Could This Dark 'AHS' Theory Explain The Season?

Horror fans know that the minute you discover your brand-new house is already home to otherworldly spirits, you haul out of there as soon as possible. Unfortunately for Matt and Shelby on American Horror Story: Roanoke, leaving their new North Carolina home is a lot trickier than one might imagine. That's good for viewers of the fictional documentary series in AHS, called My Roanoke Nightmare — Matt and Shelby's ghostly story makes for a riveting drama for both fictional and real views. In fact, for IRL fans of American Horror Story, the doc-series-within-a-show format is producing tons of theories — especially since Ryan Murphy hinted to Entertainment Weekly that there would be a major twist on AHS in the sixth episode of Season 6 that will change everything fans think they're seeing.

Though we don't exactly now what that means, I have a theory — what if the real killers on AHS are Matt and Shelby themselves?

American Horror Story: Roanoke's unique format can't just be for fun — there has to be a reason why it was important for the story of Matt and Shelby's haunting to play out in this way. One simple but disturbing explanation is that Matt and Shelby have been lying about what went down in North Carolina. The reason? Matt and Shelby are the ones who really killed the people they claim were murdered by the ghostly colonists (aka, Cricket, Lee's husband, Elias — maybe even the family who lived there before them), and in an effort to clear their names, went on My Roanoke Nightmare to discuss their deadly "paranormal encounters."

Fans of the series have already noticed that there's something a little bit off about the story that Shelby and Matt are telling. So far, Season 6 of AHS has two different actors each playing Matt and Shelby: there's the "real" version of the couple, portrayed by Andre Holland and Lily Rabe, and then the "reenactment" version, portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Sarah Paulson. Some fans have noticed that Holland and Rabe's characters, who are seemingly speaking the truth from their own experience, seem noticeably less sincere and emotional than the people portraying them in the reenactments — almost as if Holland and Rabe are choosing to play the characters that way. Could it be because they're straight-up lying about the events and can't feign that emotion the way trained actors could?

It's not just Matt and Shelby's appearance that is unsettling. Many fans have noticed that the events that occur within American Horror Story: Roanoke resemble events that occurred in previous seasons of the series, especially Murder House. Just as Ben and Vivian did on Murder House, Matt and Shelby move to a new place after a tragic miscarriage, and discover that their new home is already inhabited by ghosts. It's the similarities in the specific details that are startling: just as the couple did in Murder House, Matt and Shelby found a murderous message behind wallpaper, encounter long-dead nurses, and even meet the "Piggy Man." For a show as original as American Horror Story, it seems strange to see specific events and characters repeated from season to season without directly referencing it — one explanation would be that Matt and Shelby merely borrowed details of the Los Angeles Murder House to use for their own fabricated story.

Matt and Shelby definitely seem shady — but could they be sociopathic murderers hellbent on covering up their story? Anything is possible on AHS this season, and I wouldn't be surprised if the twist turned out to be that we couldn't trust the show's narrators at all.

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