Is The Piggy Man On 'AHS: Roanoke' Connected To 'Murder House'? His Backstory Is Unclear

The mysterious Pig Man has been one of the most elusive, enigmatic characters on this season of American Horror Story. Though the legitimacy of the backstories viewers saw for the Butcher and Scathach on "My Roanoke Nightmare" is up for debate, at least fans knew something about those two. But up until "Chapter 8," viewers had literally no clear idea of who the Piggy Man was, where he'd come from, and what his murderous motivations were. But thanks to Jether, viewers now know his history – or parts of it, at least. But is the Piggy Man on AHS: Roanoke connected to Murder House? There's been a lot of confusion as to whether the two characters are one and the same.

As a reminder – though I'm sure the most devoted AHS viewers could never forget – the original dude-with-a-pig-head appeared in the sixth episode of American Horror Story's first season. Eric Stonestreet, guest-starring as a Derek, played a vexed patient of Ben Harmon's and told the story of his paranoid fear of the "Piggy Man," an urban legend about a hog butcher from Chicago during the World's Fair of 1893. Season 1's Piggy Man, according to Derek, wore a pig mask while butchering. He was torn apart by his pigs, and shortly after, his former customers started turning up gutted themselves.

Obviously, when Season 6's Pig Man first showed up on the scene, viewers believed it couldn't be a coincidence. In a show that prides itself on inter-season connections, how could the two pig men not be one and the same? Well, the key to answering this might have been in Jether's brief, but important backstory of the Piggy Man.

As Jether told Lee when she was attempting to make conversation, hoping to bargain with him in order for her freedom, the most "famous" Polk was Kincaid Polk. Here's how Jether described him:

"He used to take the hogs to slaughter in Chicago, where the stockyard was. Then came the World's Fair. 1800-something. That's when the Piggy Man was born. After slaughtering hogs, he'd put on a pig mask and slaughter people. Hung 'em up, gutted and skinned, upside down in the bathtub. He got the idea from the Others. He saw what The Butcher did. Stick a pig head on that man and roast him alive. Made himself a legend."

So, clearly, Jether's story about Kincaid was near-identical to the story Derek told Ben about the Piggy Man – except for a few small differences. The place and timing of the Piggy Man's origin (Chicago, World's Fair, "1800-something") and his method of killing (victims gutted, hung upside down in the bathtub) is the same in both versions. But in Derek's story, the Piggy Man was killed by his pigs ("not a scrap of him was found") and only after his death-by-hogs did he begin murdering people. In Jether's more likely version of events, his ancestor was just an ordinary human, not-dead killer who happened to also be a hog butcher.

The discrepancies in Derek's tale can just be chocked up to the tendency for actual events to be exaggerated and turned into urban legends. So unless there just so happened to be two independently operating serial killers, who were both hog butchers and had an affinity for wearing pig heads, at the exact same World's Fair, Kincaid Polk is definitely the Season 1 Piggy Man. But is he also Season 6's Piggy Man? Probably not.

For one, the Pig Man who has been terrorizing the Roanoke land is seemingly bound to the land, like all of the other Roanoke ghosts. In order to have been bound to the land, he'd have needed to be killed by the Butcher and consecrated to it. In any case, Roanoke's Pig Man is in North Carolina – it's extremely unlikely that the Pig Man would make a habit of teleporting over to Los Angeles to torment urban legend believers like Derek, just for the hell of it.

Plus, the two don't actually look anything alike. Granted, Season 1's Piggy Man was never actually confirmed to be a real ghost – in the end, Derek is killed by a human robber, who's offended when he thinks Derek is calling him a pig. But in Derek's imagined version of getting murdered by the Piggy Man, the Piggy Man's pig head looks very different from the Roanoke Pig Man's. Plus, Season 1's pig killer wears overalls, while Season 6's is much skinnier and consistently shirtless.

But the explanation for what the heck is going on with all of these various Pig Men is right there in Jether's Polk family history lesson – his ancestor, Kincaid Polk (aka, the real killer on which Season 1's Piggy Man urban legend was based), got his idea for his killer costuming from the Butcher herself. He saw her create the actual Season 6 Pig Man – the "deserter" that Shelby saw her roasting alive the first time she stumbled upon them in the woods.

While this is all still unconfirmed, it seems much more likely that the Pig Man terrorizing Season 6 is the Butcher's victim – and that's not Kincaid Polk, Season 1's Piggy Man, at all. Given this, it means viewers still know nothing about Roanoke's Pig Man and his backstory – like why he was still willing to attack Flora after Ambrose took down the Butcher. Hopefully, more can be found out about him in the remaining two episodes of the season.