WARNING: The following contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Double Feature Episode 9, "Blue Moon," which aired Wednesday on FX.
Haunted houses were a part of American Horror Story from the beginning. The first season, Murder House, gained its name subsequently when the series was renewed and openly embraced its anthology format. Still, it was ingrained in the show from the beginning. Every season since then has centered around a specific place that draws darkness to it, reinventing the original “haunted house” in radically different forms each time. The first half of Season 10, “Red Tide,” presented a house that met the requirements in the Gardners’ relentlessly gloomy adobe.
The second half of Season 10, “Death Valley,” takes the concept to entirely new levels. Its haunted house is the seat of executive power in the U.S. government and one of the most recognizable buildings on Earth. The White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. becomes host to an absolute horror show. In the process, it matches the same story tropes as earlier hauntings in the series; this time visited upon from the history books.
“Death Valley” centers on a hypothetical first contact with aliens in the 1950s. Faced with overwhelming technology from beyond this world, President Eisenhower is forced to make a sinister bargain. The aliens will be permitted to harvest thousands of U.S. citizens every year. In exchange, the aliens will provide their technology to the government to assure U.S. dominance for generations. The alternative is invasion -- where the aliens simply take what they wish. With no other recourse against their overwhelming power, Eisenhower accepts the deal.
This matches numerous other protagonists from earlier seasons of American Horror Story, who take a devil’s bargain for a perceived benefit that turns to ashes. The latest example is Harry Gardner, the screenwriter from “Red Tide,” who swallows the black pill and finds more success than he ever dreamed, only to be murdered by his own daughter when he tries to wean them both off the drug. The trope goes all the way back to Murder House when Ben Harmon moves his family there in an effort to “move on” from his infidelity, only to find matters worsening under the domicile's supernatural influence.
In Ike’s case, his decision to comply with the aliens rather than fight back against certain defeat follows him home. Like American Horror Story’s other protagonists, he’s a recent arrival there, having just settled in after winning the election in 1953. In Season 10, Episode 9, “Blue Moon,” he discovers the horrors that he dealt with in the desert have taken up residency. The duct system sends disquieting sounds into the White House's living quarters, and when Ike goes looking for them, he finds an alien-controlled elevator to the “basement” -- a recently installed fallout shelter -- where the aliens are conducting their experiments. Not only does he see abducted citizens being experimented on in brutal ways, but he’s also shown the results of the aliens’ tests: row after row of hybrid fetuses suspended in containers.
It gets worse. Just like previous American Horror Story seasons, the house’s occupying family reveals their dark side. Marital infidelity, for example, goes back to Murder House, and in Double Feature, Ike finds Mamie Eisenhower copulating with the aliens’ liaison, Valiant Thor. She neither denies it nor feels sorry about it, which highlights a deeper rift between the two. Ike, concerned for the perils to his soul and his failure to the nation he swore to protect, is impotent to stop the aliens from instigating their plan. Mamie, an initially benevolent figure, is subsequently shown riven with petty jealousy for other First Ladies like Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy and terrifyingly at peace with the murders taking place beneath her feet in the name of keeping America safe.
It hits home all the harder because the pair's historical fates dictate something much better for them. Both Eisenhowers died relatively peacefully later in life, with a generally positive place in the history books eclipsed by Ike’s successful prosecution of the war. American Horror Story presents them as no different from any other couple in its universe who move into a haunted house, as guilt, recrimination and callousness turn their lives to hell beneath the happy façade. The White House certainly has its share of real-life ghosts. American Horror Story just took it to the next logical step and caught the most powerful couple on Earth as effortlessly as any other victim.
To Double Feature's take on a haunted White House, new episodes of American Horror Story air each Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.