However thin the plot appears to be, the show’s creators, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, have managed to weave together perfectly balanced elements of shock, horror and storytelling to accomplish what many thought would fall flat. And in a way, the doubts people had about the show actually ignited the fury behind trying to figure out what Murphy and Falchuk are planning.

What will happen to both the living and the dead people stuck in the Murder House? W

hat’s growing inside Vivian?

And most of all, who controls “The Infantata” in the basement?

Here are nine American Horror Story plot theories.

The entire story is made up by Violet after finding the dead bodies of Ben, Vivian & Hayden and being institutionalized.

Before you shake your head and say this is crazy, think about the show we’re talking about. So far, the rules of American Horror Story exist only within whatever Murphy & Falchuk can come up with. Knowing this, it’s possible that after the scene in the pilot where Viv cuts Ben after she catches him in bed with Hayden, what if Ben lashed out and accidentally killed her, then Hayden, and finally himself. Violet comes home and discovers the grizzly psycho sex murder scene and becomes unglued and is institutionalized, spending the rest of her days living out this fantasy within her head. 

It makes sense because during the pivotal moments of the show, Violet is the person that demands to be in the house. She even says, “We’ll take it,” to Marcie the Realtor in the pilot, and tells her mother she’d run away before she’d leave the house.

Tate is the puppeteer of “The Infantata” in the basement.

There have been lots of subtle hints that Tate is tied to the creature thing in the basement. He uses it to protect Violet multiple times, including when he has Violet lure both the high school bully and the home invasion killer down stairs. But also, he is insistent about meeting Violet there so that they can be alone,. It’s as though he is the only person that can shield her from the monster.

When Tate initially got the bully into the basement, the camera flashed between him and “The Infantata,” causing Violet to ask him what that monster was and how controlled it.  However, once Tate saved Violet from the Home Invasion killers, she stopped questioning his intentions, and instead started asking what the monster was, prompting the tale of Dr. Charles Montgomery’s most vile work, the reanimation of his own dismembered child.

The troubled past Ben Harmon talks about was caused by bizarre psychic powers.

There is something about Ben that just doesn’t add up, starting with the house’s bizarre hold over him. It causes him to wake up in the middle of the night and play with fire. Not to mention his insane meetings with Larry the fire starter. More importantly, is the fact that Ben is becoming slowly unglued.

When Ben meets with Tate in the playground on Halloween, he tells Tate that he can relate to him more than Tate can understand, making him quite possibly the worst therapist on Earth if not the most pathetic human being. If Ben’s childhood antics were the cause of super bizarre psychic powers, it would make sense how he is extremely susceptible to the power of the house and incapable on fighting it off.