The White Vault is a horror fiction podcast created by K.A. Statz and Travis Vengroff. It is written by Statz, directed, produced, edited and sound designed by Travis Vengroff, and released by the two's Fool and Scholar Productions company. Ongoing since October 3, 2017, it is made available on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify on release, and later on YouTube.
The series originally 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. Although the main show concluded its original run with the conclusion of its fifth season on March 15, 2022, it was revived as The White Vault: Goshawk, with a sixth season which premiered on October 24, 2023, set in the same universe but following new characters and dropping the found footage format. The series concluded on March 10th, 2026.
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 similarly 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 Manchu languages.
Story and characters The first five seasons of The White Vault are presented in a found footage format by a character known only as The Documentarian (Hem Brewster), 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. The final episode of Season 5 and the entire Goshawk story arc features no narration or character describing visual elements, instead directly following the characters. 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 company owning the station, consisting of: Mexican physician Dr. Rosa De La Torre (Lani Minella), sent in case of medical help needed, 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), sent 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.
Exploring more of the station, the crew finds a hatch leading to a cave system containing an ancient village trapped underneath a glacier, where Schumacher-Weiß, after encountering a "tall, black and skinny" creature, jumps from a ledge to save herself; although she only suffers limited physical damage, she grows increasingly mentally unstable. More strange events follow: the generator is sabotaged, Karina reports doppelgänger sightings, five-fingered scratches appear on the exterior of the bunker, statues within the village representing human-like or animal-like creatures begin to inexplicably disappear and reappear when out of sight, and the anatomical theatre the team found in the village turns out to be made of stone boxes each containing a human heart and a full set of teeth. A paranoid Schumacher-Weiß is eventually abducted in the middle of the night, and the team finds a new box with a still beating heart, which they believe to be hers; they also hear her outside the bunker asking them to open the door, but conclude that the being who took her is using her voice. With their food supplies sabotaged by the creature, the team tries to escape through the blizzard; their attempted escape ends in disaster as Heath is also taken by the creature, while the three remaining team members find themselves inexplicably back to Outpost Fristed. Out of options, they explore the cave system in an attempt to find a way out; however, the creatures, which the team realizes are more than a single entity, chase them, and both Casner and De La Torre are taken. Þórirsson, the sole survivor, leaves a final written note in which he reveals that his body had been changing, and that he was spared by the creatures because he is turning into one of them.
Season 3 The third season is set shortly after the first two, on the Cerro Torre mountain in the Patagonian Andes, where an archaeological site of unknown origins featuring petroglyphs was recently discovered. As the site on Cerro Torre, named Base Camp Piedra, belongs to both Argentina and Chile, an international archaeological team of six is sent to study, consisting of: Argentinian archaeology professor Dr. Carito Ureta (Alli Smalley) of the National University of La Plata, her Colombian-American student and doctoral candidate Eva Olivia Moreno (Diane Casanova), Chilean archaeology professor Dr. Josefa Guerrero (Carla García) of Chile's University of Chile and United States' University of Pittsburgh, her American assistant and graduate student Simon Hall (Eric Nelsen), Chinese epigrapher Dr. Zhou LiuOriginally introduced in the miniseries The White Vault: Imperial. (Sophie Yang), included due to having previously investigated similar glyphs in the Greater Khingan, and the Brazilian field guide who led the tourist group that coincidentally discovered the site, Lucas Criado (Danilo Battistini), now acting as helicopter pilot for the team's ascension and eventual descent of Cerro Torre.
The archaeological team starts their work studying the petroglyphs on the mountain's cliff face, until Moreno discovers a cave containing statues, an anatomical theatre with a floor made of stone boxes, and evidence of early human occupation. While the group's excitement grows, this also marks the start of inexplicable events, such as the statues being moved while no one is present, doppelgänger sightings, and both Ureta and Criado losing their grips on sanity; the latter acts increasingly suspicious, refusing to take the team down the mountain, leading the others to conclude that he knew what they would find at the site. Dense fog, and later heavy snowfalls plague the mountain, and both Ureta and the team's satellite phone go missing. An insane Criado severely injures Hall's ankle, Liu concludes that everything at the site is inexplicably similar to that of the Greater Khingan's, and Hall is attacked by a monster using Ureta's voice, barely surviving the encounter. A rockfall traps Guerrero, Hall and Liu within the cave, so Moreno is forced to descend the mountain by herself, miraculously achieving the descent despite noticing the presence of the monsters around her.
The season finale switches perspective to focus on Casner, who is revealed to have survived the events of Outpost Fristed. The Documentarian, who has placed both he and Moreno under her care, wishes to send a team led by Casner to Base Camp Piedra, in the hopes of rescuing the archaeological team and acquire more information on the site and the similarities between the events they encountered and those of Outpost Fristed and the Greater Khingan. A reluctant Casner accepts the offer after discovering that a dead body found by the archaeological team was De La Torre's. The rescue team assembles, consisting of Casner, his old Serbian friend and fellow survival expert Dragana Vuković (Tanja Milojevic),Milojevic first appeared as an unrelated character, Marion Sutton, in The White Vault: Artifact. The Documentarian's trusted Lebanese associate Maheer Issa (Haytham Alwan), and a returning Moreno, injured but determined to help; upon arriving in Patagonia, they are joined by Hall's American boyfriend Raimy Armstead (L. Jeffrey Moore), looking for Hall after losing contact with him, and start climbing up Cerro Torre.
Season 4 The rescue team arrives at Base Camp Piedra, where they receive a radio call for help from a seemingly alive Liu. A controlled explosion by Vuković creates an opening into the cave, and they find Hall, alive but with his ankle injury significantly worsened, who explains that both Guerrero and Liu ended up stuck together with one of the creatures in a deeper part of the cave. The cave is also a dead end, with a stone door that can only be opened from the outside, leaving Hall safe but stuck in the shallower part of the cave, too weakened to free the others. Casner, Vuković and Issa open the door and go through, finding both Liu and Guerrero; however, when the latter informs them that Liu was taken by the creature stuck with them, the "Liu" met by the rescue team, revealed to be a monster having taken her form, abducts and kills Issa.
Casner, Guerrero, Hall, Moreno, Vuković and Armstead conclude that they are the only survivors among both the archaeological team and the rescue team, and make plans to climb down the mountain, a hazardous solution due to both the unusual weather making the ascension easy but the descend arduous, as if on purpose, and Hall's worsening injury. Casner finds De La Torre's body, which crumbles to dust when he makes physical contact, leaving nothing but teeth, which Casner collects, and a dust-like substance. Moreno, who realizes that she is turning into one of the creatures (likely the reason why she was not attacked during her earlier descent of the mountain), detonates explosives while the others undergo their escape, killing herself, destroying the site and buying them time. The five survivors make it to the bottom of Cerro Torre and reach a hospital, where Hall's leg his amputated due to his injury in order to save his life.