X-Files scariest episodes

Today 21 years ago television series X-Files was first aired on FOX network on American and Canadian TV.

It was a pilot episode, introducing viewers to the two main characters, Fox Mulder(David Duchovny) and Dana Scully(Gillian Anderson).

The first episode followed the two FBI agents on their first X-File case together, investigating a string of deaths which Mulder believes to be alien experiments.

Here are some of the scariest episodes from the 9 seasons of the television series which ran from 1993 till 2002.

Die Hand Die Verletzt 

This is the 14th episode of the second season where the two agents are called to investigate the death of a teenager who seems to have died during an occult ritual of some sort.

As a result of their arrival in town a few of the local high school's faculty, who had called themselves devil-worshipers when they were teens but long ago stopped worshipping the devil, decide they should take steps to conceal their past activities.

Matters are further complicated when the devil seems to have decided to personally interfere.

There were several scenes in the episode involving animals, each filmed with living creatures-In one such scene frogs rain from the sky. Actor Dan Butler has been quoted as being terrified of an anaconda used during one scene.

Pusher

This was the 17 episode of the third season of the series.  In this episode, characters Mulder and Scully are involved in the case of a man who goes by the pseudonym "Pusher".

Pusher seemingly is capable of bending people to his will. The suspect uses his mysterious abilities to manipulate Mulder into a dangerous end game.

This episode ranked in big numbers as it was watched by 16.2 million viewers in its initial broadcast.

Irresistible

Irresistible is one of the few in the series that has no paranormal elements to it. This episode centres on a "death fetishist" who begins kidnapping and killing women to satisfy his obsession. Meanwhile Scully, still recovering from her earlier abduction, is soon overcome with posttraumatic stress disorder.

This was the thirteenth episode of the second season.

Home

Home was the first episode of X-files to carry a viewer discretion warning for graphic content. It was the second episode of the fourth season, agents Mulder and Scully investigate the death of an infant with severe birth defects.

Travelling to the small isolated town of Home, Pennsylvania, the pair meets the Peacocks, a family of deformed farmers who have not left their house in a decade.

Initially Mulder suspects that the brothers kidnapped and raped a woman to father the child, but the investigation uncovers a long history of incest involving the Peacocks' own mother.

Chinga

Chinga was the 10 episode of the fifth season and was particularly special because it was co written by series creator Chris Cater and renowned author Stephen King.

In the episode Scully takes a vacation to Maine, where she encounters a bizarre case where the victims appear to have inflicted wounds upon themselves - apparently at the behest of a strange young girl.