The White Vault is a horror fiction podcast created and written by K.A. Statz, and directed, produced, edited and sound designed by Travis Vengroff. Produced by Fool and Scholar Productions, it premiered on October 3, 2017, and completed its run at the conclusion of its fifth season on March 15, 2022, with its fiftieth episode. It was made available on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify on release, and later on YouTube.
The series uses the found footage format and follows a group of individuals sent to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard to investigate a remote outpost gone radio silent after sending a distress signal. In addition to the main show, Fool and Scholar Productions released several canonical miniseries, some of which introduce elements and characters later featured or mentioned in the main show, such as 2018's Artifact, 2019's Imperial, 2020's Iluka, and 2021's Avrum; Echoes, released in 2023, is a standalone sequel set a decade after The White Vault.
The award-winning show features an international cast and crew, with notable members including David Ault and Peter Joseph Lewis of The NoSleep Podcast, Beth Eyre of Wooden Overcoats, Lani Minella, and Eric Nelsen.
Production
Statz stated in 2020: "I wanted [The White Vault] to be a horror story for people who are always agitated when they watch a movie and are like, 'That's stupid, why did you do that?' [Our characters] aren't making bad choices. It's that every choice has no good option." She also claimed to have been inspired for the first season by her time at the University of Oxford, where "Everyone had their own stories about how they got to that exact same place."
Vengroff contacted Polar Bears International in order to obtain actual polar bear audio clips for the podcasts, rather than use grizzly bear audio clips as substitute as is often done in the entertainment industry. He seemingly sought authentic Andean condor audio clips for another episode.
For the Imperial spin-off, Statz and Vengroff worked with Stephen Wadley, an associate professor of Chinese and international studies at Portland State, to accurately depict Chinese and Machu languages.
Story and characters
The series is presented in a found footage format by a character known only as The Documentarian (Hem Cleveland), a British woman who gathered audio, video, and written material of the depicted events. The Documentarian has compiled the footage in order to recreate the roughly chronological order of the events; she describes visual elements, while written material is depicted as being spoken by the character who wrote it; when a character speaks or writes in a non-English language, the voice actor performs an English version played louder over the original language.
Seasons 1-2
The first two seasons of The White Vault take place in Outpost Fristed, a remote Arctic research station in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, from which a signal starts emitting, something only meant in case of emergencies; the crew, who was in charge of surveying weather and seismic activities for the safety of the locals, has made no contact since. Several weeks later, a rescue team of five is sent by Sidja Grúp, the Scandinavian compagny owning the station, consisting of: Mexican physician Dr. Rosa De La Torre (Lani Minella), sent in case of medical help needed by the station crew or the team, English technology specialist Walter Heath (David Ault), tasked with inspecting and possibly repairing the station's transmitter, Icelandic Sidja Grúp representative Jónas Þórirsson (Eyþór Viðarsson), here to document the events for the company, German geologist Dr. Karina Schumacher-Weiß (Kessi Riliniki), hired to examine the outpost's data, and Russian-Canadian survival expert Graham Casner (Peter Joseph Lewis), tasked with the group's safety against the Arctic cold and other potential dangers. The team arrives safely, finding the station deserted but in good shape overall, being fairly easy to fix for Heath; a heavy blizzard follows and fails to subside, making it impossible to leave for the foreseeable future.