The Field Where I Died

"The Field Where I Died "is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the X – files. It belongs to the "monster of the week" type and is not related to the main" mythology " of the series.

In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate the unusual behavior of supporters of a religious cult, whose representatives believe in reincarnation. One of the wives of the leader of this movement becomes an informant.

Scully believes that Melissa is showing multiple personality disorder, but Mulder is sure that she is remembering her past life. The agents bring her back to the temple, where she assumes the identity of a Civil war woman and reveals that the weapons the FBI is looking for were hidden in one of the abandoned bunkers in the field. She also claims that Mulder was her lover in a previous life, a Confederate soldier who fell on this field in one of the battles of the Civil war, and that she watched him die.

Mulder feels an incomprehensible spiritual connection with this woman and, after a session of regressive hypnosis, recalls his past life with horror. He recalls a time when he was a Jewish woman with a son who had the same soul as his sister Samantha. His late father was Scully. Melissa in that life was his husband, who was sent to a concentration camp by a Gestapo officer who was a Smoker.

Mulder also recalls his even earlier life during the Civil war, when he was a man named Sullivan Biddle and Melissa was Sarah Cavanaugh. Mulder claims Scully was his Sergeant. Scully finds photos of Biddle and Cavanaugh in the County archives and hands them over to Mulder. In the photo, he wears a Confederate uniform.

The FBI is planning another search of the temple. The head of the sect, Ephesianus, realizing that he will not survive another siege, distributes poison to the cult members, and his men open fire on the FBI agents, trying to buy time. Everyone dies, including him and Melissa, who pretended to drink poison. Mulder tries to get to the temple, but Ephesian makes Melissa to drink poison. When Mulder gets to them, he finds them both dead.

The episode is based on the concept of transmigration of souls. One of its main characters is a woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder named Melissa, in whose mind there are many personalities. In the course of the story, it turns out that these personalities are not random, but represent her previous incarnations in this world. Individuals know about each other, some of them try to protect the others. All of them preserved the memories and habits of long-dead people.

At the beginning of the episode, Scully associates the effect of Mulder's recognition of the surrounding area with the phenomenon of déjà vu. However, under the influence of regressive hypnosis, Mulder also remembers his previous lives, learns that he died in this area, and finds out that those who are close to him now were near him before. It turns out that in one of his lives, Melissa was his lover.