Fresh Bones

It was written by Howard Gordon, directed by Rob Bowman, and featured guest appearances by Kevin Conway, Daniel Benzali, and Matt Hill.

The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files.

In the episode, Mulder and Scully discover a voodoo symbol drawn on a tree after a soldier, Private Jack McAlpin, crashes his car into it following two separate hallucinatory incidents.

Howard Gordon was inspired to write the episode after reading two articles involving suicides of servicemen in Haiti.

In Folkstone, North Carolina, Jack McAlpin, an agitated Marine Corps private, drives his car into a tree after several hallucinatory episodes and is apparently killed.

After meeting with Colonel Wharton, the head of the compound, Mulder interviews an imprisoned refugee, Pierre Bauvais, and an associate of McAlpin's, Harry Dunham.

When Scully attempts to perform an autopsy on McAlpin's body, she finds a dog carcass in its place at the morgue.

Tetrodotoxin, a chemical Mulder believes is part of Haitian zombification rituals, is found in McAlpin's blood.

Although he has no recollection of the event, McAlpin confesses to be the murderer under the influence of Wharton, who tells the agents that Bauvais committed suicide and that their investigation is over.

The next day, the agents say goodbye to McAlpin, who reveals that Chester was a boy who had died in a riot six weeks earlier.

[1][2] "Fresh Bones" was written by Howard Gordon after he read two magazine articles detailing a number of U.S. military personnel killing themselves while stationed in Haiti.

The hand double had tubes attached to his fingers so as he pushed up it tore it open a little bit and you see the plasma and the skin rips.

Writer Gordon stated that director Bowman did a great job in mining his script for chills.