30 Years Later, The X-Files' Scariest Episode Still Makes Me Sleep With The Light On

Published Sep 27, 2026, 10:01 AM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

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This article contains mentions of incest, infanticide, sexual assault, murder, and forced pregnancy.

Although there are plenty of disturbing episodes of The X-Files, only one of them still truly unsettles me over a decade later. While I only discovered David Lynch’s seminal murder mystery Twin Peaks in my 20s, I was lucky enough to be introduced to The X-Files a lot sooner. Even when I was far too young to see an episode of the series, the soundtrack album to 1998’s feature film spinoff, The X-Files: Fight the Future, was played on regular rotation in my childhood home.

Unfortunately for me, thanks to a friend who told me we simply needed to watch the most shocking episode of TV he’d ever seen, my introduction to The X-Files came via what remains arguably the show’s darkest episode. I was probably 13 or 14 years old and, while I’d seen The Simpsons/The X-Files crossover and vaguely knew who Gillian Anderson’s skeptical Agent Scully and David Duchovny’s true believer Mulder were, I wasn’t quite prepared for what season 4, episode 2, “Home,” had in store.

A monster of the week outing like those favored by later The X-Files-influenced procedurals Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, “Home” isn’t linked to the broader myth arc of the series as a whole. I didn’t know anything about Mulder’s attempts to prove the existence of aliens when I saw the episode, penned by future Final Destination writer/director duo Glen Morgan and James Wong. Nor did I need to, since “Home” focused on the two agents traveling to the titular town of Home, Pennsylvania, where something unsettling is afoot.

Why "Home" Is Still Such A Scary Episode Of The X-Files

When a severely deformed baby is discovered by a group of kids playing baseball in a sandlot, Mulder and Scully are called upon to investigate the grisly discovery. The duo soon learn that a nearby farming family, the Peacocks, are thought to be the product of inbreeding due to their similar deformities. Since there are three Peacock brothers and no female family members, the FBI are slow to conclude that the trio could be responsible, but Mulder and Scully fear that they may have a woman held captive.

Fortunately, The X-Files episode avoids turning into a backwoods spin on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Unfortunately, the truth instead turns out to be something that is somehow even more disturbing and horrific. When Mulder and Scully finally arrive at the Peacock home to arrest them, they discover their severely disfigured mother lives among them, and the brothers have been siring children with her over the years.

Blessed with near-superhuman strength and an inability to feel pain, the inbred villains of “Home” put up a gnarly fight against the show’s heroes, with the mother of the family and her oldest son escaping in the melee while the two younger sons are eventually shot to death by Mulder and Scully. As if the plot wasn’t horrifying enough on its own, the episode ends with the implication that the surviving pair of Peacocks will soon start a new family in another town.

"Home" Proves That Hulu's X-Files Reboot Faces A Tough Challenge

Heavily influenced by The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, “Home” is a jaw-dropping reminder of just how shocking network TV could get in the ‘90s. While cable and streaming means the likes of American Horror Story have inured viewers to shocking taboos like incest and sexual assault in the years since, while shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead made graphic violence more commonplace in the 2010s, this episode still hits different upon a rewatch.

“Home” proves that Sinners director Ryan Coogler’s upcoming reboot of The X-Files has some big shoes to fill, as the original show was a lot more disturbing than many retrospectives give it credit for. While there are plenty of episodes of The X-Files that I re-watch with a smile, “Home” is one that will always keep me reaching for the light switch at night.