that could unite many seasons at once.

While American Horror Story works well as an anthology and has certainly played its part in the rise of horror on television, it is fun to see Easter eggs, connections, and direct tie-ins between the seasons. However, this could all be part of a more intricate plan if Murphy’s excellent skills at looping seasons together are considered and some logic is applied.

Could American Horror Story’s Purgatory Locations Be A Clue For What’s Next?

Most prominently, Purgatory/haunted locations that have been featured on the series are in Murder House, Hotel, and 1984. However, there have also been instances where ghosts and restless spirits have been featured in Coven, Freak Show, and Roanoke. Freak Show is a little bit of an outlier, as Edward Mordrake’s death could have been some other supernatural instance, for all that has been outlined on the show. But, there is a recurring theme with places being home to restless spirits who are forced to remain in their final resting place. This changes on Halloween, when they can roam freely before returning for the other 364 days of the year.

Given that 1984‘s big twist was not only that the counselors and campers who are murdered at Camp Redwood have to stay there, but that Lavinia Richter (Lily Rabe) might have caused it somehow due to her grief over losing her beloved son, Bobby, in a call-back to Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th might be a greater clue into what’s happening here. If all the locations are created by intense grief and agony, or maybe even some kind of supernatural bargaining, there’s a chance that higher beings might come into play in the future somehow.

American Horror Story has already played around with angels and demons: in Asylum, there was Shachath, the Angel of Death and in Apocalypse, it was discovered that Michael Langdon was the Antichrist. Could there be a battle between good and evil in a much larger capacity on the way that’s brought on by the creation of too many of these haunted locations? Knowing American Horror Story – which has somehow remained to keep its secrets relatively under lock and key before release – anything is possible. Guesses regarding the show’s seasons all being linked to one of the circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno has been discussed before, so perhaps this is all just another nod to that grander scale. Only time will tell.

About The Author

Jack Wilhelmi
(581 Articles Published)

Jack Wilhelmi is the horror features editor at Screen Rant, and has been with the site since 2019. He is a lifelong fan of the horror genre, and loves any excuse to discuss genre-related topics, since none of his friends dare challenge him in horror trivia. He has been published on the independent horror blog Morbidly Beautiful, and has covered major genre film festivals such as Cinepocalypse in Chicago. He has also served as a judge for the Ax Wound Film Festival.

In his free time, he is a devoted dog dad to a high-spirited rescue pup named Peter Quill and enjoys volunteering with various animal rescue organizations. Jack likes to travel and explore dark tourism-related and other various haunted locations. He enjoys studying psychology, the paranormal, and will watch literally any schlocky B-movie on the planet for a laugh.

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