There's No Disgrace Like "Home": THE X-FILES Episode Too Horrifying for Television

 Can your heart stand the ghastly truth of Home?

Can you believe that The X-Files never had an official Halloween episode? That is to say, there was never an episode that explicitly took place during the spooky season. In 218 episodes filled with monsters, aliens, and zombies, there is not a single jack-o'-lantern to be seen. They even produced a holiday episode about ghosts haunting an old dark house  at Christmas! Now, it is certainly unusual for a show of this nature to completely omit Halloween but there is still an episode that can be described as a "Halloween special" of sorts.

 Originally aired in October of 1996 this particular episode ditches sci-fi suspense in favor of Tobe Hooper esque mayhem. Shocking. Gruesome! Horrifying. It scared viewers so badly it was banned and never aired on Fox again. Well, save for a special broadcast on Halloween 1999. An ad for the airing had the following warning Only on Halloween would we dare an episode so controversial its been banned from television for three years. Some have called it sick others have called it brilliant. No other episode of The X Files was so grisly as to warrant a TV-MA rating. Can your heart stand the ghastly truth of. Home?

The X Files can accurately be described as a sci-fi horror series so it takes a special kind of morbidity to elicit the reaction  Home got. Glen Morgan and James Wong the acclaimed writing team who worked on the first two seasons had just returned to The X-Files after the cancellation of their show  Space Above and Beyond. Outside of the title being a metaphor for their return, the pair had nOT meant for  Home to be anything other than a classic monster of the week episode. 

We were trying to make a terrifying show James Wong said in an interview with The New Yorker. We did nOt think we were pushing the envelope of taste in the way people seem to ascribe to us.  Morgan and Wong had previously written episodes about a mutant liver-eater, a demonic substitute teacher and digital appliances ordering people to kill. They were no strangers to horror yet  Home was disturbing even by their twisted standards.