I'll be honest: Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story began to seriously lose my interest about midway through Freak Show. But news of Lady Gaga joining the show's fifth season has renewed my relationship with the show in a big way, and ever since I've been mulling over possible plots for Hotel. My gut tells me that Murphy will avoid the standard hotel scary stories (The Shining, Psycho) for inspiration; here are three theories that I think have the best potential.

Theory 1: Chicago serial killer H.H. Holmes and his Murder Castle

The Story: I have to credit Z100's morning show for bringing this thought to my attention, but it's a good one. Dr. Henry Howard Holmes opened the World's Fair Hotel in Chicago in 1893, which was called a "castle" by locals because of its immense size (it took up three city blocks). It allegedly had more than 100 windowless rooms, doorways that opened only to brick walls, and stairways to nowhere. Besides the creepy construction, Holmes went on to murder nearly 30 of his female employees by either asphyxiating them in soundproof bedrooms hooked up to gas lines or locking them in his office's bank vault, where they would suffocate. The dead bodies were then sent down a chute to the basement, where he would dissect them into skeletons that he sold to medical schools.

Why It Works: This type of twisted terror seems right up Murphy's alley, and Holmes gives me similar vibes as Asylum's Dr. Arthur Arden. Plus, there's been an element of doctors or medicine in each of AHS' seasons so far (Dr. Ben Harmon in Murder House, Drs. Thredson and Arden in Asylum, Fiona's cancer and witch doctor Marie Laveau in Coven, and Dr. Arden's reappearance in Freak Show) —and several of his past characters and story lines have been rooted in real life crimes.

Theory 2: The Garden of Allah Hotel

The Story: The Garden of Alla Hotel (it became Garden of Allah several years later) opened in Hollywood in 1927 and hosted a crop of famous guests over the years: Humphrey Bogart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, etc. Doesn't sound very scary, but here's how frequent guest Lucius Beebe described the scene: "Nothing interrupted the continual tumult that was life at the Garden of Allah. Now and then the men in white came with a van and took somebody away, or bankruptcy or divorce or even jail claimed a participant in its strictly unstately sarabands. Nobody paid any mind," he told Time. It was demolished in 1959.