List of American Horror Story: Murder House characters
"" is the first season of the FX horror anthology series "American Horror Story". The season's theme is infidelity, and focuses on the plight of the Harmon family, Ben and Vivien, their daughter Violet and their dog Hallie, as they try to adjust to their new life in present-day Los Angeles, after Vivien has a miscarriage and Ben has an affair with one of his psychiatry students, Hayden McClaine. Violet, although originally upset about the move due to her being unable to make friends at her new school, begins to bond  with the house, viewing it as a symbol of empowerment after she and her mother fought off home intruders. Violet also grows fond of one of her dad's therapy patients, who is being treated for psychosis, Tate Langdon. Ben and Vivien must endure the trials and tribulations of Ben's constant infidelity while Vivien is pregnant, prompting vengeful ex-mistress Hayden and overly maternal next-door neighbor and former resident of the house, Constance Langdon, to scheme to steal the children. The family soon learns that things are not how they seem when they begin encountering people who they  thought were dead in their house. Characters. Main characters. Vivien Harmon. Vivien Harmon (portrayed by Connie Britton) is the wife of Ben Harmon, and the mother of Violet Harmon. Prior to the series' start, she had a miscarriage that caused her withdraw from Ben, who then had an affair with Hayden McClaine, one of his college students. Vivien initially finds it hard to forgive Ben, but Ben is committed to keeping the family together, and she agrees to move to Los Angeles to start over. She slowly warms up to her husband, and they have sex for the first time  in months. She later participates in what she thinks is a kinky sexual encounter with Ben in a rubber bondage suit. Vivien soon discovers she is pregnant with twins, but later learns that due to heteropaternal superfecundation, only one of the babies is Ben's; with the other belonging to the man in the rubber suit (Tate Langdon). When Ben's now-pregnant ex-mistress, Hayden, shows up in Los Angeles to lure him away from Vivien, she is killed and she and the other ghosts plot to drive Vivien insane, in order to get her out of the house  and raise her children. In "Birth", Ben and Vivien learn one of the twins is growing more rapidly, and may arrive at any time. Vivien gives birth to both twins – one of which is stillborn, the other healthy. In death, Vivien is able to forgive Ben and is able to raise her still-born son, and they and the other ghosts resolve to scare away any new tenants in order to prevent them from suffering the same fate. Vivien returns in the eighth season, "". She is unable to speak with Ben due to his connection with Michael Langdon until they  apologize to each other. Vivien attempted to murder Michael after a group of Satanists arrived to the house to meet him, but she was saved by Tate after Michael attempted to destroy her, allowing him to leave the house. For her performance in "Murder House", Britton was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie in 2012. Dr. Ben Harmon. Dr. Ben Harmon (portrayed by Dylan McDermott) is a psychiatrist, married to Vivien Harmon and the father of Violet Harmon. At the series start, Ben has an affair with one of his  psychiatry students, Hayden McClaine, after his wife Vivien had a miscarriage. As a result, he and Vivien decide to move the family from Boston to Los Angeles to start over. Ben and Vivien's marriage becomes strained, due to her difficulty forgiving him for his infidelity. After a heated argument he and Vivien have sex. That night, a figure in a black latex suit (called the "Rubber Man") the Harmons discovered in the attic appears in the bedroom. Vivien believes it to be Ben, and has sex with him, unaware Ben is sleepwalking downstairs. Vivien learns that she is pregnant , and Hayden later reveals to Ben that she is pregnant as well. Ben returns to Boston to support Hayden through an abortion, but leaves while Hayden is in the operating room, after discovering multiple missed calls from Vivien. Hayden later shows up in Los Angeles and reveals to Ben that she has not received an abortion and plans on moving to Los Angeles so they can raise the baby together, but before she can do so she is killed by Larry Harvey, who attempts to extort Ben. Ben starts holding psychiatric sessions in his home office; one recurring patient, Tate , oversteps his boundaries when he starts dating Violet, and Ben discontinues their sessions. Vivien learns she is pregnant with twins, who both have different fathers – Ben and the Rubber Man, whom Ben learns raped Vivien. During a scuffle, Ben is able to pull off the Rubber Man's mask, and discovers that he is Tate Langdon before going unconscious. In "Afterbirth", after his wife and daughter die, Ben attempts to escape with his newborn son, but he is murdered by Hayden