X-File

On the television series The X-Files, an "X-File" is a fictional case that has been deemed unsolvable or given minimal-priority status by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; these files transferred to the X-Files unit. The files constitute an unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream that is more or less concerned with unexplained phenomena, fringe pseudo-scientific theories, and non-credible evidence of paranormal activity.

According to the series mythology the very first X-File was initiated in 1946 by J. Edgar Hoover. It contained information about a series of murders that occurred in Northwest America during World War II, seven of which took place in Browning, Montana. Each of the victims were basically ripped to shreds and consumed, as if by a wild animal. However, many of the victims were found in their homes, as if they had allowed the killer to enter. In 1946, police cornered what they believed to be such an animal in a cabin in Glacier National Park. They shot it, but when they entered the cabin to retrieve the carcass, they found only the body of Richard Watkins. The murders stopped that year. Believing that the case was too bizarre to be solved adequately, Hoover labeled it unsolved and locked it away in the hope that it would eventually be forgotten. However, the murders resumed in 1954 and continued to occur every few years.

In 1952, an X-File regarding something that killed cattle and terrorized the human inhabitants of Point Pleasant, West Virginia was added to the cases. After witnesses described the culprits as primitive-looking men with red piercing eyes, they became known as the moth men. The case detailing this phenomenon was consequently filed under "M", within the X-Files.

In the same year, Dorothy Bahnsen, a clerk working at the FBI Headquarters, was responsible for the files. She had originally filed the cases under U for "unsolved", but had moved them to a more spacious X cabinet when she ran out of room. There, they began to be unofficially known as "X-files". The director's office still decided which cases were filed under X, but also discouraged people from looking at the ones that had been labeled unsolved. Special agent Arthur Dales was one of the first agents to try to tackle the cases. He had some success, but the FBI and their superiors wanted several cases to remain unsolved and Agent Dales eventually retired in obscurity.

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