The X-Files
Season 2, Episode 21 - ""The Căluşari"
The episode begins by investigating the murder of a toddler, Teddy, the youngest son of the Holvey family. As they are weighing the facts of the case, FBI special agents Mulder and Dana Scully arrive at the conclusion that supernatural forces, more exactly a poltergeist, might be at play in the series of unfortunate incidents that plague the Holvey family. While visiting the Holvey household, they meet Golda, the children’s grandmother of Romanian descent who is very ambivalent in her attitude towards the family’s only surviving child, Charlie. She is at the same time protective and scared of him, as she tells the mother that she has an evil child. As the episode progresses, the children’s father suffers an unusual accident and dies as well. While Maggie mourns the death of her loved ones, Charlie’s grandmother “steals” the boy as part of a sacrificial ritual meant to purify his blood, which she performs with the help of three elder men called “Calusari”. The only one that ends up that as a result of the ritual is the grandmother. It is revealed eventually that the murdering poltergeist is Charlie’s “evil twin”. The “Calusari” are eventually allowed to perform the purifying ritual on the young boy, which severs the bound between him and his evil twin and puts an end to the series of tragic incidents. Romania is depicted in this X-Files episode as a realm of superstition, governed by what are called “the old ways”. Maggie recounts that the she had to abandoned these beliefs once she left the country, yet she finds herself appealing to them once again when she is under attack from the poltergeist. The ritualistic chants in Romanian have, thus, the power to keep evil at bay. The “Calusari” are presented as Romanian ritualists, who could also be seen as priests if it wouldn’t be for the animal sacrifices and the violent nature of their rituals. They are said to be concerned with the “correct observance of sacred rites”, thus guarding against evil forces.