and the other malicious ghosts when they hang him from a light fixture. He is presumed by the living  to have committed suicide. As a ghost in the house, he, Vivien, Violet, and more of the kinder ghosts take it upon themselves to scare away new tenants to prevent them from suffering the same fate. He reappears in "Apocalypse". After Michael discovered that Constance had killed herself to be free from him, he attended therapy sessions with Ben. A father-son relationship developed between the two, much to Vivien's dismay. Ben witnessed Michael mutilating the ghost of Elizabeth Short as well as not only murdering two new lesbian residents, but permanently expelling their spirits from existence. Ben, realizing  Michael's capacity for evil, ended their sessions. He is no longer speaking to his wife Vivien (until she apologizes to him about Michael) and he frequently spends his time masturbating while crying. Ben reappears in the seventh episode of the spin-off "American Horror Stories" as a character of Michelle's video game "Escape from Murder House". For his performance in "Murder House", McDermott was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television. Tate Langdon. Tate Langdon (portrayed by Evan Peters as teenage Tate, Paul Butler as young Tate) is the son of Constance and Hugo Langdon  and brother of Adelaide, Beauregard and Rose. He is a seemingly sociopathic teenage ghost who resides in the Murder House, and becomes romantically involved with Violet Harmon. He first appears in the pilot episode as one of Ben's new patients. During a session, Tate describes an ongoing dream in which he commits a mass shooting at his high school. It is revealed in "Halloween (Part 2)" that Tate was actually responsible for a school shooting that took the lives of fifteen of his classmates. During Halloween night (the only time ghosts are allowed to leave the property, and the  first time he had left the house since his death) he and Violet are visited by the ghosts of his last five victims. It is revealed in "Piggy Piggy" that SWAT team members shot him 17 times in his bedroom for attempting to pull out a gun. Constance implies that Tate's violent and unstable behavior is the result of the house's influence, but he is also shown using methamphetamine the morning of the shooting. As a ghost, he has murdered numerous people in the house, often while dressed in a latex fetish suit, revealing himself to be the  Rubber Man. He also raped and impregnated Vivien Harmon. Tate claims to know nothing about the murders he committed, both before and after his death. However, it is revealed in the season finale that Tate has known all along or is simply in denial, unable to take responsibility for his actions (although this was later disproven). Upon finding out that Tate had raped her mother, and was therefore indirectly responsible for her death, Violet ends their relationship, leaving Tate devastated. Nevertheless, Tate tells Hayden that he is willing to "wait forever" for Violet to take him back. However more is  revealed later on. The Murder House had actually been built over a portal to Hell itself, allowing Satan to use a form of possession and mind control on the living and spiritual occupants of the house, making them what Billie Dean Howard refers to as "Conduits", unwilling pawns completely unaware of the dark external forces influencing and controlling their actions. Satan specifically chose Tate as a vessel to control because of his painful and traumatic childhood. His mother was neglectful and verbally abusive to him and his siblings, causing Tate to seek out another mother figure in the form of  Nora Montgomery's ghost, whose distorted memory patterns caused her to go from seemingly caring and nice to demanding, entitled, and even cruel. Tate's constant verbal and emotional abuse from his mother peaked in 1994, shortly before his shooting spree. After Constance had Tate's mentally and physically impaired brother Beauregard smothered to death by her boyfriend Larry, to prevent Child Protective Services from taking him since Constance had kept him chained in the attic for years, which itself was mentally and emotionally stressful for Tate. After Constance tried to pass off Beau's murder as a result of  natural causes, Tate finally reached his limit and Satan was able to take control of his anger and frustration and amplified it with his malevolent influence and causing him to abuse drugs. Immediately before the shooting Tate had attempted to murder Larry, as revenge for killing his brother by setting him on fire, but only succeeds in disfiguring his appearance and giving him a permanent limp. After his death Tate began to dissociate due to his guilt and lack of understanding for killing innocent people, causing him to develop a split personality that would take over without Tate even realizing  and commit atrocities as a Satanic conduit before switching back to his true kind-hearted