Buzz
While 'The X-Files' is often filled with fantastical stories of aliens and monsters, there are unexpected real-life events woven into its episodes. Some of Mulder and Scully's most bizarre cases are rooted in actual strange occurrences and spine-chilling legends.
10. 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' - Gloria Ramirez
The Episode: In the dramatic season finale, a man’s body releases a toxic gas after paramedics perform a needle decompression. The medics in the ambulance succumb to the fumes, and the man escapes. While the storyline later reveals that the man carries alien DNA, the true events behind this toxic blood are even more unsettling.
The Real Incident: In 1994, a woman named Gloria Ramirez, who was battling cervical cancer, was admitted to Riverside General Hospital. When a nurse attempted to draw her blood, she noticed strange particles floating within it and a distinct ammonia-like smell. Six paramedics fainted from the fumes, and over 20 others began experiencing symptoms.
One theory suggests that the combination of oxygen and the defibrillator caused dimethyl sulfoxide in Ramirez’s body to form toxic gaseous dimethyl sulfate, which then seeped from her body and poisoned the hospital personnel. But this remains speculative, and the mystery of Gloria Ramirez stands as one of the most bizarre unsolved cases in medical history.
9. ‘Unruhe’ - Howard Unruh
The Episode: A serial killer's disturbed mind is so fractured that his violent fantasies manifest onto undeveloped photographs. After kidnapping a young woman from a pharmacy, the desk clerk finds disturbing photos of the woman screaming in terror on a freshly developed roll of film.
The Real Story: As outlined in The Official Guide to the X-Files, Volume 3, writer Vince Gilligan drew inspiration from real-life stories of Ted Serios and Howard Unruh to create a fictional killer whose disturbing visions are so intense, they leave physical imprints on the world around him.
Ted Serios was a photographer in the 1960s who claimed he could capture a person's thoughts on undeveloped film. Even more chilling was Howard Unruh, a mass murderer who imagined killing his neighbors before actually carrying out his violent fantasies, killing 13 people in the infamous “Walk of Death” in 1949.
8. ‘Folie A Deux’ - Shared Insanity
The Episode: A telemarketer takes his coworkers hostage at gunpoint, convinced his boss is a giant insect, a creature that 'hides in the light.' Even Mulder, usually the voice of reason, begins to think logically about the case… until he starts seeing the bug himself. Mulder ends up attacking the boss and is sent to a psychiatric hospital, where the deadly insect continues to pursue him. In a shocking twist, the bug is revealed to be real.
The Real Story: Folie a deux, a recognized psychiatric disorder, occurs when two people share the same delusions. In 2008, twin sisters Sabina and Ursula Eriksson ran into a busy street separately, both of them struck by oncoming traffic. In another case, three sisters developed a shared delusion, tried to break into someone's house, and then sang naked in their jail cell after being arrested. Once separated, they returned to their normal selves.
7. ‘The Pine Bluff Variant’ - Real-World Pathogen Research
The Episode: Scully grows suspicious when Mulder aids a bioterrorist who has just infected a man with a pathogen that causes his face to melt away. As Scully investigates further, she uncovers that Mulder is undercover within the terrorist’s organization, trying to stop their plot to spread a deadly pathogen through banknotes.
The Real Story: The episode's title, 'The Pine Bluff Variant,' refers to a real biological weapons facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, which was responsible for researching and developing biological agents before being shut down by Richard Nixon in the 1960s. Among its projects, the Pine Bluff Arsenal was involved in the creation of Agent Orange, whose devastating effects are still felt in Vietnam.
According to Anne Simon, author of The Real Science Behind the X-Files, the US government conducted more than 200 covert experiments on its population between 1943 and 1966 to study the impact of biological warfare. During these tests, civilians were unknowingly exposed to infections in order to track how they would spread in a real biological attack.
6. ‘Tooms’ - The Abduction of Polly Klaas
The Episode: Eugene Tooms is a serial killer who crawls through ventilation shafts to hunt his victims, intending to consume their livers. Despite orders to stay out of it, Mulder pursues Tooms in a desperate attempt to prevent him from killing again.
