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Their nightmare was our dream.
Trixie Mattel[src]

My Roanoke Nightmare is a made-for-television documentary series inside the fictional universe of American Horror Story ("a show within a show"), and is the framing premise behind season six, Roanoke. Within the timeline of the American Horror Story universe, it aired for five episodes in the fall of 2015. Some disclaimers such as "Based on actual events" blur this line.

Due to the success of the show, a sequel series was created titled Return to Roanoke: Three Days in Hell.

The Documentary[]

My Roanoke Nightmare was the television success story of 2015. With minimal promotion, the show garnered 23 million viewers by its finale, topping that week's airing of Sunday Night Football, Empire, and The Walking Dead.
— Critical acclaim[src]

"My Roanoke Nightmare" is a documentary series created and produced by Sidney Aaron James in collaboration with Diana Cross. The documentary aims to tell the dreadful events that transpired around a former Shaker house located in North Carolina, and horrors experienced by the Miller family as the main topic. The show features interviews from witnesses Shelby Miller, her husband Matt, his sister Lee Harris, and others who detail events that are displayed by the show via a series of scripted reenactments performed by actors.

The real-time incidents happened during the span of September-October 2014. Those events were depicted and re-enacted on My Roanoke Nightmare which was filmed during July-August 2015 and aired in Fall that year.

Sequel[]


Exploiting the wave of the show's success, Sidney Aaron James decided to produce a sequel, in the format of a reality show, entitled Return to Roanoke, grouping both the witnesses and the actors who impersonated them in the Roanoke House during the October Blood Moon. The result is more bloody than expected.

Testimonials[]

The survivors of the events give their take on the story, while different actors portray them as reenactments. The "real" cast (otherwise known as the "actual people" in the American Horror Story universe) go as follows:

With other details of events given by:

Acting Cast[]

AHS Repertory Company portrayed fictional actors playing roles in the in-universe TV series. Some of them were unnamed and served as guests and extras solely during reenactments but not as full-fledged characters outside the set of “My Roanoke Nightmare.”

Reenactors[]

Unknown reenactors[]

Quotes[]

  • Sophie Green: "On the surface, it's an interracial story set in a post-racial world. Which, of course, is a lie. But they're really talking about the colonization of America. The Butcher and the Roanoke Colony. Which became a matriarchy in a patriarchal system. That's why it's so timely. It's a battle we're fighting today."
  • Sidney Aaron James: "Reality is what we make of it."

Notes[]

  • The docuseries and in particular the Comic-Con panel shown in "Chapter 6 " with the cast and crew meeting with various fans and cosplayers are a tongue-in-cheek meta-reference to American Horror Story itself.
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