self and repressing his memories, showing that Tate was actually an innocent victim that had no control of his actions. During Vivien's rape Tate's eyes turned pitch black, showing that Satan took full possession of Tate's corporal spiritual form to conceive his own child using Tate's DNA, when the child was actually his own. Tate's love for Violet is ultimately what allowed him to begin breaking free from Satan's control and begin to recover suppressed memories of his actions , causing him to feel great remorse for his actions and gave him a desire to do the right thing and protect Violet (although his alter-ego also does violent things to "protect" her in his own way). Violet leaving him finally let him break control completely, and Tate began to reform himself into a better person. Tate returns in the eighth season, "Apocalypse". Still frustrated and devastated about Violet, who continues to ignore him, Tate reunites with his mother, Constance, after she committed suicide by overdose, having apparently forgiven her, showing great personal growth. Later, Tate met Michael, his "son  conceived from Tate's enforced rape of Vivien Harmon, and rejected him, saying that he would never create something as monstrous" as him. Sometime later, Michael realized that he made a mistake by coming to the Murder House. When Michael tried to banish Vivien's spirit from existence, Tate saved her. Sometime later, Tate overhears Violet and Madison Montgomery's conversation with Violet and apologizes for his previous actions. Violet accepts Tate's apology and they happily reunite. This is however reversed and erased later on in the season finale when Mallory uses the "tempus infinitum" spell to go back  in time before all the events happened to kill a younger Michael Langdon to stop the apocalypse from happening. Violet Harmon. Violet Harmon (portrayed by Taissa Farmiga as teenage Violet, Carmen Blanchard as young Violet) is the teenage daughter of Ben and Vivien Harmon, who is initially unhappy about moving to Los Angeles. In the pilot episode, Violet befriends Tate Langdon, one of her father's patients, and the two eventually start dating. She later discovers that he is in fact a ghost who died in the house after committing a mass shooting at her school in 1994. Before making  this discovery, she and Tate go on a date on Halloween night, only to be confronted by many of the ghosts of the students he murdered in the shooting. Days later, when speaking to Constance, and a medium Billie, she tells her Tate is dead, and walking among the living. Overwhelmed with fear and shock, she attempts suicide by ingesting a bottle of pills, but is seemingly saved by Tate. However, in "Smoldering Children", Tate reveals that her suicide attempt was successful and that she is now a ghost too. She lives in the murder house with her family. Neither  she or her parents are aware of this at first, because Tate hid her body in a crawl space under the house. When she tries to tell Ben that she's a ghost and therefore cannot leave the house, he refuses to listen to her, and accuses her of being on drugs. In "Birth", Violet is informed by Chad Warwick, the ghost of a former resident, that Tate was the one who murdered him and his boyfriend, and also raped Vivien. As a result, she banishes Tate from contact with her by using the trick he taught her in  Open House. She is then comforted by Vivien, who died during childbirth. Violet apologizes for Vivien's death and the loss of the baby, and the two reconcile. In the season finale, Tate tries to murder a teenage boy who is currently living in the house in order to give Violet someone else to love, but she stops him and kisses Tate goodbye, allowing the boy to escape. At Christmas time, Violet is seen decorating a tree with her parents and Moira, as Tate watches from afar. Violet returns in "Apocalypse". She is approached by Madison, who tells her that  Tate's actions in the past were the result of the Murder House, using him as a vessel to conceive Michael, and that he is truly a good person. Violet accepts Tate's apology and they happily reunite. Larry Harvey. Larry Harvey (portrayed by Denis O'Hare), also known as the "Burned Man", is a former owner of the Murder House. He is heavily scarred, and walks with a limp. He originally claims, in the "Pilot" episode, that he acquired these injuries when he burned his wife and children alive, while under the house's influence, but it is revealed in  a later episode, that his wife Lorraine set herself and their daughters, Margaret and Angie, on fire upon learning of Larry's affair with Constance. In the same episode, it is revealed that Tate actually set Larry on fire as revenge for killing his brother Beauregard. Larry later disposes of Travis' body after Hayden's ghost kills him and, in the "Smoldering Children" episode, implicates himself in the murder as an act of penance for what he had done to his wife and children. He is