Within minutes of seeing the news the next American Horror Story season would be subtitled Hotel and feature Lady Gaga as a series regular, I found myself poring over a digitized page of the August 25, 1892 edition of the Los Angeles Herald. That's because AHS creator Ryan Murphy had previously said that top-hat imagery in the fourth season hinted at something about the fifth season, and Reddit informed me of a Top Hat Burger Palace in California, and further online digging revealed that the restaurant was on the former site of one Anacapa Hotel, which judging by the archival photos might be spooky enough to set an AHS season in, and which once advertised in the 1892 Herald, which means …
Here it is, arguably the best part of American Horror Story—the waiting. In the months leading up to the fifth season’s October premiere, fans can anticipate a slow but steady drip of information answering questions about casting (will Jessica Lange return?), characters (is Mother Monster an actual one?), and plot elements (are we talking more Bates or Overlook for this particular hotel?). A swath of the Internet will go delirious dissecting it all—despite the fact that it did exactly the same thing leading up to season four’s Freak Show, and was rewarded with the dullest story Murphy and co-creator Brad Falchuk have yet offered up.