S2E13 · Irresistible

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a funeral is held for a young girl. The ceremony is observed by Donnie Pfaster, the eerie assistant director for the funeral home. Later that night, Pfaster's boss catches him cutting off the corpse's hair and promptly fires him.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are summoned to Minneapolis by Moe Bocks, an FBI field agent who is investigating the exhumation and desecration of a body in a local cemetery. Mulder discounts Bocks' theory that this act is a variation of extraterrestrial cattle mutilation, and suggests they search for a human culprit. Scully is disturbed at the sight of the disheveled corpse. Two more bodies are found exhumed, with their hair cut and fingernails removed. Mulder develops a psychological profile of the criminal, believing him to be an escalating "death fetishist " who may resort to murder to satisfy his desires. Scully keeps her discomfort with the case to herself, and writes up a field report on necrophilia.

Pfaster, who is behind the exhumations, proves Mulder's prediction correct when he brings a prostitute to his apartment. When the prostitute discovers a collection of funerary wreaths in Pfaster's bedroom, he kills her and removes her fingers. Later, Pfaster—having been hired as a frozen food delivery man—delivers to the low-security house of a woman with teenaged daughters. In the bathroom, he steals some discarded hair from a brush found in the trashcan. Pfaster attends a night class at a community college, where a female classmate defends herself after he makes threatening advances. He is arrested and is placed in a jail cell across from a suspect being interrogated for Pfaster's crimes by Mulder, Scully and Bocks. Pfaster shows interest in Scully, and learns her name from the interrogated suspect. Pfaster is released as his charges are dropped.

Scully is deeply troubled by Pfaster's crimes, and has unsettling dreams and hallucinations about the case. In Washington, she has a counseling session with a social worker, during which she shares her anxiety about the investigation. After the session, Scully learns that someone from Minnesota had called for her. When she contacts Mulder, she learns that neither he nor Bocks made the call. Tracing a fingerprint to Pfaster from his arrest, Mulder and Bocks raid his apartment, finding one of the prostitute's fingers in his refrigerator. After Scully arrives in Minneapolis, Pfaster forces her car off the road. He kidnaps Scully and takes her to his late mother's abandoned house. He ties and gags Scully, and keeps her in a dark closet.

Mulder and Bocks discover that Pfaster's mother had owned a car which matches paint found on Scully's abandoned vehicle, and track down her former residence. Meanwhile, Scully escapes from Pfaster as he prepares a cold bath for her, resulting in a pursuit through the house. Scully and Pfaster have a struggle that sends them falling down a staircase into the foyer, where a task force led by Mulder and Bocks breaks in moments later and apprehends Pfaster. Scully initially insists that she is okay, but then breaks down and cries in Mulder's arms. In a voice-over narration, Mulder traces Pfaster's pathology to his childhood, when he was raised in a family of four older sisters. Mulder also reflects on Pfaster's nature and the nature of evil in general.