Every Character Who Died In American Horror Story's Murder House

When "American Horror Story" first debuted back in 2011, it brought the horror anthology to television in a big, bold way. It had sex, it had scares, and it had death — so, so much death. What it didn't have, though, was a sub-title. Though the following seasons each got one, that first season only retroactively came to be known as "Murder House," after the bloody, haunted Los Angeles mansion in which it took place.

The show's inaugural season first introduced us to the house when the Harmons — Ben (Dylan McDermott), Vivien (Connie Britton) and their daughter, Violet (Taissa Farmiga) — move in. Built in the '20s by twisted surgeon Dr. Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), the mansion feeds off of death and despair for the next 100 years, as dozens of victims fall prey to its evil, becoming ghosts trapped forever in its walls.

From the genre defining pilot episode of the show, to the confusing, meta season finale of its spinoff, "American Horror Stories," (was that episode just a video game or not?) the Murder House has loomed large in the "American Horror Story" universe for a decade, with each appearance piling on to the body count. In fact, the house has racked up so many deaths, you practically need a spreadsheet just to keep track of them all. So we thought it might be a good (albeit macabre) idea to go through each of the characters who died in the Murder House, from its start to its (possible) end.

In the first season episode "Halloween Part I," Tate Langdon (Evan Peters) tells Violet the tragic tale of the house's first owners. Sometime after the Countess' visit, one of Dr. Montgomery's patients told her boyfriend about her abortion. Enraged, the man kidnapped the Montgomerys' baby son Thaddeus and dismembered him. Police recovered the pieces and, horrifyingly, returned them.

Charles was already addicted to ether at this point, fond of stitching animal parts together, and clearly half mad, so this pushed him over the edge. He rebuilt his dead son and brought him back to life, giving the result to his wife, Nora (Lily Rabe). Horrified after it bit her and drank her blood, she tried killing the baby dubbed the Infantata (Ben Woolf), but it wouldn't die. Instead, she shot her husband in the head and killed herself.

Though Thaddeus is still in the house with the ghosts of his parents, Infantata isn't a spirit. He died elsewhere and was brought back to some sort of twisted, Franken-vampire-baby unlife, mostly feeding off of bugs and animals.

With only three ghosts and an undead baby in the house, the Murder House was still relatively quiet for another couple decades or so. In its next incarnation, it became a sorority house for nursing students. Then, viewers learn in the "Home Invasion" episode, evil came knocking in the form of serial killer R. Franklin (Jamie Harris) in 1968.

He claimed be injured and in need of help, but once in the house, nursing students Maria (Rosa Salazar) and Gladys (Celia Finklestein) realized he didn't have a scratch. He knocked Maria unconscious, then drowned Gladys in the bathtub. When he returned to the tied up Maria, he taunted her, as well as her religion. Just when she thought her prayers were answered, however, Franklin stabbed her repeatedly in the back. He made it out alive, but his two victims would remain trapped in the horrific house forever.

Sometime after the twins' death, Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) moved into the house with her husband Hugo and their kids: Addy, Beauregard (Sam Kinsey), Tate, and Rose (Raina Matheson). It was Constance's dream house, but living there was a nightmare. She made the mistake of hiring a maid, Moira O'Hara (Alexandra Breckenridge), and it's made clear in the first season episode "Murder House" that Hugo cheated on Constance with Moira. He got drunk in 1983 and tried to do it again, but Moira rebuffed him, so he tried raping her in the master bedroom. Then, Constance appeared.

She sauntered into the room with a gun and fired a warning to get Hugo off Moira. But Constance wasn't there to save their maid. She shot Moira in her eye, then turned to Hugo, told him he'd broken her heart "for the last time," and shot him three times in the chest. She later disposed of their bodies, told everyone Hugo had run off, and spent the rest of her time on Earth doing her best to torment Moira's ghost. Afterwards, Moira's ghost ends up being a litmus test of sorts to the living. Those who see her as a caring person see an older woman (Frances Conroy). But those who just objectify women — like Ben — see her as young, seductive, and dangerous.

