Vault: Strange History We Locked Away

Vault: Strange History We Locked Away

Beneath the official record lies another layer of history—buried, classified, or quietly erased. Vault is a documentary-style podcast that investigates real events too bizarre, disturbing, or inconvenient to survive in the open. From Cold War coverups and rogue experiments to suppressed discoveries and weaponized folklore, each episode reconstructs a hidden truth with cinematic detail and historical precision. This is not conspiracy fiction. It’s what was almost lost. A recovered file. A redacted name. A story pulled from the vault. If it sounds unbelievable… it’s probably real.

Episodes

August 7, 2025 16 mins

A brilliant scientist stood alone in a St. Petersburg laboratory. Moments later, a silent, glowing sphere entered the room—and killed him instantly. What followed was buried in technical euphemism, discredited by peers, and quietly erased from history.

In 1753, Russian physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann became the first person in recorded history to die while attempting to measure atmospheric electricity. Witnesses described a floatin...

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In 1962, more than a hundred children and factory workers were ushered into a Havana movie theater for a secret screening. Within minutes, they were screaming, convulsing, and clawing to escape. The film was never shown again—and its existence swiftly erased from Cuban records.


This episode reconstructs the lost story of The Screaming Room, a propaganda experiment gone catastrophically wrong during the Cold War. Drawn from decla...

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August 7, 2025 13 mins

In the winter of 1517, villagers near Verdellino, Italy, reported an impossible vision: armies of ghostly soldiers clashing in a frozen field, day after day, then vanishing without a trace. Witnesses included peasants, priests—even a Venetian mercenary commander who saw the battle with his own eyes.


This episode reconstructs the events surrounding the so-called Battle That Never Was, a mass apparition—or hallucination—that sprea...

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August 7, 2025 16 mins

In the year 897, the corpse of Pope Formosus was exhumed, dressed in sacred vestments, and dragged into a Roman courtroom—where it was placed on trial for crimes against the Church.


This episode of Vault investigates the Cadaver Synod, one of the strangest and most grotesque moments in papal history. From the political chaos of 9th-century Rome to the desecration of a dead pontiff, we explore how vengeance, fear, and power turne...

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August 6, 2025 19 mins

The Dancing Plague of 1518

In the summer of 1518, a woman stepped into the streets of Strasbourg and began to dance. She could not stop. Days passed, then weeks, as dozens joined her—arms flailing, feet bleeding, bodies collapsing. Some danced to their deaths.


What unfolded was a mass affliction no one could explain—blamed at turns on cursed saints, overheated blood, or collective sin. Physicians prescribed more dancing. Musician...

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August 6, 2025 7 mins

It sounds like satire: a royal court, dozens of nobles, and a latrine floor that gives way beneath them. But this grotesque catastrophe actually happened. In the year 1184, during a political summit convened by the Holy Roman Emperor, a hall packed with German aristocrats collapsed into a cesspit below, killing many and reshaping imperial power in the process.

This is not a metaphor. It’s the story of how some of the most powerful m...

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August 6, 2025 10 mins

On October 17, 1814, a 22-foot vat of fermenting porter ale exploded inside London’s Horse Shoe Brewery, unleashing a tidal wave of beer that surged through the impoverished St. Giles neighborhood. Within minutes, eight people—mostly women and children—were dead. While newspapers called it an “act of God,” the truth reveals a haunting tale of industrial arrogance, ignored warnings, and a community shattered by one of history’s stra...

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August 18, 1976: two American officers were hacked to death with axes in the Korean Demilitarized Zone—by North Korean soldiers, in broad daylight, under the watch of dozens of armed men. It was a brutal killing over a tree.

But what happened next nearly ended the world.

This is the story of Operation Paul Bunyan, a military show of force so overwhelming that it risked plunging the Cold War into open nuclear war. With bombers in the ...

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