10 Scariest X-Files Episodes Of All Time

7. Our Town - Season 2, Episode 24

You'll never eat KFC again after watching Our Town, a truly scary episode that ponders the age old question of 'what if the local chicken plant was actually a front for a crazy, cannibalistic cult?'. When the residents of Dudley, Arkansas start going missing and acting all weird Mulder and Scully are drafted in to get to the root of the problem.

Small towns with a secret are usually pretty creepy (The Wicker Man, anyone?) but when you throw in a genuinely terrifying axe-wielding, masked madman the bar is raised. The scenes of said madman are undoubtedly scary, but it is the idea of the episode, moreso than any particular scene, that is frightening.

Things get a little clichéd at times and there is a sense of 'seen it before' when Scully is, yet again, captured by the bad guys, forcing Mulder to spring into action, but it's still an unsettling episode for the most part. Credit must go to the director, Rob Bowman, for making those scenes of the masked madman look scary when they could have easily come across as silly.