The second installment of American Horror Stories, the FX series that is a spin-off of the first American Horror Story, debuted on July 27. Max Winkler was the show’s director, and Manny Coto wrote the script.
The premise is not necessarily the spookiest or most horrible storyline ever. Witches and eerie dolls are definitely not present. However, the episode is shrouded in mystery when Jaslyn, the main character, installs a new security system dubbed “Aura” on her front door. She is unaware that this technology has the ability to identify ghosts and gives them access to the user of the device. It can sort of feel the ghosts’ aura.
Similar to the first episode, Aura features a wild story twist and demonstrates how the most terrifying characters are frequently not ghosts or other supernatural things, but rather other people who are near to us.
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What Happens In Aura?
The story meshes the concept of technology and spirits as the lead character, Jaslyn, buys a new device to monitor her visitors without having to walk up to the door.
Jaslyn is exposed to an advertisement about a smart doorbell system that allows the user to see who is at the door on their phone. She is intrigued by it and spends a whopping two hundred dollars on the purchase, even though her neighborhood is a safe, secure, and gated community. She lives in Mountain View Place with her husband and is trying to run a business selling what looks like handmade trinkets. But this business is at the baby stage, which means she does not make enough money at the moment to casually spend so much on a security system.
Her husband, Bryce, is bummed out about the purchase but Jaslyn’s childhood trauma from a terrible experience is reason enough for her to be paranoid. Twenty years ago, an invader wearing a rabbit mask had snuck into her house via the window and shot her mother. Bryce acknowledged the situation and understood why she would go the extra mile to ensure her safety, but did not pay enough heed to it. So, early into the episode, we get a glimpse of Bryce being a not-so-great partner. However, that is initially overlooked and the Aura security system is installed at the front door.
Later, Jaslyn and Bryce test out the device and it seems to work perfectly well. However, Bryce leaves soon, as he has an important work meeting to attend. Jaslyn, now alone, locks the door and gets back to work. She gets a notification on her phone from Aura. The device can basically sense people at the front door via the motion sensors. But Jaslyn does not notice anything on her camera. She goes outside, only to find out that it is a cute raccoon causing a ruckus and having a party within the neighborhood trashcans. She goes back into the house, and the app notifies her of a visitor again.
Jaslyn checks her phone to find an older man standing at the door, calling her by her name endearingly (in the creepiest way possible), and pleading for her to open the door for him… and him referring to her as “My Sweet Jasmine” does more harm than good. Naturally, she freaks out and asks him to leave, but he begins to bang the door frantically. Jaslyn calls the cops and even Bryce comes back home.
The police question her while her neighbor, Hwan, checks his security camera footage. However, his footage shows the situation with the raccoon which is soon followed by the cops arriving at Jaslyn’s household. She is shocked to see that the camera has not detected the old man, and the others begin to suspect that she was tired or dreaming. Even Bryce does not take her side and she feels the need to assert herself and her truth to not come off as crazy. But all in vain. That night, Bryce even asks her to see a therapist for her childhood invasion trauma once again. But Jaslyn claims that she does not need to, mainly because she knows that her experience was not a hallucination or a dream.
On a different night, Jaslyn learns about Bryce poisoning the raccoon to stop the ruckus in the neighborhood. She is bummed out about him straight up killing the animal for just going in and out of trashcans, which seems like quite the harsh step. Once again, she gets an Aura notification and sees the same man from the other night. This time, Bryce is present and she even shows him the footage of that man.
Bryce calls up Hwan and asks him to check the footage from his security camera, which seems to show no one outside the door. So, he suspects that the device has been hacked and that somebody is planting these videos to creep people out. Once again, Jaslyn knows that’s not true, as she had already experienced the man physically banging on her door. But Bryce seems to not care about her reasons and casually asks her to look up ‘Aura pranks’ on the internet.
The next morning, Jaslyn checks for Aura pranks and finds several videos of menacing-looking figures appearing outside people’s doors. It also said that once the door was opened, no one was there. However, the person in the prank was also revealed to be a registered sex offender who was arrested. As usual, Bryce pays no heed to her concerns and just changes the device’s passwords, expecting for things to go back to normal.
Meanwhile, Jaslyn begins to put two and two together and vaguely recognizes the old man at their door to be similar to her high school janitor Dayle Hendricks. He was an odd man who people made fun of. But one day, she had complimented him out of courtesy, which caused him to latch onto her. He began to refer to her as ‘My Sweet Jasmine’ (just like the man at the door) and would send her love letters. However, Bryce keeps on insisting that it is all a cyber prank.
