“Red Museum” is episode ten of season two of The X-Files.
The episode opens at a slaughterhouse and a woman is ending her shift and heading home. Her two sons are watching television and she suggests ordering a pizza whilst she gets a shower. Someone is spying on her through the bathroom mirror. The phone rings and the teenage son gets it. He tells his younger brother he will be back in five minutes. Four hours later and his mother is calling the police. The next day, the boy is running through the forest in his underwear. He stumbles onto a road and is found by police looking for him. The boy, Gary, seems panicked. On his back is written ‘HE IS ONE’.
Mulder is telling Scully this at the FBI. The boy is Gary Kane, 16. A C-student but plays varsity football. Not one of the more remarkable kids in Wisconsin. Nobody knows what the message means. Gary was found 12 hours after he disappeared and has been unable to form a coherent statement. The other victims – and there have been two others – have had to be sedated and hospitalised since their experiences, due to being hysterical with fear. The sheriff in Delta Glen thinks they have been possessed.
Sheriff Mazeroski tells Mulder and Scully about the Church of the Red Museum, led by someone called Odin. They moved out from California 3 years ago and bought a ranch. Being vegetarians, they turned 500 head of beef cattle into pets. Stating it was a monument to barbarism. Mulder bets that went down well with the other ranchers. The sheriff says it takes something to settle a church like this in the middle of cow country. He wants them to see for themselves.
The church members wear white robes and red turbans. They are having a meeting and the leader, Odin, is typing a sermon onto a computer which is displayed on a screen, as a woman reads it aloud. Which is peculiar. Mulder, on hearing what they are saying, mentions ‘Walk Ins’; they believe in soul transference where enlightened spirits take possess of the bodies of others. Hence, the sheriff’s belief in possession.
Gary doesn’t remember much but thinks a spirit entered him. He can’t explain what happened, doesn’t remember who called or what happened after he left home. Mulder continues the interview as Scully wanders round the house, and speaks to the younger son, Stevie. Whoever was watching their mother is spying again.
Outside, the sheriff tells them that Gary hasn’t been in trouble. He’s known the kid since he was born. Sure, he’s drunk beer but that’s basic 16-year-old stuff. One thing has changed; Gary Kane lived for football, now he won’t even suit up. Nobody much cares for the Red Museum; there’s tension but most folks try to avoid them. Mulder asks for motel recommendations and somewhere to eat.
Over their recommended ribs, Mulder explains more about Walk Ins. Those who lose hope, despair and want to leave the mortal coil leave themselves open to being taken over by a more enlightened spirit, naming a few people from history who supposedly were. Does Mulder believe it’s possession? In the absence of any other plausible explanation, it’s a novel theory. Outside, several kids pull over to one of the Red Museum kids and start hassling him. Mulder comes out and stops them; the girl gets more worried when she sees Scully has a gun. The boy, Rick, thinks his father would like to know about this. His father is the sheriff. Mulder is up for calling him, but the kid, Rick, and the others leave.
Later, Rick drops his girlfriend off. She hears a dog crying and goes to see. Someone grabs her from behind. The next day, she is wandering the forest in her underwear and hallucinating. ‘SHE IS ONE’ is written on her back. Scully, when the girl is found, says that toxicology shows an unspecified alkaloid substance, possible an opiate derivative, and scopolamine in levels where it would be useful as an anaesthetic and hallucinogen. Quantities that large would only be obtainable by a pharmacist or doctor – and Odin used to be in the AMA.
Odin won’t let them contaminate his house because they are meat eaters. Even a warrant wouldn’t let them. So, he gets arrested and taken to the sheriffs. He’s never prescribed or administered scopolamine, nor has he ordered others to do so. The rest of the church turn up outside the barbecue restaurant and the woman is preaching when Rick arrives with a bucket of cow blood and throws it over them.
A man watching from his truck motions to Scully; he has something he wants to show the FBI. That being the pastureland he sold. More specifically, the men injecting cattle with a genetically engineered growth hormone. The man says that you wouldn’t have seen the incident in town 5 years ago. People have changed, becoming mean and spiteful. There have been 7 rapes in the past year by high school boys. He thinks the growth hormone is the root source.
Things start getting more complicated when the local doctor is killed when his light plane crashes and it seems he was up to something. Then people start getting murdered, and a man last seen in “The Erlenmeyer Flask “ turns up. Plus, is the man who was spying on the Kanes a garden variety creep, or is there something more?