When you think of geographical locations associated with the hit 1990s science-fiction series The X-Files, your brain likely goes to Washington, D.C., where FBI headquarters is located. Or maybe it’s Los Angeles or Vancouver, the two primary filming locations for the series. Or Roswell, New Mexico and Area 51 in Nevada — the two epicenters of UFO lore. You most likely aren’t thinking of the upstate New York town of Saratoga Springs, yet nowadays, that’s where you’ll find the greatest concentration of X-Files fandom.
Saratoga Springs is a resort town in New York’s Capital Region, known for its mineral springs and a horse racing track. Since 2022, it’s also been the home of The X-Files Preservation Collection, the world’s only museum exclusively dedicated to preserving props and memorabilia associated with the beloved science-fiction show.
The museum began as the pet project of X-Files superfan Jim Thornton, who has been obsessed with the series since it premiered.
“I was completely captivated by it,” Thornton tells Polygon. “That show changed the course of the rest of my life. I gave up my substance abuse problem, fought through those demons, and focused my entire life, everything, just on this show.”
He began collecting X-Files-related items as soon as he could, starting with the first trading cards being sold near the end of season 1. From there it expanded into regular retail items and international merchandise, before he got into acquiring production materials like scripts. It was during the latter half of the show’s original run that he got into collecting props from The X-Files by connecting with other collectors and eventually people involved with the show itself. A little over 10 years ago, he was invited to show off some of his collection as an exhibit at a local comic convention. That grew into The X-Files Preservation Collection becoming a traveling exhibit at horror cons and the like, particularly in the Northeast.
Then, in 2022, with the encouragement of his wife, the two of them opened the brick-and-mortar location in Saratoga Springs. Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, was there for the museum’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. Since then, a number of people involved with the show have stopped by, such as writer/producer Frank Spotnitz and even William B. Davis, who played the Cigarette Smoking Man on the series. He’s also welcomed fans from as far away as Australia.
While virtual tours of the museum hosted by Thornton are available, it’s especially exciting to see the massive collection in person. To offer a preview of the experience here, Thornton shares 10 can’t-miss items from The X-Files Preservation Collection.
10
Chris Carter’s Laptop
“It all started here,” says Thornton of the 1989 Toshiba 1600 on which Carter wrote the X-Files pilot. “That’s directly from Chris Carter.”
After connecting with X-Files writer Benjamin Van Allen over a few other items, Thornton’s wife spotted an email from Carter while both were at their respective jobs. This was a few years before the museum opened.
“My wife and I are old-school. We don’t text each other at work or anything like that unless it’s an emergency,” he says, “but I got a message from her saying ‘call me’ and I’m figuring ‘Oh man, what the hell.’ I called and she was completely emotional and shocked, then she forwarded me the email from Chris Carter saying that he had a bunch of stuff and he wanted to know if we were interested. It was mind-blowing!”
9
The Mammalian Corpse
In the very first episode of The X-Files, Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) and Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) have a body exhumed that, at first, appears to be alien, though it’s later determined to be from an ape.
“Writer Benjamin Van Allen wrote to us and wanted to know if we wanted what they called ‘The Little Monster,’ which was the corpse that was in the casket from the pilot episode,” recalls Thornton. “I was like, are you freaking crazy? Yeah! Absolutely!'”
The prop, which is made of papier-mâché and foam, is one of several items in the museum from the show’s very first episode, including storyboards and the complete pilot on film.
8
The X-Files “Pilot” on Film
“We’ve got thousands and thousands of original film negatives from the original run,” says Thornton.
While not every one of them is on display at all times, Thornton says he has the negatives for every single episode of the show’s first nine years. In the gift shop, you can even buy original film reels of the trailer for The X-Files: Fight the Future.
7
Chinga
The season 5 episode of The X-Files titled “Chinga,” about a killer doll, was co-written by Stephen King and Chris Carter. According to Thornton, who has King’s first draft in his collection, King originally wrote the episode on his own, but it was full of ideas too wild even for The X-Files. In the final episode, Scully goes into a grocery store and sees the ghost of a recently murdered local butcher in a freezer door. But in King’s original draft, there were also dead cheerleaders who came out of all the coolers and began doing cartwheels, which, according to Thornton, is why Carter stepped in and did a heavy rewrite. King’s draft is on display in the museum, as are two versions of the Chinga doll — one regular version and the other from when the doll was burned.
6
Mr. Chuckle Teeth Mold
A number of items in the collection came from late makeup effects designer Bill Terezakis, who worked on the second X-Files film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe and the two revival seasons that began in 2016. “He kept a lot of stuff,” says Thornton, who acquired a number of items from Terezakis before he passed away in 2021. Especially striking is the mold of Mr. Chuckle Teeth, a demonic children’s mascot from season 11.
5
Dr. Sanjay’s Body
Also from the revival seasons via Bill Terezakis came the shockingly real-looking body of Dr. Sanjay (Chris Logan), who killed himself thanks to a mysterious sound that drives him mad in the season 10 episode “Founder’s Mutation.” Scully performed countless autopsies during the run of The X-Files and at least a couple of those prop bodies are on display in the museum. Dr. Sanjay’s is easily the most realistic to see since it’s only a decade old. Time hasn’t rotted the foam as much as it has with some of the older foam props.
4
Scully’s Shell Casings
“I used to talk to this boom operator named Marty who worked on the show during the Vancouver years,” says Thornton. “He sent me an envelope in the mail once, and it had the prop shell casings from the episode ‘Wetwired.’” The season 3 episode, which was about subliminal messages causing hallucinations, sees Scully fall under the influence of the hallucinations and she thinks she sees Mulder working with the Cigarette Smoking Man.
“She sees Mulder passing him information in the car. Then, when Mulder is entering the motel, Scully takes her gun out and starts shooting at the door,” explains Thornton. “These are the shell casings from that episode. Marty held onto them.”
3
The Fishing Lounge Painting
Referring to the season 2 episode where Mulder and Scully investigate a case at sea involving the rapid aging of US Navy soldiers, Thornton says, “In the episode ‘Død Kalm,’ Mulder and Scully go to Norway and hire a guy in this fishing lounge. There’s this giant painting that’s in the Norwegian fishing lounge, and we have that here. It’s massive.”
2
Theme Park Blueprints
Even Chris Carter himself was blown away by this item. While details on it are scant, at some point in the mid-1990s, Fox was considering building an entire theme park dedicated to The X-Files to be placed somewhere in the Middle East, most likely Dubai. Looking like a small alien city composed of ovular shapes, the park would have had areas dedicated to various early episodes from the show, and even would have contained a bee sanctuary.
Having acquired the blueprints from a fellow collector, Thornton says, “I showed it to Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, who was a writer on the show almost from the beginning. They had no clue about that. They were completely shocked.”
Thornton assumes that, at some point, Fox toyed with the idea of a park and had a floor plan drawn up, but plans were abandoned before they even reached Carter.
1
The Alien Pod
“I bought this years ago off another collector,” says Thornton of perhaps the most impressive item in the collection, at least in terms of size: an alien pod from the 1998 theatrical film The X-Files: Fight the Future.
It stands over seven feet tall with bright green lights, made from a mix of steel, cast-iron, fiberglass, foam, and resin. Thornton says the pod is “a big focal point. A lot of people take their selfie photos in front of it.”
