The hit true-crime podcast will center on a new case about the disappearance of a young woman, when season two debuts in August.
The hit true-crime, investigative podcast Up and Vanished is officially back for season two -- and ET has exclusive details and a teaser from host Payne Lindsey.
Since first captivating audiences with the story about the 2005 disappearance of Georgian beauty queen and school teacher Tara Grinstead -- the first season premiered in 2016 -- fans have eagerly awaited a brand new installment of the podcast.
Season two, focusing on a whole new case about a disappearance of a young woman, will premiere Aug. 20. While the specific case won’t be revealed until season two debuts, ET can confirm the case takes place outside of Georgia in a small town with its own set of unique characteristics.
“She’s gonna turn back up. She’s gonna come back. She just went on one of these journeys. Maybe she’s in a cult somewhere and she’s just fallen off the face of the earth and doesn’t want anybody to find her,” a voice is heard saying in the ominous tease, with another adding: “There’s just something really, really strange about this whole ordeal.”
“Apparently there is this one guy that seen her walkin’ off alone into the forest,” another voice says, while the tease ends with a chilling remark from another person: “We all know in our hearts that somebody did something bad to her.”
The first season of Up and Vanished, with 200 million downloads, reignited interest in the case and led to the arrests of Ryan Alexander Duke and Bo Dukes in connection with Grinstead’s murder. According to the podcast, season one will continue to provide updates as Grinstead’s case goes to trial.
Since the success of season one, Up and Vanished co-creators Lindsey and Donald Albright partnered with HowStuffWorks to create the other wildly popular true-crime podcast, Atlanta Monster, which explored the infamous Atlanta Child Murders from 1979 to 1981.
Unlike the cases of Up and Vanished, Atlanta Monster very much had an ending to the story, with Wayne Williams arrested and later convicted of two of the murders. Speaking with ET ahead of the premiere, Lindsey said that after weeks of research into the horrific killing spree, he found “really compelling stuff -- a gripping story.”
“I didn't want to just retell a story that had been told before,” he said at the time. “It's not what I do, and it's not what I want to do. But I found very quickly that that was not the case here. There was so much that was left unsolved, and the door remains wide open for a lot of people in this case, especially the victims' families. Just going off of that, I realized there was a lot more to this story and there were conclusions that we could get to that no one had ever got to before.”
Albright and Lindsey also teamed up with host Philip Holloway to present Sworn, a podcast that pulled back the curtain on the criminal justice system. Both Atlanta Monster and Sworn have generated 35 million downloads.
Beyond the podcast world, Lindsey and Albright recently shot a pilot for an Up and Vanished docuseries for Oxygen, on which they’ll both serve as executive producers.
Up and Vanished is produced by Tenderfoot TV; season two is produced in partnership with Candence 13.
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