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 floating ball of light that struck him mid-experiment—leaving no scorch marks, only a hole in his forehead.

This episode reconstructs the fatal experiment, the suppressed reports, and the forgotten legacy of The Ball Lightning Executioner.

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 declassified medical reports, eyewitness accounts, and archival CIA cables, it unravels a real event long dismissed as rumor: the day a film broke an audience’s mind.

The footage is gone. But what happened inside the Payret Cinema still echoes.

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 spread through Lombardy and reached the halls of the Vatican. Based on firsthand accounts, sealed letters, and early printed pamphlets, it remains one of Europe’s most unnerving historical anomalies.

What hundreds swore they saw has been nearly erased. This is the record that remains.

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 turned justice into theater. What began as a trial became something closer to a ritual. And what was meant to be erased still echoes.

Based entirely on documented events. Reconstructed as a recovered file.

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. Musicians were hired. The rhythm spread.

This is not a legend. It was recorded by city councils, chroniclers, and physicians alike. And then, almost as suddenly as it began, the plague faded into silence—leaving only the record.

Vault reopens that file.

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 men in medieval Europe drowned in human waste—and how that moment exposed the rot beneath the empire’s surface.

VAULT is a documentary podcast that uncovers real but nearly forgotten events—strange, disturbing, and too often left out of the official record.

🕯️ THE FORGOTTEN RECORD. OPENED.

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 strangest disasters.

Vault opens the forgotten record on a tragedy that sounds too bizarre to be true—until you see the evidence.

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 sky, troops on the ground, and the world holding its breath, a single symbolic act—cutting down a tree—became one of the most dangerous flashpoints in modern history.

What was so threatening about this tree? Why did North Korea escalate to murder? And how close did we come to global annihilation?

VAULT opens the file on a forgotten incident that nearly brought the world to the brink.

In this timeline, Len Bias doesn’t die in 1986. Revived on the dorm room floor, he lives to fulfill his NBA destiny—but the world that rises around him is not the one we know. There is no national panic, no sweeping crack-era legislation. Yet the pain still comes, just differently. Delta-66: Len Bias Rises traces a world where one life saved changes the course of American sports, politics, and grief. As the Archivist restores this record, we’re left to wonder—was the warning worth more than the miracle?

March 1974. King Faisal is assassinated hours before Saudi Arabia can lift the oil embargo. In this timeline, the embargo never ends. Gas lines stretch for miles. American cities go dark. And one year later, U.S. paratroopers seize foreign oil fields under the banner of “economic survival.” What begins as a temporary operation becomes something far worse: occupation, indoctrination, and a generation of blowback that culminates on a September morning decades later.

Was the comfort worth the cost? Or did we trade short-term power for a lifetime of war?

This is the Archivist’s account of Endless Embargo.

Listen now—if you’re ready.