Teasers
The teasers for this series were pretty vague...and very frightening. "Sycamore Tree", the song in which it's humming is featured on most of them, doesn't help at all. Here is the link to the first 26 teasers, not counting "Illusion".
- "What's Cooking?" features a barn with smoke plumes resembling the logo "?6". As the date, channel and show name appear at the bottom of the screen, a chainsaw activating is heard, followed by a screaming woman.
- "Milli Crossing", "Bite Sized", "Back Track", and "False Eyelashes" all show a woman inhabited by bugs, with the first showing a millipede walking across her face, the second showing a tarantula walking out of her dead-looking mouth, the third showing a line of spiders crawling into a hole in her back, and the last showing eyelashes that turn out to be spiders under her eyelids.
- "Sunset Stroll" shows a shadowy family of three walking... with bright glowing eyes.
- "Post-Op" has a bald patient getting staples in his scalp that resemble the "?6" logo" on his head. The man who stapled his head states to the patient to try to keep it dry.
- "Lullaby" shows an old-fashioned bassinet with a mobile including a knife and the ?6 logo. The camera lingers, before a monstrous hand in the bassinet grabs the knife. The fact that this the first teaser that contains the mysterious humming from the song "Sycamore Tree" makes it worse.
- "The Descent" shows a dark staircase, and screams are heard in the background. We then see a woman try to run down, while hands from behind the steps grab at her. The woman screams as one of the hands succeeds in getting her foot.
- "The Mist" shows a bizarre humanoid creature crawling across foggy train tracks, eventually running at the camera.
- "Wind Chimes" has, of course, wind chimes that contain metal resembling the "?6" logo. But then, a nurse uses hedge trimmers to cut it, sending teeth to the floor (pictured above). And the worst part of this teaser is that it's the only one to remotely hint at the show's usual theme, unknown at the time (as shown in "Chapter 1").
- "Camp Sight" is an alien abduction. Before the woman is carried up all the way, her back snaps and folds in half.
- "Blind Date" may be pure B-movie, but it's still sort of creepy, showing a water monster dragging a woman under with it.
- "The Shadow" shows a Nosferatu-like shadow creeping up some stairs and grabbing a woman's hair. Even worse, there's a version of the teaser that invokes The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, by showing the shadow creep across a video page and grab the woman inside. When this happens, a comment praising the show turns into a repetition of the symbol that the show was using in it's teaser campaign, "?6".
- "The Harvest" shows some wheat...figures walking across a field while someone follows unafraid, holding a sickle.
- "The Visitors" show an entire crop somehow being cut by itself to resemble the "?6" logo.
- "Anthology" contains a brief montage of every monster seen in each American Horror Story poster, before cutting to a very fast montage of all the other teasers before this example. It ends with multitudes of human bones and skulls forming the "?6" logo.
- "Self Preservation" shows a mummy-like face wrapped in cloth, which opens its mouth to an unnatural degree and sucks in the camera.
- "Blink" shows an eyeball inside a woman's lips. She "blinks" a couple of times by opening and closing her mouth, before swallowing.
- "Bathing Beauty" shows a long-haired woman looking into a bathtub, with her hair clearly saying "?6". Her head turns around backwards, revealing a lamprey-like mouth in place of a face.
- "The Lesson" uses Children of the Corn vibes to show that six students who have black eyes and slam their desks in synchronisation are clearly dangerous.
- "Pitch a Fit" is worse than the previous example, depicting a pitchfork covered in green slime being dragged away from a green hand. As it moves away, it suddenly disappears.
- "Baby Face" shows a doll sitting on a chair. As the camera moves closer, its jaw decays and its eyes roll forward while it sits and moves its mouth. All while a little girl's voice is chanting something in the background.
- "Tide" shows someone crawling onto a beach, while their leg mutates and crystallises with unnerving metallic sounds and sickeningly realistic visuals.
- "Bite Me" contains a simple yellow spider moving around. It may not seem too scary to look at... until the final seconds prove otherwise.
- "Illusion" is mostly not scary due to containing Lady Gaga's "Perfect Illusion" playing over a montage of all other teasers before this example, but there are some freeze-frame bonuses when one pauses it correctly. There are actually more teasers not shown individually that are shown in this teaser, which features static containing what appears to be the Grim Reaper, a fly transforming into a butterfly that has the "?6" logo in it's wings, black smoke going into a screaming man's mouth, and a woman's reflection breaking a mirror, suddenly changing into the "?6" logo.
Episodes
Chapter 1
- The brief scene of the Knockout Game is terrifying. Matt is hit in the head with a swift punch, which knocks him and leaves his left eye seriously swollen afterwards.
- The squealing Pig Man heard throughout the premiere and glimpsed on the home movie footage is the scariest character since Twisty.
Chapter 2
- The Human Sacrifice witnessed by Shelby.
- The Serial Killer nurses killing helpless elderly people, Laughing Mad while they do so.
- The ways they go about killing them as well, such as:
- Shooting one in the head after they refuse to take their (poisoned) medicine.
- Lethal injection disguised as a shot. While we don't see it actually happen, we do see the aftermath, showing doctors fruitlessly attempting to revive the patient with CPR, all while the nurse discreetly discards the syringe in the bin.
- Choking one to death with a stuffed rag, all while trying and failing to hold the nurse back.
- Mixing rat poison in with one's oatmeal, causing them to vomit blood as they die.
- The ways they go about killing them as well, such as:
Chapter 3
- Mason's charred and mutilated remains, on display as a symbolic warning - and at that time, there was no idea who'd be capable of such an act.
Chapter 4
- Cricket's extremely graphic disembowelment.
Chapter 6
- A video shows a crew member working when his chainsaw suddenly seems to turn on him, cutting him open.
- Deciding to quit, Diana drives away, talking on her cell phone camera. She sees a woman who looks like the Butcher on the road ahead but decides to drive on. Just as she's talking off the freaky stuff, the pig man reaches up to grab her from behind, sending the car crashing in a horrible show; the last shot of Diana as her neck is heard snapping. A title card then says that the video was discovered with her phone three months later, but her body was never found.
Chapter 7
- Agnes spends most of the episode alternating between tormenting her former cast mates and psyching herself up so that she doesn't feel any of the guilt for her actions. Towards the end of the episode, it looks like she's finally gone over the deep end and is going to burn down the house... and then the actual Butcher shows up and puts a cleaver through her head.
Chapter 9
- The scene where Sophie and Milo are graphically burned to death at the stake. Their screams of pure agony as they're impaled on the wooden poles are nothing but a mix heartbreaking and terrifying.
