“Our Town” is episode twenty-four of season two of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night on County Road A7 in Dudley, Arkansas. A car pulls to a stop and the man driving tells the noticeably younger woman in the passenger seat that they don’t have to be out here; it’s not like she’s in high school. The woman, Paula, doesn’t want anyone to see them. She leaves the car and the man starts having a seizure, but he takes some pills and follows her. Paula tells the man, George, that he has to catch her and disappears. George loses her and falls to the ground. Then sees some fires and a person wearing a mask and holding an axe approaches him and swings.
Scully thinks that they are being sent on a wild goose chase, even if a man has been missing for 10 weeks. Wild chicken, according to Mulder; George Kearns is a federal poultry inspector at Chaco Chicken. On the night he disappeared, a woman driving noticed a strange fire in an adjacent field. There are tales dating back to the 19th century about a foxfire spirit and people taken away by fireballs. Scully tells Mulder those are only legends, but this one left a 12′ burn mark in the field where the woman claimed to have seen foxfire. Mulder remembered something, a documentary he saw in college about an insane asylum that gave him nightmares. He plays a clip; a man is ranting about the fire demons wanting their pound of flesh. The man pulled off the road in 1961 and was found 3 days later, so deranged he had to be committed. The car was found in the middle of Dudley, Arkansas.
At the burn mark, there is something shoved into the ground; a witch’s peg, according to Mulder, used to ward off evil spirits. Mulder also finds a fork. They are approached by Sheriff Arens, who is happy to help but isn’t sure what there is to investigate. There’s no evidence of crime or criminal activity; just a missing person. He dismisses the fire as a trash burn. George Kearns never fitted in since he arrived and probably chased some sweet young thing out of town.
George’s wife, Doris, knew what he was like and is fairly certain he left with someone else. He left her when she turned 40. Mulder finds an inspection report that Kearns was going to file; it recommended that the chicken plant be shut down.
Chaco Chicken is the next place to visit, where Paula works. She also seems to have a problem and is taking pills. The floor manager, Jess Harold, says that Kearns had been trying to shut them down since he arrived. Paula, meanwhile, hallucinates George’s head on one of the chicken lines.
Harold is showing Mulder and Scully where the other three inspectors work. Kearns had a grudge against everyone, including the federal government for dismissing his case for health problems caused at work. Mulder asks what something else is; it’s a slurry made from all the chicken bits they can’t package that they feed to other chickens. Scully is telling Mulder that Kansas City could have handled it, when Paula grabs Harold and holds a knife to his throat. Scully tries talking Paula down, but the sheriff shoots and kills her.
Paula, according to Harold, was always one of their best employees; stable, well-liked. The doctor says that Paula was complaining of persistent headaches. He couldn’t find anything physically wrong with her, including a couple of scans. George Kearns had similar symptoms. Scully wants to do an autopsy of Paula; Mr Chaco’s permission will be needed, because he’s Paula’s grandfather and legal guardian.
Walter Chaco is a big fan of chickens and lives in a large house. After questioning why an autopsy should be done, he gives the go-ahead for it. Scully gets Mulder to look at Paula’s brain; she suffered from Creudztfeldt–Jakob disease, which is difficult to diagnose out of an autopsy (and autopsies tend to be fatal to living people). Paula would have been dead in months. Mulder has found something himself. Apparently, Paula was 47 when she died. She didn’t look it. Mulder thinks this case may be even more interesting than foxfire.
In the car, Scully says it’s extremely unlikely that two people in the same town would suffer from Creudztfeldt–Jakob disease. Then they nearly get hit by a truck driven by a third victim of the disease. Scully has a sick theory; what if Kearns’ body was ground up with the chicken feed? Creudztfeldt–Jakob disease is a prion disease and if chickens ate it, they would pass it along to whoever ate them. Mulder wants the river dragging; when the sheriff asks why he says to see what’s in there. Which is a pretty obvious reason. Scully may think she has a sick theory, but there’s a sicker one. Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease can be caught if you cut out the middle, err, chicken, and go direct to eating the source.