S4E22 · Elegy

Angie Pintero (Alex Bruhanski), the owner of a bowling alley, tells one of his employees, an autistic man named Harold Spuller (Steven M. Porter), to go home for the evening. Shortly thereafter, Angie discovers a badly-injured blond girl wedged inside of the automated pinsetter. The girl attempts to speak, but no words come out of her mouth. Angie notices police in a nearby parking lot and rushes outside to get help. He realizes a crowd has gathered around the dead body of the same girl he saw only moments earlier in the bowling alley.

Angie relates his bizarre tale to Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Mulder suspects that Angie encountered the dead girl's ghost; three similar encounters, and three similar murders, were reported in the area in as many weeks. The agents discover the words, "She is me" written on the bowling lane where Angie saw the spirit, but its meaning remains a mystery.

Detective Hudak (Daniel Kamin) tells Mulder and Scully that an anonymous caller phoned 911 with a message regarding Penny Timmons, one of the killer's victims. The caller claimed that Timmons' last words were "She is me." Hudak notes, however, that the victim's larynx was severed, making it impossible for her to utter dying words. The agents trace the source of the 911 call to a payphone at the New Horizon Psychiatric Center. Mulder notices one of the patients, Harold Spuller, avoiding his gaze. After viewing photographs of the murder victims, Scully comes to the conclusion that Spuller fits the killer's profile: a compulsive person consumed with the desire to organize, clean and reorder.

Scully uses a rest room to attend to a nose bleed and there encounters the apparition of another young, blond girl. Moments later, Mulder tells her that the body of another victim was found nearby and Scully realizes it was the same girl she saw as an apparition. Scully decides to seek medical attention for her nosebleed but tells Mulder to remain and continue working on the case. In the meantime, the audience is made aware that Harold sees the apparitions of all of the young women recently murdered.

After having the nosebleed checked, Scully makes an appointment with an FBI psychiatrist in whom she confides that she has come to understand that she relies on Mulder far more than she ever realized and finds him to be a source of strength. Meanwhile, Mulder brings Harold to the police station for questioning and, during his interrogation, makes a connection between long strings of numbers Harold can recall on command to the bowling alley. Along with Hudak and Harold's attorney, Harold leads Mulder to a back room accessible from the bowling alley.

The walls of the room are covered with score sheets, including those of the victims, and these are the strings of numbers Harold recalls. Mulder realizes Harold met each of the murdered women at the bowling alley, but Harold becomes greatly upset and, from his point of view, Angie's ghost is seen standing behind Mulder. Harold rushes out of the room and makes his way to the bowling alley, where Angie lies dead from a heart attack. Mulder approaches Scully, asking her to examine Harold, because every person who saw the apparitions was dying or about to die, which implies Harold may be next.

Mulder also believes that Harold formed some kind of profound connection to the victims but was unable to express his feelings due to his Autism so a psychic connection formed between him and the murdered women. Scully, who also saw a victim's ghost, is struck by the implication but does not tell Mulder.

Harold is escorted back to the psychiatric center where he is tormented by Nurse Innes (Nancy Fish), a bully who seems to have a particular dislike for Harold. Later, Mulder finds Innes lying on the floor, half-conscious. Innes claims Harold went berserk and attacked her. Harold's roommate, Chuck Forsch, tells Scully that Nurse Innes warned Harold that she was poisoning him. Scully slowly realizes that Harold has probably not been taking his meds and that Innes, not Harold, was responsible for the murders. When Innes attacks Scully with a scalpel, Scully draws her weapon and fires, striking her in the shoulder.

While summarizing the case with Mulder, Scully explains that Innes had been taking Harold's unused medication, triggering violent and unpredictable behavior. Scully hypothesizes that Innes—out of rage for her husband having left her for a younger woman—committed the murders in order to destroy happiness and the innocent affection Harold felt towards the young women. Later, Harold's body is discovered in a nearby alley, the apparent victim of respiratory failure. Scully, however, suspects that Harold died from what Innes took away from him. Scully admits to Mulder that she saw the ghost of the fourth victim shortly after she was murdered and the two have a short but intense discussion about trust and the fear they both share. Later, Scully sees Harold's spirit sitting in the back seat of her car.