The time the X-Files caught a real alien on film

A blinding light fills what looks like a typical 70s suburban living room.

The door is flung open. A little girl screams – ‘Fox.’

She is grabbed, raised into the air by an unseen force and pulled out into the night, screaming as her older brother – Fox Mulder – cowers in the corner, paralysed by fear.

What appears to be a typical scene from nineties TV sensation The X-Files.

However, this scene is far from typical, because as the door is flung open, for no more than a second, a small grey figure is visible, backlit by the blinding light.

That small grey figure is thought to be a genuine extra-terrestrial.

“Didn’t notice at the time,” said cameraman David Anderson.

“If I had, I’d have whomped it with a broom or something.

“Caught me an alien.”

However, once in the editing suite, it became obvious.

“Sure. All us knew what it was the moment we saw it.

“Worked on X-Files for, what, two? Maybe three years by then.

“Three years on that show, you know what an alien looks like, and that was an alien.”

Mr Anderson believes that the alien’s intent was not of harm.

“Was he going to be doing that butt-probing you hear about? No, don’t think that’s what he was there for.”

“Figure he was just passing by and thought he might try and get on TV.

“Round that time X-Files was biggest thing on TV, I guess if he’d dropped by twenty years later you’d have got an alien in Downton Abbey.”

In 2008, X-Files producers implemented a bold plan to attempt to re-establish contact with the alien.

“Made a bad film,” explained Mr Anderson.

“Alien didn’t come visit with us. Always thought that if we made it a good film, he might have done. Never know.”

As far as anyone knows, this is the only time an alien has ever been captured on film in a major network TV show.

There was the famous instance when the producers of Lost thought they’d done so, but their ‘alien’ turned out to be a small dog instead.

Will another alien ever be caught on film?

No one knows. But the truth, as they say, is out in space.