When agents Mulder and Scully are called to investigate a child’s mysterious death, the case raises disturbing memories for Scully. Her flashbacks provide us not only with some rich background about our heroine, but also with some truly visceral scares made all the more potent for being viewed through the eyes of a child. In a nice bit of role reversal, Scully chases her phantoms while Mulder pores over town history searching for a pattern of strange occurrences at the eponymous address.
Lawson’s handling of her characters is deft and true. Scully’s self-analysis of her nightmares is as pragmatic as ever, but we catch a glimpse of a time when she did, in fact, believe in ghosts. Mulder is concerned over his partner’s upset, but not cloyingly so. He’s almost a peripheral character, and the only time we miss him is when it comes time to theorize about the haunting and the underlying evil that seems to have spawned.
All that keeps this episode from scoring a perfect 10 is that it leaves too much unexplained and undiscussed, even for an X-File. I’d like to hear what Spooky Mulder has to say about the dead child and the forces behind her demise, for this is no average ghost story. But wait -- first let me turn on a light.