Madame Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) settles in New Orleans with her husband and three daughters. She develops a nasty habit of harvesting blood from her slaves to use as a nightly face mask.
Delphine overhears her daughters planning to murder her and locks them in her torture chamber for a year.
Delphine catches her daughter, Borquita, with the house slave Bastien. As punishment, she turns Bastien into a Minotaur. Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett), the local witch and former lover of Bastien, is devastated.
Marie Laveau kills Delphine's entire family as revenge. Then, she makes Delphine immortal and buries her alive.
Mid-1800s — Freak Show
Edward Mordrake (Wes Bentley), a noble Englishman, suffers from an unthinkable ailment: a devilish face on the back of his head whispers terrible, hellish things to him.
Edward's family admits him to the insane asylum in Bedlam, but he escapes. He ends up as an act at the freak show.
Overcome with misery, Edward murders every freak in the troupe on Halloween night and hangs himself.