S5E10 · Chinga

In Ammas Beach, Maine, Melissa Turner and her young daughter Polly go to the store; Polly carries with her an old doll that she calls "Chinga". Customers watch Polly and her mother, and Polly doesn't like it. Suddenly, Melissa sees a phantasmal vision of the store's butcher, Dave, on the edge of death. Melissa, terrified, decides to leave, but suddenly everyone in the store begins to claw at their eyes. Meanwhile, Dave, after seeing a monstrous reflection of Chinga, is compelled by an outside force to stab himself in the eye, killing himself.

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is coincidentally in the area on vacation, and, after stumbling upon the carnage in the store, telephones Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). Mulder, true to character, speculates that it might have been caused by dark magic or witchcraft. Scully dismisses Mulder's hypothesis and instead decides to watch the store's closed-circuit television recordings to gain a better understanding of what happened. She notices that, of all the customers in the store, only Melissa and Polly are not compelled to injure themselves. The police chief of Ammas Beach, Jack Bonsaint, offhandedly mentions that Melissa is rumored to practice witchcraft.

Bonsaint tells Scully that Melissa had formerly been married to a local fisherman, but he was killed when a hook on his winch ripped through his skull. Later, it is revealed that he found Chinga in a lobster trap and gave it to Polly as a present before he died. Bonsaint also reveals that a daycare teacher named Jane Froelich had once slapped Polly over her behavior. Meanwhile, Melissa and Polly meet with her friend, Buddy Riggs, a police deputy, at an ice cream shop. Melissa confides in Riggs that she has been having horrific visions of people dying.

Riggs is startled and suggests that Melissa and Polly use his cabin to get away from Ammas Beach. While Riggs and Melissa chat, Polly asks one of the workers for more cherries on her ice cream, but the worker insists that she needs to pay for them. Just then, the worker's hair gets caught in the mixer, but Riggs saves her from death.

Scully and Bonsaint visit Froelich, who accuses Melissa of being the scion of a witch family. She also claims that Melissa has passed her evil onto Polly. Meanwhile, while heading out to Riggs' cabin, Melissa sees a bloody image of Froelich and decides to return to Ammas Beach to save Froelich. While Melissa races back, Froelich is confronted by the enlarged Chinga and is forced to kill herself with a shard of a phonograph record. Soon thereafter, Melissa sees a vision of Riggs, and as expected, the deputy is forced to bludgeon himself to death with his own nightstick. At her home, Melissa has a final vision, this time seeing herself with a hammer embedded in her head. She decides to end the madness once and for all by burning Chinga. However, the doll somehow manages to extinguish the matches that Melissa lights.

Scully and Bonsaint drive to Melissa's house and witness Melissa manically trying to burn her house down—with her, her daughter, and Chinga all trapped inside. Chinga eventually overpowers Melissa, forcing her to grab hold of a hammer and beat herself. Scully and Bonsaint burst into the house, and Scully quickly tosses the Chinga doll into a microwave, where it bursts into flames and melts. The power over Melissa is lifted and she stops beating herself. In the final scene, a fisherman is seen pulling up a lobster trap, inside of which is the burned doll.