The Real Story: Richard Allen Davis was released from prison only months before kidnapping and murdering Polly Klaas. While 'Tooms' borrowed this concept of a criminal's release before he kills again, the season three episode 'Oubliette' introduced a storyline involving a young girl who is abducted from her bedroom and held captive, much like Klaas's case.
Due to the chilling parallels with the Klaas case, Fox initially hesitated to air the episode. Eventually, a compromise was reached, adjusting the girl's age from 12 to 15 and removing some of the scenes depicting her captivity.
5. ‘Never Again’ - John Hinckley Jr.
The Episode: A man begins to hear voices and soon realizes that his Bettie Page tattoo is speaking to him. The tattoo, voiced by Jodie Foster, persuades him to murder his neighbor and dispose of her body in the building's furnace. As Scully gets closer to uncovering the truth, the tattoo urges him to kill her as well.
The Real Story: In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Leading up to the assassination, Hinckley became fixated on Jodie Foster. He claimed that he tried to kill the president to impress her. It’s believed that Jodie Foster was chosen to voice the tattoo as a nod to Hinckley’s disturbing obsession with her.
In the conclusion of the episode, it’s revealed that the ink in the tattoo contained traces of ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus responsible for several real-life instances of mass hysteria.
4. ‘The Field Where I Died’ - The Jonestown Massacre
The Episode: Mulder and Scully investigate the Temple of the Seven Stars, a cult suspected of concealing a weapons cache. As the FBI closes in on him, cult leader Vernon Warren orders a mass suicide, forcing everyone to drink poison.
The True Story: The episode’s cult and its leader are inspired by the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists and their leader, Vernon Wayne Howell (aka David Koresh). The Branch Davidians became infamous following the 1993 standoff in Waco, Texas, which lasted two months and culminated in the deaths of over 80 individuals.
The mass suicide portrayed in the episode is believed to be based on the Jonestown Massacre, where cult leader Jim Jones coerced his followers to ingest cyanide. Those who resisted were rounded up and shot. A total of 909 lives were tragically lost in this senseless event.
3. ‘Home’ - The Ward Brothers
The Episode: A family of inbred brothers resorts to killing anyone who threatens their isolated lifestyle. In one of the most disturbing scenes, the brothers break into a police officer’s home and beat him to death with a baseball bat. This scene was so graphic that the episode was banned from being rebroadcast.
The True Story: The 1990 case in Syracuse, New York, drew national attention when William Ward, one of four brothers living in a rundown house, was found dead. Evidence initially pointed to Delbert, the youngest brother, as the one who killed William in his sleep. However, Delbert was later acquitted after it was revealed that he was illiterate and unable to read his supposed confession.
2. ‘Drive’ - Project Seafarer
The Episode: Mulder is taken hostage by a man who believes his head will explode if he stops driving. Later, it is uncovered that an underground extremely low frequency (ELF) antenna is hidden beneath the man's property.
The True Story: Project Seafarer was a government initiative designed to create a network of underground ELF wires for submarine communication. While ELF radio waves never caused anyone's head to explode, there was once widespread belief that exposure to these waves could have such an effect. However, studies later showed that these fears were baseless. Eventually, the government deemed the project obsolete and shut it down.
1. ‘Irresistible’ - Jeffrey Dahmer
The Episode: A man who works at a morgue begins collecting souvenirs from the deceased bodies that pass through his workplace. His obsession escalates as he begins to murder people to obtain more souvenirs. At times, he appears to transform in a way that terrifies his victims.
The True Story: X-Files creator Chris Carter openly stated that the character of the killer was heavily inspired by the notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Carter mentioned, 'There are reports from people who were held by Dahmer who claimed he shape-shifted during their captivity—that his appearance actually changed.'
Initially, the killer was also written to be a necrophiliac, much like Dahmer. However, Fox did not allow the inclusion of necrophilia on television, so that aspect of the character was toned down. It's safe to say they never attempted to address Dahmer's cannibalism either.
