Since American Horror Story's first season, Murder House, the show has developed a fairly large fan following. And with the sixth season, My Roanoke Nightmare, finally starting, it came with much anticipation.
This time around the producers decided to leave viewers guessing by releasing a stream of teasers but gave no official release of the exact theme of the upcoming season until the premiere itself came out. They even had a sweepstake contest in which fans sent in their guesses pertaining to what they thought the theme of this years season could be about and the winner won a car. The teasers included clips of a farmhouse out in the country, a lake monster, children in a corn field, a woman's hair stretched across a bathtub, a man's bald head being stapled, hands grabbing a person running up stairs, people in pilgrim looking outfits, a crib mobil made of teeth, children in a corn field, and many more mirages with the statement, "Has it all been a perfect illusion?", to further intrigue and confuse viewers.
Apparently this season is the year for trying new things for AHS. Besides waiting to release the theme, the producers are also trying a completely new story telling style. This season is in the style of a documentary. So each character has two actors, one that narrates in a way like they are being interviewed about past events and the other actor is reenacting those events. The first actor portrays the "real" person that the events actually happened to and the second is the actor playing the actor. If you're following me on that, the idea is pretty cool and different than anything AHS has ever done.
The theme, My Roanoke Nightmare, is based on the Roanoke Colony, or the Lost Colony. This colony was the last colony that Queen Elizabeth I sent over in a last attempt to establish an English colony in the Americas. They arrived on Roanoke Island in 1587, in what is now North Carolina and mysteriously disappeared during the Anglo-Saxon War. Their leader, John White, left all the Roanoke colonists and a newborn granddaughter to go seek help from England after a colonist was killed by a native. He was unable to return to Roanoke Island or even send a resupply ship until three years after his departure because all the ships were being used in the war. When White finally returned to Roanoke Island he was surprised to find that all the colonists had disappeared and without any sign to indicate violence. All he found was the word CROATIAN carved into a tree. He took this to mean they had moved to the near by Croatian Island, but was unable to confirm this hypothesis. There a lot of questions that this story presents that have gone unanswered for generations. Who's to say that the disappearance of the colonists wasn't something more mischievous. 
American Horror Story has yet to disappoint and with a whole new season and style I can't wait to see what they do next.
