It was the original fake news story: Orson Welles’ booming voice, commanding the airwaves on October 30, 1938, informing terrified listeners that the end of the world was upon them, and that aliens from another planet had begun to invade.
And while Welles’ dramatic narration of H.G. Wells’ classic The War of the Worlds was nothing more than fiction elevated to high art by way of social experiment, it still scared the shit out a lot of folks who didn’t know better. Some 79 years later, some of those same people probably regard the President’s apocalyptic threats on Twitter in much the same way, even if they are far worse and far more real of a threat.
Though radio broadcasts steadily lost listeners as televisions became the new family room fixture, the medium itself never truly went away. It just evolved to encompass a new audio platform for our digital age: the podcast.
To commemorate Welles’ broadcast, remembered each year on October 30 as part of the annual World Audio Drama Day celebration, we wanted to clue readers in on something truly scary: A new horror podcast called The White Vault, which is produced in Florida by a newly-married couple in Sarasota.
Meet Travis Vengroff and Kaitlin Statz.
They not only want to entertain you with their narrative serial about a possibly doomed mission to the Arctic Circle by a repair team dispatched to check on a remote scientific outpost, but also spook you silly.
Appropriately enough, the third episode of The White Vault, titled Location, will debut for free on October 31, just in time for Halloween. For those wanting to catch up, you can get the first two episodes, Fristed and Hatchway, here.
The first season of The White Vault will span 10 episodes, each about 20 minutes long, with new episodes debuting every two weeks.
“Every horror writer hopes to terrify people,” said Statz, 25. “I don’t think people are going to get lost in it like they did with War of the Worlds. I want people to get really attached to the characters.”
Podcasts, particularly those mining the horror genre, are a big deal these days. The NoSleep Podcast recently passed 60 million downloads. Amazon Video just launched Lore, a serialized anthology based on the popular podcast of the same name. And the horror website Bloody Disgusting recently added author Jon Grilz’ urban legend-based podcast Creepy to its burgeoning audio network.
While we have an entire generation too young to know the significance of radio, there’s also an awful lot of people who remember it fondly.
“Out of the 40 percent of Americans who listen to a podcast, more of them are older rather than younger. It’s not just a bunch of kids,” Vengroff, 30,said. “There’s a great interest in older listeners who maybe remember The Shadow or even The War of the Worlds.”
The White Vault was sparked by a trip the couple took in March 2016 to Iceland.
“We had been working on a previous podcast,” Statz said. “We decided we wanted to write a horror serialized series. We wanted to work on a much larger story arc.”
Statz, who received a Master of Science degree in archaeological science from the University of Oxford, said she returned home and began writing furiously.
As the writer, her goal is to maintain as much historical and scientific accuracy as possible, while weaving in the more horrific elements. Vengroff serves as producer, and oversees sound production.
Their cast for The White Vault is internationally-based, with voice actors sending recordings from Germany and Iceland, as well as different parts of the U.S. Vengroff and Statz said they've only met one of their actors in person.
One familiar voice — and name — to many should be Lani Minella, who portrays Dr. Rosa De La Torre. Minella’s voice has appeared in video games and animated series since the mid-1990s, including various titles based on Disney and Nintendo properties, as well as Nancy Drew, Warcraft and many more.
For now, Vengroff and Statz, through their company Fool and Scholar Productions, rely on the charity of fans (and their own incomes) to fund The White Vault. They use the crowdfunding website Patreon to receive donations, usually about $200 an episode, from about 40 listeners around the world.
Contributors receive bonus content not available publicly in return, but none of the money is used to pay any of the performers, or the creators.
“(It) allows us to produce at a higher quality,” Vengroff said, although eventually he and Statz would like to convert their passion into a profitable enterprise.
“That is our goal, to be able to pay everybody,” he said, laughing.
As if on cue, Statz chimed in: “Including ourselves!”
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 2, 2017.