subsequently arrested and jailed for the murder. He is visited by Constance and tells  her that he will be able to endure the punishment if she can just admit that she loves him, but she cruelly rebuffs him. As Larry doesn't appear in "Apocalypse", he was mentioned by Ben in the episode "Return to Murder House". For his performance, O'Hare was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. Constance Langdon. Constance Langdon (portrayed by Jessica Lange) is the next door neighbor of the Harmons, and a former resident of the house, who is determined to steal one of Vivien's twins and raise him  as her own. Constance had four children: Tate, Adelaide, Beauregard, and Rose (the last of whom is unnamed and unseen until "Apocalypse"). She tells Vivien that her womb is "cursed" because three of her four children were born with a genetic defect, and Tate who wasn't born with a genetic defect was a psychopath and messed-up. Constance originally moved from Virginia to California in order to become a movie star, but she was against nudity so her career never took off. At some point in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Constance and her family moved into the house . In 1983, she caught her husband, Hugo, attempting to rape their maid, Moira, and shot them both. She buried Moira's body in the backyard and ground up Hugo with a meat grinder, feeding him to her dogs. At an unknown time, possibly due to financial hardship, Constance and her family moved out. The Harvey family moved in next, and Constance began taking advantage of Larry's affection in order to move back into the house. In 1994, Larry told his wife Lorraine of his intentions to divorce her and move the Langdon family in with him, causing Lorraine to  kill herself and their children as a result. Not long after, Constance asked Larry to kill her son Beauregard, who was going to be taken away by child services due to Constance's neglectful and abusive method of chaining him in the attic. Larry smothered Beau with a pillow, and Beau's ghost still haunts the attic. Later that year, her son Tate went on a shooting spree, taking the lives of fifteen people, and was shot to death in his bedroom by a SWAT team. Constance's last living child, Adelaide, was hit by a car on Halloween night . Constance pulled Addie's body to the house from the street before she died so she would be trapped by the house and continue to live on in spirit, but was unsuccessful. Constance's much younger boyfriend, Travis, is murdered in the basement by the ghost of Hayden and resides in the house as well. In the season finale, after the Harmon family dies, Constance abducts her grandson and raises him in secrecy. Three years later, Constance claims to her hairdresser that after all the tragedy she's been through, the baby has given her the chance to be the  mother of someone destined for "greatness". The last scene shows that her now 3-year-old grandson, Michael, has inherited his father Tate's psychopathy; he has brutally murdered his nanny, and is gleefully sitting in a rocking chair next to her corpse. Constance looks at him with pride, and says, "Now what am I going to do with you?". She returns in the eighth season, "Apocalypse". Following the events of "Afterbirth", Constance began noticing violent psychopathic tendencies in Michael, beginning with the killing of insects to eventually murdering his nanny at the age of three. One day, she entered  Michael's bedroom to discover he had aged ten years overnight and now had the appearance of a teenager. When Constance was almost strangled to death by Michael in her sleep, she consulted the help of a Catholic priest, only for him to be murdered by Michael. With her dreams of motherhood shattered, Constance returned to the Murder House and committed suicide by overdose. She then became a spirit of the house and reunited with her children, Tate, Beau and an eyeless girl, Rose. She spends her time drinking, smoking and repeatedly forcing her maid Moira, with whom Constance has  an intense grudge, to clean the house. When Madison and Behold Chablis visit the house, Constance tells them everything about Michael in exchange for removing Moira's spirit from the house. In the finale, after killing the priest, Constance forces Michael out of the home before he is run over multiple times by Mallory, thus preventing the apocalypse from occurring. Constance runs outside and Michael asks her to take him to the Murder House before he dies. Constance refuses and leaves him to die on the road, thus preventing her suicide. For her performance in "Murder House", Lange won the  Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series and was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Movie/Miniseries Actress, as well as receiving a 2011 Satellite Special Achievement Award. For her performance in "Apocalypse", Lange was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. List of American Horror