- After a life-changing experience, a young man is admitted into a notorious insane asylum, while a local reporter is determined to get the full story.
- Briarcliff, a former tuberculosis hospital, is now an insane asylum run by the Catholic church. The year is 1964, and the asylum houses some seriously disturbed individuals. The day to day administrator is Sister Jude Martin who works under the general supervision of the director Monsignor Timothy Howard. Her chief nemesis however is their in-house medical officer, Dr. Arthur Arden, who is frequently seeing patients in the night - patients who die and are disposed of immediately. Briarcliff's latest patient is Kit Walker, aka Bloody Face, an accused serial killer of several young women but is unable to stand trial due to insanity. Sister Jude is tough as journalist Lana Winters learns when she starts poking around the place.—garykmcd
- A pair of newlyweds explore abandoned Briarcliff Manor, reading up on it on a smartphone. It was a tuberculosis ward built in 1908 and the site where 46,000 people died. They shuttled the bodies out through the death chute.
Leo (Adam Levine) and Theresa (Jenna Dewan Tatum) are visiting the 12 most haunted places in America for their honeymoon as she's a horror freak. The Catholic church bought the place in 1962 and turned it into an asylum for the criminally insane. The most famous resident was a serial killer named "Bloody Face."
The walls are covered in graffiti, including the word Fun!
They find an old shock treatment room and start having sex on the table, but stop to investigate when they hear a noise.
Leo sticks his hand through an access panel on a locked door to snap a picture. Something flashes in front of the screen and he screams. When he pulls away from the door, his arm has been ripped off.
1964 A family fuels up, leaving Kit (Evan Peters) a tip. He closes up the service station, starting to lock up the cash box. He hears a noise. He goes to investigate and the lights go out, but it's just his friend Billy with a couple other guys. They want to borrow Kit's gun to scare someone.
He says no. Billy takes a bite of a chocolate bar, full of meaning, but they leave.
Kit returns home to his wife, who is black. He slips on the wedding ring he hides at home. He wants to tell everyone, but she doesn't think it's safe. They wait on dinner and get in bed.
After, while she goes to make dinner, Kit sees lights outside. He goes out with his shotgun to investigate, thinking it's Billy. There's a bright white light in the sky and he hears his wife scream in the house. He runs inside to find the place trashed and white light everywhere, along with an ear splitting noise.
Windows shatter, the noise stops for a second, then things start to fly to the ceiling. Suddenly, he's yanked up to the ceiling, too, and the noise returns.
Cut to Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), with the Gazette, going to do a story on a bakery at Briarcliff.
A mentally and physically handicapped woman named Pepper approaches Lana with a rose. Lana thinks she's harmless, but Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe) explains she drowned her sister's baby and sliced its ears off.
Sister Mary leads Lana inside the asylum and up the "stairway to Heaven" to see Sister Jude (Jessica Lange). When they walk in, Sister Jude is shaving Shelley's (Chloe Sevigny) head. Shelley proclaims she'll still be the "hottest tamale" in the place, no matter what Sister Jude does.
Sister Jude explains Shelley was diagnosed as a nymphomaniac, but she doesn't buy it. "Mental illness is the fashionable explanation for sin," she says.
Sister Jude talks up Monsignor Howard, who believes in the three P's: productivity, prayer and purification. She says they have big dreams for the place. On her notepad, Lana writes "hiding something?"
Sister Mary busts in with news of someone. Lana guesses she's talking about Bloody Face, who's being admitted & mentally evaluated for trial. Lana wants three minutes with him, but Sister Jude shoots her down. The asylum watches as Bloody Face is brought in: it's Kit Walker.
He's stripped, showered, de-liced and strapped to a bed, where Sister Jude tells him to repent. She's not buying his story of "little green men." He says they were monsters, but she thinks he is.
"I wonder, did her dark meat slide off the bone any easier than your other victims?" she asks. He spits in her face. "You're going to wish you hadn't done that," she says, then beats him.
Kit walks out into the common area, with welts all over his back and legs. Shelley immediately comes onto him. A recording of"Dominique", perhaps the most annoying song ever by a nun, plays on an endless loop. A French inmate warns Kit not to touch the record player or turn it off.
