True Storie That Inspired ‘The X-Files’

[Dalia]

Some of Scully and Mulder’s weirdest cases were directly inspired by real-life oddities and creepy tales.

‘The Erlenmeyer Flask’
Gloria Ramirez

The Episode: In the first season’s finale, a man’s body emits a poisonous gas after paramedics perform a needle decompression. The paramedics in the ambulance die, and the man escapes. Of course, the guy in the ambulance is later revealed to have alien DNA, but in a way, the real story behind that toxic blood is even more bizarre.



The True Story: In 1994, a woman named Gloria Ramirez with cervical cancer was admitted to Riverside General Hospital. When a nurse tried to draw blood, she noticed strange particles floating in the blood and realized that it smelled like ammonia. Six paramedics collapsed from the fumes, and more than 20 showed symptoms.

The combination of oxygen and the defibrillator may have caused dimethyl sulfoxide in Ramirez’s body to form gaseous dimethyl sulfate, which seeped out of her body and poisoned the hospital staff. However, that’s just a theory, and the case of Gloria Ramirez lives on as one of the medical world’s eeriest unsolved mysteries.

http://discovermagazine.com/1995/apr/analysisofatoxic493

 

[OldLady]

I loved the X-files the first few seasons. Then it got kinda goofy. Some interesting stuff, though. Thanks, Dalia!

 

[Carl in Michigan]

I loved the X-files the first few seasons. Then it got kinda goofy. Some interesting stuff, though. Thanks, Dalia!

The first time I watched the early episodes, I though it was real. A documentary, at least. They should have kept it like that, but then, like you said, it got kind of goofy.