20 Moments
From The X-Files That Scared The Crap Out of Me
(in order by season, mostly)
1. Squeeze - After
discovering Tooms' "nest" in the basement of a condemned apartment building,
Scully stops in her tracks on the way out, telling Mulder that her necklace is caught on
something. She seems to have fixed her problem, but as she walks away we see Tooms'
arm reaching down from the ceiling, holding onto Scully's necklace. He was there the
whole time.
2. Beyond the Sea -
There are actually 2 scenes in this episode that got to me. The first, and the one
scene from all 7 seasons that scares me the most, takes place during the opening
teaser. Scully's parents have just left her apartment after a holiday dinner.
Scully has fallen asleep on her couch with the TV on. She awakens to see her father
sitting in the chair opposite her. He seems to be speaking to her but no sound comes
from his mouth and he is expressionless. The phone rings and after answering it
Scully turns back to the chair and sees that no one is there. The phone call is her
mother telling her that her father has just died. The other scene that does me in
takes place later in the episode. Scully has just ripped into Boggs, accusing him of
setting Mulder up to be shot. The camera switches quickly to Boggs, who channels
Mulder and for an instant actually appears as Mulder to Scully.
3. Excelsius Dei -
Something is haunting a nursing home. Scully walks down one of its hallways and we
see that the haunters are ghosts of former residents. We watch them float along next
to an unaware Scully. Also, the scene where one of the residents is quickly dragged
down a hall by those unseen ghosts gives me the willies.
4. Irresistible -
This entire episode scares me.
5. Paper Clip -
Mulder and Scully are deep within an abandoned mine where they have stumbled upon a
massive installation of filing cabinets, all housing medical records and tissue samples
for thousands and thousands of individuals. The lights go out suddenly and Mulder
and Scully are separated. Scully walks down one of the darkened tunnels, shining her
flashlight, when suddenly dozens of little people (looking suspiciously like aliens and
making weird clicking sounds) rush by her, causing her to drop her flashlight. She
can't see them, but she can feel them brushing past her.
6. Tempus Fugit - I
can usually suppress it, but I have to admit that I get pretty scared when I fly in an
airplane. My fear is not enough to prevent me from flying, but I have been known to
white-knuckle it for many of my flights, especially the rocky ones. That is why the
plane crash scene from this episode scares me so much. It's so realistic.
7. Home - Here's
another episode that is just terrifying in itself. Most notable: the scene
where the Peacock boys beat the Sheriff and his wife to death with clubs, and especially
our first encounter with the armless and legless Mrs. Peacock as she is rolled out from
her hidey hole under the bed. I'm getting the shivers just thinking about it.
8. Leonard Betts -
The headless corpse has just gotten up and strolled out of the morgue. That's okay,
though - it's Leonard Betts and he can grow another head, no problem. Leonard has
gone home to soak in a tub full of iodine as his new head grows, but wouldn't ya know, no
sooner is he in the bath than there's a knock on the door. The camera's point of
view is a low shot of the inside of the door, and just before it is opened a pair of legs
quickly scurries in front of our view. Vaguely defined scurriers give me the creeps.
9. Elegy - This
moment is similar to the vision that Scully had of her father in Beyond the Sea.
Scully, already informed by the cancer-snacking Mr. Betts that she had what he needed, has
a precognitive vision of a dead young college girl. The gruesome image, with its
throat cut, silently mouths words to Scully. This, combined with the knowledge that
a person who experiences these visions is likely to die soon, terrifies Scully.
10. Detour - Okay,
the Fountain-of-Youth-Tree-People were pretty lame monsters. But the way they could
blend into the surrounding area was tres spooky. Especially at the end, when one of
them is hiding under the motel bed. See why I never hang my feet or hands over the
side of the bed?
11. Schizogeny - Not
a very scary (or very good) episode, but I get so creeped out when Karin Matthews'
personality splits and she starts speaking in the deep male voice of her father.
12. All Souls
- Now that I think about it, this entry may fall under the "unsettling"
category. Scully is again seeing visions, but this time they are of her dead
daughter Emily. Scully is still mourning for Emily, and these visions terrify her.
And me.
13. Tithonus -
Scully investigates a crime-scene photographer who has the ability to tell when someone is
going to die. In a scene near the end, Scully is in Fellig's dark room, becoming
more and more uneasy as the conversation proceeds. And then we see what Fellig sees
- that Scully is marked for Death.
14. Milagro - Mulder
and Scully are investigating a series of murders in which the victim's heart is removed,
without cutting of any kind. During the investigation, Scully goes to a church to
examine a painting and she is approached by her secret admirer. And even though she
does not know that he is tied to the murders (as we do), she becomes more and more
frightened as he tells her how he feels about her and reveals intimate knowledge of her
personal life.
15. Millennium -
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on the loose and Mulder and Scully need to
eliminate them before the new Millennium begins. (They actually would have had a whole
year to do that, but nobody likes a math geek, right?). Mulder locates the house of
the necromancer who has raised the zombies from the dead and enters the basement. At
first Mulder is unaware of their presence, but then the zombies rise from beneath the dirt
of the basement floor. He eventually kills one, but he ends up standing in the dark
in the middle of a circle of salt, surrounded by the zombies. Very scary stuff.
16. Signs and Wonders
- There were quite a few horrifying moments in this episode about snake handlers.
Most notably, the scene where Mulder and Scully first enter Enoch O'Connor's dark church
and become surrounded by snakes. Snakes in general don't scare me so much.
However, if someone were to hold me down on top of a snake carrier and try to force my
hand down into the gaping jaws of a rattlesnake in order to test my righteousness like
Enoch O'Connor did to Scully, um, I'd be scared.
17. Sein und Zeit - Mulder,
Scully and Skinner chase a suspected serial killer through his property. Skinner is
able to catch him, and when Mulder and Scully arrive at the scene they all stop to look
around. As the camera pulled back to give us a wider view, the sight of all of those
tiny burial mounds, the graves of those little children, was horrifying.
18. Closure - Psychic Harold
Piller comes to Mulder's hotel room at night to tell him that a "visitor" wants
to see him. He tells Mulder to grab a pen and paper and write down what the visitor
has to say. While Mulder tells Piller he's full of crap, the 'ghost' of Mulder's
dead mother appears behind him. The vision disappears and Piller says that whatever
called him there was gone. But Mulder looks down to find that he has unknowingly
written the words, "April Base" on a piece of paper. A clue from his
mother to help in his search for his sister?
19. Theef - Scully
has taken the victim's family to a remote cabin in an effort to keep them safe from
Peattie. But Peattie has found the cabin, and he finds Scully's photo ID and a
strand of her hair in the car outside. He uses these in conjunction with a poppet
(like a voodoo doll), and with a few well-chosen magic words he pokes through the eyes in
the picture with a pin and blinds Scully. She knows that he is there but she can't
see him.
20. X-Cops - The
teaser for this episode really did scare the crap out of me. It was very "Blair
Witch"-like in that it was filmed with a hand-held video camera and you were never
shown the monster. When the sheriff came running out from behind the house,
screaming at the camera man to "Run! Run!", and they jumped into the patrol car,
and then before they could get away the unseen monster began to pound on the car with
incredible force, rolling it over and over, and the guys inside were screaming and
screaming... that got my attention.
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