American Horror Story’s Season 6 Might Be Borrowing Heavily From Stephen King

“Borrowing heavily” as in a whole title! Perhaps realizing that the gleam has been a little dulled on his shock-heavy FX horror series (Lady Gaga can sometimes have a tarnishing effect on things), American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy has turned the marketing for the show’s upcoming sixth season into a “Guess which one of these 30,000 horror tropes is next season’s actual theme?” game. The jig could be up, however, because TV Guide and Rotten Tomatoes might have let the demonically-possessed cat out of the bag.

AHS’s marketing team created 21 different teasers for the show (you can watch them all here), and FX’s president John Landgraf hinted that only one one of them is accurate during the press tour last month. Don’t worry. If you don’t feel like playing, TV Guide appears to have cleared up the mystery for you in its latest paper edition (via EW).

The Wrap reports that Rotten Tomatoes listed that as the show’s title this season as well, but have since removed it.

If that title is for reals, the speculation across the boards is that this would be the real teaser:

Note the mist. In further theft “homage” news, The Mist is also the title of a fairly well-known 1980 Stephen King novella which was turned into a seriously depressing flick in 2007. There’s a mist and horrifying creatures come out of it, and Marcia Gay Harden turns into a real bitch for Jesus.

But we can’t be sure. Murphy himself has noted that this season will have “elements of children,” and FX released this as the “official” Season Six poster:

So children with eye spiders that could potentially come from mist. Well, they’ve got the “horror” part down because spiders are scary, and children are even scarier. As a big fan of the show (glamorous gay gore is one of my favorite cross-genres), I’m kind of excited for the reveal on Sept 14. The rest of you are probably like “Is Stranger Things back yet?”

Pic: FX