With Hugo gone, Constance fell on hard times and had to abandon the house, after which the Harvey family — Larry (Denis O'Hare), Lorraine (Rebecca Wissocky), and their daughters Margaret (Shyloh Oostwald) and Angela (Katelyn Rodriguez) — moved in. Constance, though, wanted it back, so she seduced Larry and destroyed his family.

In "Open House," the still living, but horribly maimed Larry tells Ben his tale of woe. In 1993, he cruelly told Lorraine that she and their daughters should move in with her mother in Ohio so Constance could move in with her brood. Lorraine took it in, but was devastated enough to lock her and her daughters in their room, and then set it on fire. The house was fine, but the three burned to a grisly death. Their singed ghosts never quite forgave Larry, but they do finally convince him to repent for his actions.

Of all those to come under the influence of the house — living or dead — few succumbed so totally to its evil as Constance's sociopathic teenager, Tate. The depths of his psychosis isn't fully revealed until flashbacks to 1994 in the episodes "Piggy Piggy" and "Smoldering Children." Shortly after Beau's death, Tate dove headfirst off the deep end.

He woke one morning with a plan, snorted some coke and grabbed the stash of guns under his bed. Tate first paid Larry a visit at work, where he doused the man in gasoline and set him on fire. He then went to school and murdered 15 classmates with a shotgun in one of the series' most disturbing moments. He returned home, but didn't survive long. S.W.A.T. followed and gunned him down in his room.

In death, Tate became even more sociopathic, though he doesn't remember his crimes or his death until most of the way through Season 1. Still, he adds to the house's body count, and seems to start a trend of ghosts joining in the bloody mayhem.

2011 was a landmark year for the Murder House, mostly (as viewers learn in "Apocalypse") because that's when Satan himself stepped in to play. The Harmons move into the house to start fresh after Ben's philandering nearly tears the family apart. But the fresh start turns into a nightmare right from the start.

In the second episode, "Home Invasion," a trio of twisted R. Franklin stans — Bianca (Mageina Tovah), Fiona (Azura Skye), and Dallas (Kyle Davis) — break into the house to recreate the serial killer's nurse murders. They tie up Vivien and Violet Harmon, and plan Maria and Gladys' murder re-creation down to the tiniest detail.

What they didn't plan for, however, was angry ghosts. With Tate's help, Violet lures Fiona down into the basement. When they arrive, Violet runs off and Gladys rises from the tub in which she died. Shortly after, Dallas finds Fiona's body in the basement with her throat cut. He also finds Gladys and Maria, waiting to slit his throat as well, and likely ticked at having their deaths fetishized. Upstairs, Tate takes an axe to Bianca's stomach, though she escapes the house and its influence before dying. When she's found, the police assume her friends turned on her and tried recreating the Black Dahlia murder.

In between tormenting Ben and Vivien, Hayden begins an affair with Constance's younger lover, Travis (Michael Graziadei). In "Spooky Little Girl," she wants to see if she can still sleep with the living, while he wants revenge against Constance, who'd been ticking him off. But when he goes back for seconds after another fight with Constance, he says all the wrong things. First, he tries leaving to make up with Constance without bothering to satisfy Hayden. He then follows that by pushing aside Hayden's advances and declaring his love for Constance.

This time, the unstable Hayden channels her jealousy into murder. She brutally stabs Travis, but realizes that having a body lying around could put a damper on her plans to score Ben. Dr. Montgomery agrees to help, so he slices Travis up just like he did Elizabeth Short. Then Hayden convinces Larry — who feels bad for having shoveled her to death — to dispose of the body. Once discovered, the media dub an oddly delighted Travis the "Boy Dahlia."

By the time Tate reveals Violet's body, it had begun causing big problems in the house. Blowflies had invaded the home, so Ben called in an exterminator in the episode entitled  "Smoldering Children." 