Jaslyn sets out to investigate and finds Hendricks’ sister’s house. She comes up with a lie about hosting a reception for the old staff of her school, which is why she needs to get in touch with Hendricks. However, his sister tells her that he keeps disappearing and that she has not seen him in months. She also talks about him being deeply into computers. Anyway, Jaslyn asks to see a picture of Hendricks, so that she can add it to the roster of the staff (which is obviously a lie). Soon, she realizes that this is the same man as the one who keeps appearing at her front door.
Jaslyn leaves the place and tells Bryce about the janitor and the man being the same person. But he just tells her that he will be home later.
Soon, Hendricks appears on Jaslyn’s Aura and pleads for her to just talk to him. He wants her to open the door and so she does. But, there is no one outside. Jaslyn closes the door and sees the man standing by the window. She is shocked as he comes near her. Even though she is scared, he just tells her that he is here to apologize for his inappropriate behavior back in school. He does not ask for her forgiveness but gets it anyway as Jaslyn admits to making fun of him with her friends and asks for his forgiveness.
The man begins to cry blood and bursts into dust. Jaslyn also learns that the man had been missing for quite some time and his body was recently found floating in the river, apparently dead from suicide. She realizes that the man was a spirit who had one last motive to fulfill, which is why he had sought Jaslyn out.
After Bryce comes back and asks her about everything, she tells him that everything has been fine, and he attributes it to him changing the password on her Aura. But as he heads upstairs, another Aura notification comes in.
Jaslyn sees an unrecognizable woman who claims to not know what is going on but mentions something about being at a park. Bryce yeets the phone out of her hand, screams at the woman, and aggressively removes the device from the door to throw it away.
On a separate day, Jaslyn investigates this new woman and finds a memorial for a woman known as Mary Jeane Burkett. This is the same woman as the one on her porch and it is revealed that she was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Jaslyn comes back home and asks Bryce about the woman, since she believes the woman, who is already dead, had come for him… and according to what she had found out, Aura’s system could detect ghosts and the motions of spirits, so it is a way for spirits to reconnect with the people they have unfinished business with. Since Jaslyn knew nothing about Burkett, she was convinced that Bryce was the one with a connection to her.
Bryce laughs at the spirit and ghost theory when Aura notifies Jaslyn of Burkett returning. Bryce is bummed to learn that she has re-installed the device and that it is still working. She even tells him that she had lied about things being fine and reveals her experience with the spirit of Hendricks.
The Plot Twist
The woman at the porch directly calls for Bryce, proving that she has a connection to him. Despite his struggles, he is forced to reveal that Burkett was a woman he was engaged to. They had fought in his car because he wanted to break up and he drove off without her. After that, she apparently died in the hit-and-run and he claimed to regret the incident all the time.
Jaslyn lets Burkett’s spirit in and she appears, cradling a baby in her arms. The spirit of her baby with Bryce. And she forces Bryce to reveal the entire, true story from the day of her death.
Burkett had gotten pregnant and Bryce wanted nothing to do with it. He left her alone in that condition, when she was immediately hit by a separate car and left in tatters. Bryce witnessed the accident and called for help nonchalantly. He got closer to her battered body and noticed that half of her face was done for and her legs were squashed. Instead of trying to get her help, he stepped on her neck and killed her. She probably would have survived otherwise, since her vital organs had not taken any damage. So, she was actually killed by Bryce, and not as a result of the hit-and-run.
With Jaslyn now being aware of the secret, Bryce gets his hands on a fireplace poker to kill her as well. Immediately, he is stopped by Burkett’s ghost. His body then dissolves into ashes just like that of Hendricks’. This was low-key alluded to Bryce throughout the episode, as he was shown to be a cold-hearted partner who lacked empathy. He was very much okay with killing off a raccoon and rarely ever cared about Jaslyn’s feelings. They even made jokes about him being a raccoon murderer. Needless to say, he was revealed to be a downright terrible person.
Three months pass by and Jaslyn has moved to a new apartment. She is pursuing her business and lives alone. However, her new landlord installs Aura at her front door, which she is shocked by, and he tells her that it is the policy of the apartment that the people have this device installed. After he leaves, she gets a notification on her phone. She checks it to see the ghost of Bryce, who aggressively wants to talk to her. She is terrified and the episode ends.
Do you remember the Season 4 Black Mirror episode called Arkangel? The one where the mother had gotten a device to constantly monitor the whereabouts of her daughter, which ended in utter disaster? It really shows how some things are better left unknown and that you do not need to be in the know of things at all times. Aura is kind of similar in that sense. Things would have been better if Jaslyn had never known about the app. But it is also better to have some weird experiences than to be married to a cold-blooded murderer.