When he was a child, Brad Falchuk's grandmother had a very unusual punishment to mete out when he misbehaved. She made him watch the cheesy old gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. I would sit there and be very afraid, and then the next day I would say, 'Nana, I want to watch the program again.' I just loved feeling scared, he remembers. The cult show recently got new life thanks to a Tim Burton-directed movie, but before that it was mainly remembered as being a singularly odd series that followed the bad acting, melodrama and cliffhangers of regular soap operas, but with a cast that included vampires, ghosts, and all manner of other ghouls. Originally Falchuck wanted American Horror Story to be his version of Dark Shadows, where there are creatures and a soap opera and sex. In the end, he settled for Dr Aden in season two carrying a replica of the silver wolf's head cane carried by Barnabas Collins, the lead character of Dark Shadows, during his time at the Asylum.