Is This Who Evan Peters’ ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ Character Is Based On? [Spoilers]
Evan Peters’ American Horror Story: Hotel character has been revealed, and it looks like the cherub-faced star might be playing a sinister murderer based on one of the most twisted serial killers of all time. Before you read on, be forewarned that this article is haunted by more than a few spoilers.
Evan Peters is reportedly playing James March, the man responsible for creating the sinister structure inhabited by so many twisted souls in American Horror Story: Hotel. Entertainment Weekly describes Peters’ character as a “rich and charming but deeply psychotic” man who built the fictional Hotel Cortez in the 1930s. It’s described as a “labyrinthine structure built to hide March’s murderous activities (think dead ends, secret rooms, endless shafts).”
There’s evidence that Evan Peters’ character is based on a real-life serial killer who went by the name H. H. Holmes. In 1890, Holmes started building a strange structure that sounds a lot like Hotel Cortez. According to the Straight Dope, the Chicago hotel was “a gaudy three-story building with shops on the first floor and a bizarre labyrinth of windowless rooms, false floors, secret passages, trapdoors, and chutes above.” Biography reports that the hotel would one day be nicknamed “Murder Castle” (this definitely sounds like the perfect title for a future season of AHS).
The true story of H. H. Holmes and his Murder Castle is so macabre and twisted that there’s no way American Horror Story: Hotel will be able to match the real terror that took place there. Holmes murdered his guests using rooms that he turned into gas chambers, and the hotel of horrors was equipped with special trapdoors and chutes that he used to transport bodies to the basement. Many rooms could only locked from the outside, and some of them were lined with fireproof asbestos so that their inhabitants could be incinerated.
Holmes had a surgery room, a rack, and other items that he could use to torture his victims. He usually dismembered them and disposed of their bodies using an oven and lime pits. Most of his victims were women, and he eventually confessed to killing 27 people. However, some estimates say that he murdered as many as 50 hotel guests, and his killing didn’t stop there — it’s possible that he took the lives of around 200 people during his lifetime. Holmes was hanged in 1896, and his hotel mysteriously burned down a year before his death.
As you can see, Evan Peters might end up playing his most twisted American Horror Story character yet. He’s one of the AHS cast members who has been around since the show’s first season, and so far he’s played a school shooter, an asylum inmate who encounters aliens, a Frankenstein’s monster made of frat boy body parts, and a freak show performer with lobster claw hands.
Unfortunately for fans of Evan Peters, James March will only appear in flashbacks. American Horror Story: Hotel will center on Lady Gaga’s Countess, the current owner of the hotel. She’s a fashion-obsessed socialite who drinks human blood and takes on two lovers at once (Matt Bomer and Finn Wittrock). The future inhabitants of March’s macabre hotel also include drug junkies who dress like rock stars (Sarah Paulson and Max Greenfield), a fashion designer (Cheyenne Jackson), a detective (Wes Bentley) searching for a serial killer known as the Ten Commandments Killer, a film star (Angela Bassett) who is a former lover of the Countess, a cross dresser nicknamed Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare), and a Vogue editor (Naomi Campbell). There’s also a creature known as The Addiction Demon roaming around. It “has no eyes or mouth but does wield a nasty, conical drillbit dildo.”
Evan Peters isn’t just reuniting with his American Horror Story costars onscreen. According to E! News, he was recently spotted out and about in West Hollywood with Freak Show costar/former fiancee Emma Roberts. Evan and Emma called off their engagement two months ago, but they looked happy to be together during a dinner date. AHS showrunner Ryan Murphy told E! News that Emma Roberts will have a role in American Horror Story: Hotel, but he hasn’t quite figured it out yet.
American Horror Story: Hotel premieres October 7 on FX. Are you looking forward to seeing Evan Peters playing a psychotic killer, or would you rather see the actor as a kinder, gentler character?
[Featured image credit: Rich Polk/Getty]