A disturbed inmate named Spivey (Mark Consuelos) asks Kit if he killed his last victim because she was black, then he punches Kit. Kit fights him off and is beating him when Sister Jude comes in and breaks things up by blowing her shrill whistle. Orderlies knock Kit out.
In his cell in a straight jacket, Kit thinks of his wife. The French woman, Grace, brings him food and a cigarette. She's accused of chopping up her family, but says she didn't.
Sister Mary Eunice sobs over the death of a patient named Willie. He was brought to Dr. Arthur Arden (James Cromwell).
Sister Jude confronts Arden, wanting access to his operation, but he is not cowed by her. Four patients have died under his supervision. She asks where the bodies are (we see a brief flash of someone ravenously eating a plate of food), he says they were cremated. She thinks he's lying and warns him she'll always win "against the patriarchal male."
At home, Lana gets excited about the possibility of blowing the lid off whatever's going on at Briarcliff. Her girlfriend, a science teacher, totally supports her.
Sister Jude prepares a special dinner of coq au vin and puts on a lacy red slip and perfume under her habit to dine with Monsignor Timothy Howard. She asks where he found Arden and shares her concerns about him.
He takes her hand and tells her he wants the institution to become a place of such renown that "we" are asked to be cardinal. Wherever he goes, she goes.
She imagines stripping down to her lacy underthings and climbing on top of him. Meanwhile, the Monsignor tells her to worry about her own affairs and let Arden worry about his.
Arden tells Sister Mary Eunice "they" are getting hungrier and need some meat.
She heads outside with buckets and leaves them in the woods. She runs into Lana, who wonders where she's going so late at night.
Arden visits Kit in his cell, injecting him with something.
Back in the present, Theresa puts a tourniquet on Leo's arm and tries to drag him to the car. She runs to get his phone from the car, but finds every way out of the asylum is barred or locked.
1964 Sister Mary Eunice leads Lana through her tunnel shortcut in the woods. Lana can tell she's terrified of Sister Jude. Lana wants five minutes to look around or she'll tell on her. Arden wheels Kit into one of his therapy rooms. Lana looks around for Bloody Face. Sister Jude also patrols the hall.
Arden extols the virtues of science to Kit. He hopes Kit doesn't mind if he doesn't use anesthetic; it interferes with his readings.
Lana and Sister Mary Eunice walk through the men's ward, where they are taunted by the patients. One flicks feces on Sister Mary Eunice and she runs off, leaving Lana alone.
Lana continues to explore and runs into a male orderly being serviced by Shelley. They agree no one saw anything. Shelley tells Lana that Kit is in solitary. Lana hides in an empty cell when Sister Jude comes to inspect.
Arden has jars of brains in his lab and thinks they hold the key to the human psyche.
He hooks Kit up to his machine and recites from the police report, which details that Kit's supposed victim was skinned from the feet up. Kit remembers being probed by little green men.
Arden finds a bulge in Kit's neck and slices it open. He pulls out a microchip that immediately sprouts legs and crawls off.
Lana looks into a cell in solitary and is grabbed by a large arm.
Later, Sister Jude chews out Sister Mary Eunice for letting Lana in. She pulls out one of her canes, but Sister Mary Eunice says it's not big enough and grabs a larger one from the closet, begging to be beaten. Sister Jude sends her away.
Lana wakes up strapped to a bed in a head brace with Sister Jude standing over her. Lana says someone will come looking for her.
Sister Jude meets with Lana's girlfriend and levels veiled threats, pointing out she has grounds for visiting Lana since she's not a relative. She threatens to out her to her school unless she makes a statement remanding Lana to her custody. Terrified, Wendy signs it.
Sister Jude locks Lana away, promising to cure her of her homosexuality.
Sister Mary takes the keys to the men's ward. She stands outside the room where Lana was attacked, and Leo in the present. She finds Arden cleaning it with disinfectant. There are deep scratches all over the walls. She thinks something's been living there. She promises Arden she'll find him out.
Back in the present, Leo slowly bleeds out on the asylum floor as Theresa continues to look for a way out. She turns a corner and runs into Bloody Face, bulging eyes, torn skin, holding an ice pick.
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