S4E5 · The Field Where I Died

In Apison, Tennessee, authorities receive a tip from someone named Sidney alleging child abuse and weapons possession by a local cult called the Temple of the Seven Stars. The FBI and ATF stage a raid on the Temple's compound, but are unable to find its leader, Vernon Ephesian (Michael Massee). Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) experiences déjà vu and walks into a field on the compound, where he finds a trapdoor. Inside, he and Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) find Ephesian preparing to drink a red liquid with his six wives. Mulder stops them and handcuffs Ephesian, but he feels a strange connection to one of the wives, Melissa Riedal-Ephesian (Kristen Cloke).

Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) warns the FBI and ATF that Ephesian and his wives will be released in a day unless they can track down Sidney and the Temple's reported weapons cache. The agents question Ephesian, who states that there is no member of the Temple named Sidney. When they interview Melissa, she suddenly begins to talk like Sidney, claiming that Harry Truman is president. Scully believes Melissa is exhibiting multiple personality disorder, but Mulder thinks she is recalling a past life. The agents take her back to the temple, where she takes on the personality of a woman from the Civil War period and says that the weapons were hidden in another secret bunker in the field. She also states that Mulder, in a past life, was a Confederate soldier in the field with her, was her beloved, and that she watched him die.

Mulder has Melissa undergo regression hypnosis so she can recount her past lives. She implies that she and Mulder have met over their past lives, always to be separated or lost to each other. To confirm her events, Mulder has himself hypnotized and recalls a time when he was a Jewish woman with a son, who had the same soul as his sister Samantha; his deceased father, who was Scully, is dead. Melissa was his husband in this life and had been taken to a Nazi concentration camp by a Gestapo officer who was The Smoking Man.

Mulder also recalls his past life from the Civil War, when he was a man named Sullivan Biddle, while Melissa was Sarah Kavanaugh; Scully, Mulder claims, was his sergeant. Scully finds pictures of Biddle and Kavanaugh in the county's hall of records and gives them to Mulder. He wears a Confederate uniform in the photo.

The FBI and ATF plan to make another search of the compound. Ephesian, realizing that he will not survive another siege, passes out poison to the cult members while his men open fire on the FBI agents. All but he and Melissa die, Melissa having feigned drinking it. Mulder surrenders in order to get into the Temple. Ephesian then forces Melissa to drink the poison, and when Mulder arrives he finds both of them dead. Mulder caresses Melissa, looking out into the field.