Season 11, Episode 5: Ghouli

Synopsis

Two teenage girls confront each other on an abandoned ferry in Norfolk, Virginia. They each see each other as being a horrific creature, which they call Ghouli, and seriously wound each other trying to fend off the beast. The title screen reads, "You see what I want you to see."

Scully tells Mulder how she saw the ferry, which is part of an active X-File, while in a hypnagogic state. One of the cops on scene mentions how one of the girls mentioned Ghouli, and the agents find Ghouli.net, a website about the creature that's only been active for a few months. Mulder is intrigued by how the girls each had a vision with similar details to Scully's experience.

Although the girls don't know each other, they each have the same boyfriend: a fellow named Jackson Van de Kamp. Upon arriving at his house, Scully recognizes it from her vision. The agents hear gunshots and find Jackson and his parents dead in an apparent murder-suicide. Scully fears that Jackson might actually be William and that the visions were his way of summoning her.

Mulder confronts a pair of men who followed the agents to Norfolk, accusing them of being with the Department of Defense, but they play dumb. Scully, preparing to run a test to see if Jackson is William, tearfully apologizes for giving up her son and says she never forgot him. After leaving the morgue, Jackson rises from his body bag, apparently still alive.

Scully thinks William is trying to lead them to him, but Mulder is skeptical. The agents investigate Jackson's room further and find that he has made several posts to Ghouli.net and set up a back door connection to the DOD. The DOD men who followed the agents order them to cease their activities. In D.C., we see that Cancer Man is still hanging around with Skinner; he remarks that Mulder is close to finding what they've been looking for with "Project Crossroads."

Skinner meets with Mulder and warns him to drop the investigation, saying this case goes back to the efforts to make alien-human hybrids. He also says how a Dr. Masao Matsumoto initiated Project Crossroads, a eugenics project related to this subject, and that the DOD has been trying to track down his subjects after Matsumoto destroyed their files. Jackson is one of the subjects they have been trying to find. Mulder says he has checked Jackson's DNA and confirmed that he's William.

Scully meets with Jackson's psychiatrist, who allows that he had "specific and detailed" visions but won't go further. Scully correctly intuits that his vision involves the apocalyptic events of last season's finale, in which he was the key to creating a vaccine to stop the Syndicate's disease. Mulder suspects that the DOD agents killed William's adoptive parents, and that William projected an alternate reality to make them think he was dead.

William apologizes to one of the girls, saying he projected the Ghouli image as something of a prank and he's still learning to control his powers. The police surround the hospital, having been tipped off by his other girlfriend. The DOD agents pursue him, but William uses his powers to trick them into shooting each other and escape.

Stopping for gas on the way home, Scully again sees a man who offered her a cryptic greeting at the hospital. She thinks it might be Matsumoto, but he politely denies it. Tipped off by his parting words, Mulder asks the store clerk to review the surveillance video. The agents see that the man was actually William projecting a different appearance.

Episode Body Count

Dead rat: One of the girls comes across a decaying rodent in the abandoned ferry

William's adoptive parents: Shot to death by DOD agents

Three DOD agents: William uses his powers of mental projection to make the agents shoot each other

Humans: 5
Creatures: 1
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (202/202 original episodes, 2/2 movies, 11/16 reboot episodes)

Humans: 2,484
Creatures: 133
Aliens: 66

Grand Total: 2,683