“Science-fiction has been a vital narrative strand in nearly every aspect of American popular culture,” said Jim Gardner, the museum’s associate director. “The X-Files series is a particularly important example of that tradition, with its quirky blend of the everyday and the paranormal.”

The Most-Likely-To-Haunt-Your-Dreams Object Award goes to the little alien maquette that was used to design the color and texture of the aliens in the first X-Files movie, Fight the Future. Other items include photographs and a poster from the I Want to Believe movie, autographed by Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

“(The show) is representative of two very exploitable American qualities – fear and paranoia,” Carter joked. “I’m kidding, of course. Even though it was a dark show, even though it was a scary show, it was a show that represented a true American quality, which is the quality of hope.”

The National Museum of American History “has led the way in exploring and documenting America’s pop culture,” Gardner says, so it makes perfect sense to me that the X-Files paraphernalia belongs there. I mean, who was alive in the '90s that didn’t have an intense debate over whether or not Mulder and Scully should resolve their sexual tension? Keep on musing when the second X-Files film, I Want To Believe, opens in theaters on July 25, and the National Museum of American History re-opens this fall.