
The ninth season, 1984, takes place outside Los Angeles in the 1980s and focuses the staff of a summer camp reopening after a massacre.

The eighth season, Apocalypse, features the Coven witches and the Murder House Antichrist. The seventh season, Cult, takes place in Michigan, and centers on a cult after the 2016 U.S. The sixth season, Roanoke, takes place in North Carolina during 2014–2016 and focuses on an isolated farmhouse haunted by the deceased Roanoke colony. The fifth season, Hotel, takes place in Los Angeles, California, during 2015 and focuses on the staff and guests of a supernatural hotel. The fourth season, Freak Show, takes place in Jupiter, Florida, during 1952 and centers around an American freak show. The third season, Coven, takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2013, and follows a coven of witches and their enemies. The second season, Asylum, takes place in Massachusetts in 1964 and follows the patients and staff of a criminally insane institution. The first season, Murder House, takes place in Los Angeles, California, in 2011, and centers on a family in a haunted house. Other notable actors such as Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Adina Porter, Finn Wittrock, Jamie Brewer, Billie Lourd, and Leslie Grossman appear in five of the seasons.


Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe have returned most frequently, with each having appeared in nine seasons, followed by Frances Conroy who appears in eight, with Denis O'Hare appearing in seven, and Emma Roberts set to appear in her sixth.

Many actors appear in more than one season, usually playing a new character though sometimes as a returning character, and often playing multiple characters in a season. The first installment in the American Story media franchise, seasons of AHS are mostly conceived as self-contained miniseries, following a different set of characters in a new setting within the same fictional universe (which the show occasionally utilizes for crossovers between seasons, and shares with episodic spin-off American Horror Stories), and a storyline with its own "beginning, middle, and end." Some plot elements of each season are loosely inspired by true events. American Horror Story is an American anthology horror television series created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk for the cable network FX.
