Paranormal events have been seen from the dawn of time. Since the dawn of time, young and old have reported seeing UFOs, ghosts, and specters all across the world. We witness astral entities in ancient artworks, accounts of the dead coming back to life, and even family legends of paranormal marvels. But there are times when all we want to do is relax, sit in front of the TV, and watch some fake terrifying entertainment, and The X Files has provided just that for millions of people around the world since 1993.
The X-Files is an American science fiction drama television series created by Chris Carter. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents who investigate the X-Files, which are unsolved cases involving paranormal occurrences.
Home: A Horrifying Tale Like No Other
The episode starts when a woman, subsequently revealed to be Mrs. Peacock, births a severely malformed kid, which three of her sons bury during a wild storm in a nearby field. The next day, three local youngsters notice the infant’s hand coming out from the earth.
FOX prohibited the rerun of this episode owing to its horrific nature (the reference to incestuous relationships and the brutal murders). Subsequently, it has been shown in syndication and is available on the season 4 DVD collection. It was also the first episode in the program to be labeled as “Viewer Discretion Advised.”
When the two detectives arrive and begin investigating, Mulder tells Scully that he’d want to settle in a place like this if it weren’t for his profession. Mulder asks the Sheriff named Andy Taylor if the house closest to the site, the Peacock residence, has been interrogated about the infant. Taylor informs them that it is a civil war-era house and still lacks power, heating, and running water. After they were killed in a car crash a decade ago, no one has seen the parents, so there are most likely only three brothers. Taylor also implies that the members of the family are incestuous, as the Peacocks observe from their foyer.
Scully examines the body and notes that the infant seems to have a large number of congenital disabilities. After a brief inspection in the restroom of the police station, they learn that the infant was buried alive. Scully and Mulder chat outdoors after the autopsy. Scully appears to be upset by the desertion of this infant and its abnormalities. When she wonders about Mulder’s family, he states that the Mulders pass the “genetic muster.” Furthermore, Mulder believes this is an instance of the siblings getting rid of an undesired baby. Scully feels the infant was not the consequence of a chance union and is inbred. Because the Peacock family is an all-male home, Mulder and Scully believe this is an impossible task.
Later, the pair goes to the residence of the Peacock family and knocks firmly on the door, believing the biological mother may be abducted. Mulder is ready to enter the house, but Scully worries they don’t have a good reason. They continue inside, weapons armed, after taking a peek inside. They find bloody shoe prints that match those observed at the crime site and a dirt-covered spade. They flee after collecting evidence, unaware that they are being watched. The Peacock home was initially featured in Season 2’s “Aubrey.” Even before the episode, it had been regarded as an ideal setting.
Later in the evening, Sheriff Taylor phones Scully to tell her that he issued arrest warrants for the Peacock siblings.
Later we see the Peacocks depart in their vehicle, and the Sheriff appears worried back at his house. His missus placates him before they retire to bed, accidentally leaving their main door open. The arrival of the Peacocks terrifies the already frightened Sheriff, who instructs his lady to hide. He equips himself using a baseball bat and launches an attack but is swamped by the Peacocks, who are equipped with handmade clubs and brush off his onslaught. Before fleeing, they violently bash the Sheriff and his spouse to death and leave while blasting Johnny Mathis’ “Wonderful, Wonderful.”
Scully and Mulder arrive at the residence of the Sheriff the following day to discover Deputy Paster smoking in distress. He delivers the lab results to them and informs them that the vehicle driven by the Peacocks belongs to a lady from Baltimore before it was abandoned. Mulder observes the bodies and remarks that the Peacocks really beat the two up like troglodytes. The findings confirm many of Scully’s suspicions, but to a degree, she never imagined conceivable. They also indicate that both the parents of the infant were Peacock family members, which Scully fails to comprehend since no female in the Peacock family has been sighted in years. A sequence in which Mulder and Scully jostle one other suggestively in Sheriff Taylor’s storage closet was removed in this episode.
Eager for retribution, Paster promises Mulder and Scully that he will offer backup to rescue the alleged missing lady, whom they suspect might have birthed the infant. The FBI investigators are baffled as to why the Sheriff is murdered, given that nobody could have learned about the arrest warrants and believe someone was in the residence when they were investigating.
