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A visit to Wales by legendary comic Charlie Chaplin where he encountered a ‘human frog’ inspired one of the most controversial episodes of American TV drama The X-Files, it has emerged.

Chaplin details in My Autobiography about a three-night visit to Ebbw Vale where he stayed in a miner’s house while touring with a play.

Originally published in September 1964, Chaplin writes about how on the second night, while eating supper in the house, the homeowner revealed something behind a dresser in the kitchen.

(Image: Getty Images)

The ‘something’ makes for disturbing reading.

Chaplin, born in London in 1889, describes what he saw in his autobiography.

He wrote: “A half a man with no legs, an over sized, blond, flat-shaped head, a sickening white face, a sunken nose, a large mouth and powerful muscular shoulders and arms, crawled from underneath the dresser.

“He wore flannel underwear with the legs of the garment cut off to the thighs, from which ten thick, stubby toes stuck out.

'I was horrified'

“The grisly creature could have been twenty or forty. He looked up and grinned, showing a set of yellow, widely spaced teeth.”

According to Chaplin, the landlord then ordered the man, named Gilbert, to jump and asked if he would be suitable for a circus.

Chaplin wrote: “I was so horrified I could hardly answer.”

The incident, it has emerged, provided inspiration for one episode of the popular science fiction horror drama The X-Files many decades later.

(Image: Publicity Picture)

According to writer Glen Morgan the strange tale told by Chaplin came to him while he was co-writing an episode, after reading about it years earlier.

In 1996, an episode features two detectives who investigate a family of three disabled brothers following the murder of a baby in Pennsylvania.

Complaints branded X-Files 'tasteless'

The paranormal detectives later discover the brother’s and baby’s quadruple amputee mother, a character based on Chaplin’s encounter.

The episode was marred in controversy due to its disturbing content, and TV network Fox promised never to repeat it after complaints branded it “tasteless.”

(Image: Mirrorpix)

Chaplin was not fond of Ebbw Vale, and wrote how he was thankful his three-night stay in the mining town was not longer.

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In the autobiography, originally published by Simon & Schuster, Chaplin wrote: “Ebbw Vale was a dank, ugly town in those days, with row upon row of hideous, uniform houses, each house consisting of four small rooms lit by oil-lamps.”

The silver screen star died on Christmas Day in Switzerland in 1977.