when Mulder arrives and shoots the figure; he is revealed to be Sheriff Arens. Harold tries to shoot Mulder, but is trampled to death by the fleeing townsfolk. In narration, Scully explains that Chaco's plant has been closed down by the Department of Agriculture, and that twenty-seven Dudley residents have died from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. She reveals that Chaco was ninety-three years old at the time of his death, and had spent time with the allegedly cannibalistic "Jale tribe" after his transport plane was shot down over New Guinea during World War II. She also states that his remains have never been found; the final scene suggests that Chaco's remains are being fed to chickens at his plant. Production "Our Town" was written by future executive producer Frank Spotnitz and directed by Rob Bowman. The episode was Spotnitz's first stand-alone episode for the show, and because of that he decided to write about "the most despicable and vile things he could imagine", which in this case was cannibalism occurring at a chicken processing plant. Spotnitz was also inspired by the thriller Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) (about a town that holds a terrible secret) and an article he read while a student at University of California, Los Angeles about salamander cannibalism and how such behavior makes the animals sick. When the episode was being scripted, these ideas were later supplemented with medical research about kuru, a very rare, incurable neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. While researching the Ancestral Puebloans for the second-season finale, Spotnitz learned that archaeologists had discovered boiled human bones in Chaco Canyon, New Mexicoan element featured in the final version of the episode. Spotnitz also used "Chaco" as the name of the chicken plant in this episode. Spotnitz had trouble finding books about cannibalism, but he did glean enough information to name the characters in the episode after real, notable cannibals. Gary Grubbs, the actor who played the sheriff, was later cast as the fire captain in the 1998 X-Files film. Howard Gordon came up with the idea to start the episode with a love affair between George Kearns and Paula Gray. Of the end result, Spotnitz said "I was very pleased with the way it was executed, and I think it was a good mystery." He later wrote that he "liked [it] more as time has gone