“I Want to Believe.” Printed in bold white type beneath a grainy flying saucer, the phrase has become more than a tagline — it’s a mantra for fans of The X-Files and seekers of the supernatural. 

In the pilot episode of the beloved series, Dana Scully sees the poster on the wall of Fox Mulder’s office before she even sees his face. As the show’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1990s, the poster became a must-have accessory for fans (aka X-Philes). Now that Sinners director Ryan Coogler is rebooting the franchise, perhaps it will adorn the walls of a whole new generation of fans. 

Chris Carter, the mastermind behind the series, drew inspiration from the artist Ed Ruscha, who is known for placing textual overlays over images. While figuring out Mulder’s office decor, Carter decided to channel Ruscha’s oeuvre.

“The original graphic came from me saying, ‘Let's get a picture of a spaceship and put — Ed Ruscha-like — "I want to believe," Carter told Smithsonian Magazine in 2008. “I love Ed Ruscha. I love the way he puts text in his paintings. I actually got to say to him, ‘I was inspired by you.’"

After deciding on a Ruscha-esque style, the next step was searching for the right UFO photograph, which is no easy feat. People have been capturing images of so-called flying saucers — by far the most memorable form of suspected alien spacecraft — since the 1940s. Some sightings have been proven to be hoaxes or terrestrial in origin, but many remain unexplained. 

These images of UFOs (or, in modern terms, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP) have evolved into a rich iconography for the massive worldwide community of ufologists who “want to believe.” 

For their poster, Carter and his team settled on a photograph taken by Swiss ufologist Billy Meier in Europe during the 1970s. Meier, who claims to be an alien abductee as well as a major prophet, is the subject of the forthcoming documentary I Want to Believe and remains one the most controversial figures in ufology — and that is really saying something. 

Meier founded the UFO organization FIGU (Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien) and claims to have been in telepathic and physical contact with extraterrestrials from the Pleiades—whom he calls the Plejaren—since childhood, and asserts that he is the reincarnation of Jesus, Elijah, and Mohammad, among others. In the 1970s, he released hundreds of photographs, film footage, sound recordings, and metallic samples that he claimed are evidence of his experiences with UFO “beamships,” though these have been widely disputed by investigators.

Skeptics, including his ex-wife, have alleged that many of the photographs were staged using models made from household objects like trash can lids and carpet tacks, and that some supposed “alien” figures were actually sourced from television shows. Despite extensive criticism and claims of fabrication, Meier’s case remains one of the most well-known and controversial in modern UFO lore.

Despite Meier's history, Carter loved his saucer photograph and adapted it to the poster, which hung on Mulder’s wall for the first three seasons of the show. However, the image was never properly cleared, according to Carter, which led to an intellectual property lawsuit. As a consequence, the poster was “recast” for the following seasons, according to The New Republic. The new image showed a slightly altered UFO that was much closer to the treeline than the original.

The series’ lore cleverly accommodated these tweaks to the poster, according to The X-Files Fandom page. In the season five episode “Chinga,” Mulder says he acquired the original poster at a head shop (aka cannabis paraphernalia store) on M Street in Washington, DC. That version was lost when the Cigarette Smoking Man set Mulder’s office on fire in the season five finale “The End.”  

In the sixth season episode “Alpha,” the character Karin Berquist gives Mulder the second version of the poster, which was displayed on her wall. That was replaced later with a nearly identical third version with a UFO that looked a bit more like the original poster, but that didn’t infringe on copyright. Mulder tears this third iteration apart with his foot when he comes across it on his abandoned FBI office floor in the tenth season episode “My Struggle.” 

A fourth version appears on Mulder’s home office wall, and as his desktop background, in the 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe. The tenth season episode “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” which aired in 2016, opens with Mulder throwing pencils at a new poster as if it’s a dartboard. Scully walks in and asks him, in her classic flat tone, “What are you doing to my poster?” The reveal that this new poster actually belongs to Scully hints at her character’s shift toward Mulder’s perspective, though she still retains most of her skeptical bonafides.

The poster is such an integral part of the show that it will even be included in the upcoming X-Files LEGO set. It will be interesting to see whether Coogler will have a new spin on the well-worn wall art, but regardless, the poster, and its message, have resonated far beyond the pop culture realm. The city of Roswell, New Mexico — known around the world as the capital of ufology — has even adapted it into a municipal motto: “We Believe.”

The phrase initially serves as an expression of the intellectual dichotomy between Mulder and Scully, and expressed by the legendary chemistry between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. When they meet, Mulder is animated by a desire to believe in UFOs as a proxy for finding his sister. Scully, while sympathetic, abhors the idea of bringing personal priors (including her Catholic faith) into the scientific process at the risk of muddying results. 

The spark at the heart of the series is how these two rub off on each other and how they often arrive at the same place despite taking different paths. Take the memorable scene in “The Truth,” which aired in 2002 and was, at the time, the series finale, in which Scully and Mulder share an intimate moment in a motel room in Roswell.

“You've always said that you want to believe. But believe in what, Mulder?” Scully asks.

“I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us,” Mulder says. “That they speak to us as part of something greater than us greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen, to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.”

“Then we believe the same thing,” she replies.

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Becky Ferreira is a science reporter based in upstate New York. Her book First Contact, about the search for alien life, is available to preorder and will be released from Workman Publishing on September 30, 2025.