It’s official – TV’s favourite paranormal investigations team will soon be back together again. Here are the modern mysteries we’d like to see them solve …

It’s just been “a 13-year commercial break”, says X-Files creator Chris Carter, as David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson get the go-ahead to return for six new episodes in the roles that made them famous. “The good news,” he suggests, “is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these stories.” He’s right: we can think of endless mysteries from the intervening years that would be perfect for the will‑they-won’t-they-oh-they-sorta-did duo to solve.

Colony collapse disorder

Since 2004, bees have been dying all over Europe and North America, leaving their hives like Mary Celeste empty shells, and science is still mystified. Back at the Bureau, Scully wades through data on the varroa mite, and examines detailed EU legislation on the banning of nicotinoid poisons. Mulder’s tingling sixth sense leads him towards a more unusual answer: sentient and malevolent honey.



Kazakhstani sleeping sickness

Since spring 2013, the entire village of Kalachi has been plagued by sudden bouts of sleepiness. One man even blacked out while riding his motorbike. After a hard-bitten Kazakh military official declares, “You are not welcome here”, Scully takes her Geiger counter to an abandoned uranium mine next to the town. Mulder, however, realises that an ageless spirit living in the forests is using the power of their dreams as fuel.



Sinkholes

In 2014, a parked car was swallowed by the ground in High Wycombe. In 2013, a man disappeared along with his entire house in Seffner, Florida. A whole factory plunged into a 30m hole in Guatemala City, 2010. In each case, sinkholes were blamed. Mulder is convinced they are portals ripping through the fabric of space-time; Scully digs up invoices from an international fracking company.



The Scottish dog-suicide bridge

In 2005, five dogs jumped to their deaths off the Overtoun Bridge in just six months. After which, the SSPCA enlisted a canine psychologist to help solve the mystery. No luck yet. Mulder writes a lengthy post that is immediately upvoted to the front page of reddit, arguing that the dogs are seeing an ancient Scottish folkloric figure second only to Loch Ness Monster: the Walkies Ghost. Scully points to a bacon factory beyond the bridge.



The time-travelling hipster

In 1940, a photo was taken of the reopening of the South Fork Bridge in Canada. In 2010, someone noticed that this photo appeared to show a man wearing very modern dress: a T-shirt, sunglasses and a haircut that marked him out as the quintessential 2010 alt-bro. Mulder receives the photo anonymously in the post, and instinctively heads to Brooklyn to find the wormhole to municipal bridge openings prophesied in Navajo legend, all the while remonstrating via FaceTime with Scully, who points out that similar sunglasses also appeared in the 1944 film Double Indemnity, and his camera resembles the contemporaneous Kodak Folding Pocket Model.



Creepy staring clowns of Wasco

In October of 2014, the world briefly went gaga for “creepy clowns”: men in clown suits appeared holding balloons and staring intently started in the Southern Californian town of Wasco. As Mulder weeps in Scully’s arms about his childhood coulrophobia, caused by an unfortunate incident in a McDonald’s playpen, she realises that there’s no hope for him, and goes rogue on a mystery of her own: the fact that a man who made Lesbian Vampire Killers and one of the most critically panned sketch shows of modern times has just become host of America’s Late Late Show. James Corden – the truth is etc etc etc …



• This article was amended on 26 March 2015 to correct the spelling of Mary Celeste, from Marie Celeste as an earlier version said.

