"The White Vault" Season 7 Premieres & "That Scares Me Too" Debuts

 These two creepy podcasts are billed as Fool & Scholar’s Spook-tacular Podcasts. Normally, I scoff at such hyperbole, but after listening to a previous season of The White Vault and the trailer for That Scares Me Too! I’m sufficiently scared to hide under my weighted blanket until I get the signal that it’s safe to come out.

At the end of the recent trailer of The White Vault, host K.A. Statz tells her listeners, “The White Vault: Goshawk approaches as the cold winds blow in, and we hope you see us soon.” Then after a pause that sent a chill down my old, arthritic spine, Statz whispers, “Don’t worry. We see you, too.”

"Mommy."

I recently wrote and reviewed two iHeart “scary” podcasts, Rattled & Shook and Radio Rental. Those shows represent the genre reasonably well and are enjoyable, if not predictable. But they demonstrate the disparity in artistry, creative design, imagination, and world building between independent shows like The White Vault, Dark Dice, and Don’t Mind (all from Fool & Scholar) and iHeart, Spotify or Wondery shows in the same genre.

The White Vault begins its seventh season on October 15th. Since there are more podcasts in existence than even conspiracy theories, I had never heard of the show until it was recommended by Shreya Sharma, who, I consider, my audio sommelier. 

Here’s the show’s marketing pitch: “Explore the far reaches of the world’s horrors. Follow the collected records of a repair team sent to a remote arctic outpost and unravel what lies waiting in the ice below.”

Just to make it creepier, the show’s website has large text in all caps that reads, “TRAVEL NOT ADVISED.”

I listened to the last season and was hooked. The show is exquisitely produced. The lushness of the sound, the skillfully executed narrative, and the intensity of the actors places listeners in Iceland. I listened to the show in 80-degree weather while walking and perspiring and still, the howling wind and shivering sounds from the actors made me cold. 

I can tell you that you can jump in anytime on this show. My plan is to revisit the first five seasons, but only when people are around and it’s daylight.

The White Vault is produced by Fool & Scholar Productions, which was founded as a hobby production duo by K. A. Statz and Travis Vengroff in 2015. 

By 2019, Fool & Scholar Productions was a registered company with multiple podcast productions, awards, and a substantial following. Starting in the realm of science fiction, they have gone on to create shows in the horror, drama, TTRPG, and family-oriented spaces.

Kaitlin Statz began writing audio drama scripts in 2015 while completing her Master’s program at the University of Oxford. Within the year, her first stories hit headphones as Liberty: Critical Research and Liberty: Tales from the Tower. 

By 2017, with several audio seasons completed, she launched The White Vault under the same Fool & Scholar Productions banner. Now, with even more shows, she works full-time creating audio stories. She lives in Bavaria with her husband and their rescue dog, Eezo.

Travis Vengroff is the award-winning sound designer, editor, and producer of The White Vault podcast and the other half of Fool & Scholar Productions. His search for authentic sound has taken him to the forests of Central America, the black beaches of Iceland, the streets of Oxford, and through misty trails in the Pacific Northwest. 

Vengroff is also an educator, consultant, and an active member in numerous podcast communities and organizations, including the Audio Drama Hub and IADAS. He works full-time creating podcasts and lives in Bavaria with his wife and their rescue dog, Eezo.

On October 8, Fool & Scholar is releasing its first non-fiction podcast, THAT SCARES ME TOO! 

Vengroff says: “In this conversational podcast, we discuss and share historical legends and more recent ghost stories from around the world.”

The new show’s marketing pitch is: “Join Dr. Sophie Yang and K.A. Statz to discuss horror tales and myths from Asia. We’ll share stories about urban legends, unknown entities, cemetery superstitions, the undead, ghost month, cursed objects, folklore, and more from Taiwan and other Mandarin-speaking communities. Together, we discuss, compare, and contrast horrors from our cultures and talk about the shared human terrors.”

You can listen to the one-minute teaser here. This may be one of my favorite trailers of all time. Why? First, it’s only a minute-long. Second, there’s very little dialogue, which is: “First, I’m going to tell you a couple and scary stories, and then we’ll continue the discussion.” I love the transposition of concepts. The words are spoken in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, while the creepy music and flatness of the narrator’s voice presage something far more sinister.

Third, it is the silence and the eerie music that dominates the 60-second interlude. It’s a classic “less is more” strategy, and it slays as a table setter for the upcoming podcast.

These two shows are another winner for independent podcasting. 

Check out The White Vault and That Scares Me Too!

I'll leave room for you under my weighted blanket.