They plan to attack the Peacock home. When Deputy Paster arrives, he slips a bullet-proof jacket on and claims to have seen the Peacocks shoot muskets previously. A mysterious set of eyes tells the brothers to preserve the Peacock’s way of living. Paster bursts through the door, only to be beheaded by a hidden weapon.
The siblings attack the slain man’s body and rip it apart. Mulder takes a step back and recounts a program he saw the night before about wildlife and their hunting style. He informs Scully that they are the witnesses of unadulterated animal impulses. He suggests luring the boys out of the property by freeing their cattle. Mulder and Scully meet the mother of the Peacocks after going into the residence and evading a trap.
She’s in bad condition, with dental problems and severed limbs, and she lives underneath a bed on top of a sleigh. Scully attempts to console her as she cries in horror. The two women talk about the freak mishap that led to the death of the Peacock lady’s spouse and caused her to be handicapped. Even after Scully explains that her sons had killed people, the Peacock mother has no ill will against them. She also informs the female detective that she is aware that Scully doesn’t have any children since she would empathize if she did.
Realizing they’ve been duped, the Peacock brothers storm into the residence and assault Mulder and Scully. Mulder and Scully shoot at George until he dies, then Sherman follows Scully, and he triggers a booby trap and is stabbed by a huge spike. Edmund, the oldest son, flees with his mother during the altercation. When they learn this, Scully notifies the Sheriff’s office and requests that barricades be placed on the road. While Scully suspects they will be apprehended, Mulder argues they are trapped – in a fight with themselves.
Mrs. Peacock and Edmund are now in the back of their vehicle on a deserted road, possibly conceiving again. Mrs. Peacock states in a voice-over that George and Sherman were nice boys and that she and Edmund will have more Peacock family members. She informs Edmund that the two must leave Pennsylvania with the aim of discovering a location to call “home.” Her son then jumps out of the car, apparently after having just impregnated his biological mother to keep the family alive, and drives away. At the same time, “Wonderful, Wonderful” plays eerily on the radio. A version of Johnny Mathis’s song “Wonderful Wonderful” is significantly featured in this episode.
The Peacock Family
Mrs. Peacock was a Peacock family member from Home, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Edmund, Sherman, and George Peacock were her children. Mrs. Peacock and her spouse were involved in a horrible vehicle collision in 1986, which led to his death and the mutilation of her limbs and legs. Her sons carried her home and healed her injuries, but she was kept on a sled beneath a bed and fed regurgitated food. Mrs. Peacock subsequently submitted herself to incestuous sexual relations with her sons. This was an attempt to keep the family thriving by having additional offspring.
Mrs. Peacock’s intercourse with her boys has been discovered thanks to a DNA test from an infant her sons buried alive, whose molecular fingerprint is believed to have “tripled into cell metaphase.”
Mrs. Peacock gives birth to a young infant in Home, Pennsylvania, who was sired by her three children. Edmund, George, and Sherman, on the other hand, buried the infant alive on a baseball field at night in the pouring rain.
Why should you watch The X- Files: Home?
This episode was and continues to be one of the most terrifying from shows on TV or in cinema. When you see Mrs. Peacock’s eyes looking out at you from beneath the floorboard, you wonder to yourself, ‘how much worse can it get?’ and eventually discover that it was just the beginning of the nightmare to come.
Nonetheless, writers Glen Morgan and James Wong managed to infuse some levity into the plot, with Scully remarking on Mulder’s choice to retire to a community like Mayberry, only to have Sheriff Andy Taylor arrive with a suitably named deputy, Barney Paster. Perhaps the writers were attempting to retain some semblance of normalcy in this bizarre novel about a family of halfwit farmers suffering from severe, numerous birth abnormalities and passing on their genes through the disabled mother’s compliant reproductive behavior.
To add to the strange character of the plot, the film creators picked the Johnny Mathis song, ‘Wonderful, Wonderful,’ as part of the episode’s score. Not unexpectedly, Mathis objected to having the original version of the song used in the plot due to the unsavory subject material. Hence, the producers had to find someone else to make the cover.
The episode still receives critical acclaim today for the way it was written and produced, despite the fact that it carried a viewer discretion warning when it first aired, making it the first X-File to do so. Personally, we feel it included some tour de force writing that will make it unforgettable for many years after its debut.