That poor exterminator is named Phil Critter (W. Earl Brown), and as we now know, he will never leave the house again. Blowflies just love rotting meat, so it doesn't take Phil long to find out where they are coming from: Violet's decomposing body, located under the house.

With the thought that if one body was fine, two would be better, Tate grabs hold of the exterminator's spray, jams it into his mouth and pumps the man full of toxic pesticides. No one would be blabbing about Violet's death. Though it seems kind of pointless because just after all this happened, Tate told Violet anyway. Oh well, what was one more restless spirit in a house like this?

In the end, Ben is the only living being left in the house. Though half-mad, he pushes on, allowing Constance to care for the surviving baby while he gets Vivien's affairs in order. He eventually reclaims his son in the season finale, "Afterbirth," ignoring Constance's warning about bringing the tot back into the Murder House.

Despondent, he prepares to take his own life in the house, but Vivien and Violet appear and convince him to move on, raise the baby, and live. But by then it's too late. Fiona, Dallas, and Hayden grab him as he's leaving. They loop a rope around his neck, string him up to the chandelier in the front hall and hang him. 

Hayden takes the baby for herself, but Travis strikes back at his murderer, snatches the infant from her and hands baby Langdon back over to Constance. The killing seems, for a time, to have finally come to an end, as the more benevolent spirits work to scare the next family who moves away before they, too, can die. But, it doesn't last.

After Constance kills herself, Michael is left alone and scared. Ben decides to help the now-teen out, so he moves into the Murder House. Ben explains to Madison and Behold that though he knew Michael wasn't his son, he saw Michael's distress over losing Constance as a way to take back the son that had been robbed from him. It soon became obvious, though, that Michael's evil was beyond help.

Eventually, a new couple moved in: Grace and Elizabeth. They didn't even make it past unpacking before Michael killed them, but their spirits didn't stick around. In a particularly chilling moment, Michael exerted his growing power and incinerated their ghosts, wiping them from existence.

Now afraid of Michael, Ben ended the sessions and stopped appearing for him, leaving him ripe for influence when three Satanists showed up at the Murder House. They sacrificed a nameless woman to their Anti-Christ, and finally won Michael over to evil. At least, that's what happened before Mallory undid the timeline.

In "Rubber (wo)Man Part One," troubled teenager Scarlett moves in with her dads, Troy (Gavin Creel) and Michael Winslow (Matt Bomer). She's sullen, disconnected and has a fascination with violence and hardcore S&M porn. Then she finds the Rubber Man suit, and when she puts it on, something seems to possess her, making her attack her dads with a knife. The overwhelmed parents convene some family therapy, conveniently provided by a doctor who makes house calls: Andi Grant (Merrin Dungey).

Dr. Grant only makes it through one session, however. She's left to show herself out, lured to the basement by creepy twins Bryan and Troy, and slashed by the Rubber Man. The show never reveals who's in the suit, but it doesn't matter; the doctor dies. Death, though, doesn't slow her down. She continues her sessions with the Winslows as if nothing happened, and even teases a book collaboration with Ben.

The Winslows move into Murder House with the all-too-familiar intention of fixing it up and making a little money off it. In Troy and Michael's case, they plan to turn it into a cute, haunted bed and breakfast. After trying to do some work themselves, in "Rubber (wo)Man Part Two," they hire contractor Adam (Aaron Tveit) to help them out on the cheap — thanks to Troy's cheating with him. Eventually, though, Adam and one of his builders, Martin (Abraham Luna) tear open the wall where Scarlett stuffed the murdered teens.

The utterly unscrupulous Adam smashes Martin's head in with a hammer, right in front of a shocked Michael and Troy. He figures they killed the girls, so he wants to use the knowledge to get in on the B&B and force them both into more sex. Michael tries throwing him out, but only makes it to the front door where the Rubber Man kills the amoral contractor before he can leave the house.