Which brings me to the secret of Murder House. Everybody that dies in the house or on the property seems to be trapped there, forever. Or that is, their spirits stay trapped there. This has been an ongoing phenomenon since the mid-twenties, when Doctor Charles Montgomery, then a world-famous "Surgeon To The Stars" built the house for his wife Nora. However, Montgomery's business suffered when he became first a drug addict, and then, well, somewhat unhinged, performing ghastly experiments to graft animal body parts together in vain attempts to create reanimated hybrids. When Nora came to the finally finished home and saw what was going on, she out his ass back to work-as an abortionist for girls wanting to be stars but who had gotten themselves "in trouble".
This went on for some time, until one of Montgomery's patients spilled the beans to her boyfriend, who took revenge on the Montgomery's by kidnapping their son Thaddeus, killing him, and chopping the poor tyke up in pieces, which is how the Montgomery's received his remains-in pieces in a box.
Driven even further insane with grief, Montgomery stitched the pieces back together and combined them with the heart from "one of our girls" (apparently an aborted fetus) and possibly some animals parts, and succeeded in bringing the infant back to "life", which turned out to be the life of a blood sucking monster. When it tried to take blood from Nora, she tried unsuccessfully to kill it with a letter opener, but it got away. Nora then killed her husband, and then herself. Poor Thaddeus apparently died of his wounds later, after some time spent living off the blood of insects and opossums.
Charles and Nora's spirits remain trapped in the house to this day, as does Thaddeus, as indeed do the spirits of anyone else who subsequently died in the house, which would seem to include most of those who ever lived there.
So what then is the true secret of Murder House? There seems to be two different types of ghosts, those who died there and whose bodies were discovered and buried (or whose bodies were at least removed elsewhere) and those whose bodies were hidden and remain somewhere on the premises.
The latter include the following, with some caveats-
Thaddeus-assuming he actually died.
Moira the maid-who was killed, shot through the eye, by Tate's mother Constance Langdon (Angela Lange) when she discovered her being raped by her husband (who she also murdered, ground up, and fed to her dogs), and who she buried secretly on the grounds of Murder House.
Hayden-A former lover of Ben's who was the reason the family left Boston to begin with. She followed Ben there and threatened him with the news she was pregnant by him, whereupon she was killed by Larry, yet another victim of the House (one of the few surviving ones, though scarred for life by a fire inflicted on him at the hands of Tate), who prevailed upon Ben to bury her with the long buried remains of Moira, then covering them with a gazebo he constructed himself.
Violet Harmon-daughter of Ben and Vivien Harmon, she committed suicide via drug overdose. Tate, her ghost lover, hid her body in a crawl space. She did not know for some time she was dead, having forgotten her own attempt on her life. When she was unable to leave the house, Tate told her the truth and showed her own own decaying remains.
An exterminator who discovered Violet's body in the crawl space and who was subsequently killed by Tate, because Violet realize she was dead and he was waiting for the right time to tell her.
Add to this the fully human son of Vivien, and possibly the unborn child of Hayden, and you have an interesting subset of ghosts. But what is so different about them in comparison to the others?
Well, the others remain stuck at the age in which they died. But the ones whose bodies remain there seem subject to the ravages of aging. Moira, for example, was murdered as a young woman in her prime, yet appears to be now a woman past middle age, well into her fifties or possibly even sixties.
Her she is as a young woman, played by Alexandra Breckenridge. This was her age at her murder, and is the way she appears to Ben and to any man she tries to seduce.
And here she is as she appears to all others, at the age she would be had she not died, and which is apparently her normal appearance, played by Francis Conroy.
As for the Infantate, though he still wears the period clothing of an infant of the twenties, and remains that basic size, he nevertheless presents the appearance of a wizened old man well into his eighties. In fact, here is a photo of him.
Everybody else listed was of course recently dead, so it is too early for any aging to be apparent. However, I am struck by something Constance said to Moira in one of the earliest episodes. She in effect warned her that "I'll kill you again".
So it could be that a ghost whose body remains at Murder House might not just be subject to the ravages of aging but of death as well. If so, is it not about time the Infantate, or Thaddeus, die a normal death of old age? And perhaps more to the point, is it possible that all the problems caused by the vicious Hayden might be solved simply by, well, killing her?
I won't speculate any further, because with this crazy ass show, just about anything is possible. But I did want to put that out there, as I have never seen any speculation as to the reason for the aging process of Moira other than that she is an "old soul", one who nevertheless can appear in the form of a beautiful, voluptuous woman, at the age at which she was murdered, whenever it suits her. And no one has ever commented on the apparent advanced old age of Thaddeus, the Infantata.
Maybe tonight on the season finale, we'll get some answers. But probably a whole lot of other questions as well.
