"Soft White Damn"

**"Soft White Damn"** is the first tale in the eighteenth episode of the fifth season of the NoSleep Podcast. In it, a man trapped in a snowy cabin is harassed by a voice outside. Written by M.J. Pack, it has a runtime of 17:15 and was performed by Jeff Clement. It is 583rd tale overall on the podcast.

## Summary

A man named Danny is snowed inside a cabin. He says that he has given up shoveling the walk, instead deciding to stay inside and keep warm. The previous night, he had been drinking whiskey and watching movies on his couch with the blinds closed. While watching a movie, he starts to hear a strange sound from his porch window. It sounds like a slow, deliberate tap. He hears the noise several times before deciding to try to catch whoever is making the sound in the act. He waits until he hears it again and snaps open the blind. However, he doesn't see anyone at the window. The tapping noise doesn't return, Danny downing more whiskey.

After about ten minutes, he hears another noise. Outside on his porch, he hears something muttering unintelligible noises in a low voice. Danny says that when he was a kid his dad had a stroke while at the store with him. After asking his father a question, he is unable to answer and instead speaks gibberish. The sounds outside remind him of his Dad's stroke. The voice continues to gibber in a voice that reminds him of his late father for a moment, although he quickly dismisses the thought. As soon as he lets go of the thought he realizes that whatever is out there is not his father, the sounds stop. He writes off the experience as him being drunk.

He looks through the blinds a second time, but only sees snowfall on his porch. After getting another glass of whiskey, he hears running from his porch. The thing outside runs back and forth on his porch, occasionally throwing its weight against the banister with a heavy thud and groan.

After hearing it splinter some of the wood, Danny calls out to it to stop, which it does. It becomes dead quiet, until the creature begins to speak his name over and over in the same low, gibberish voice. Outside the front door, Danny can hear the thing repeat his name and shift its weight from side to side. In between repeating Danny's name, the creature continually asks him if he is sorry, to which Danny doesn't respond. The thing tells him that his father "knows" and that he's here. It then tells him to come outside, and that his father is mad. It orders him to open the door and that he forgot to shovel the walk. Danny almost opens the door, hand on the knob, but tells the creature that he didn't forget to shovel it. He says he'll do it when it stops snowing. The creature then tells him that the snow will never stop, and that Danny will be very sorry if he doesn't come outside. He tells it that his dad is not outside on the porch, to which the creature returns to running back and forth on the porch.

It continues babbling while running, changing between speaking in the gibberish voice and his dad's voice. After several hours, the sun finally comes out and the thing stops running across the porch. Danny waits another half hour to make sure it's gone. He checks the weather report which says that another storm is soon approaching and will be at least another 6 inches by the next morning. He says he doesn't think he'll make it to the next morning, saying the creature will come back. He doesn't know what it will say the next time, but that since he nearly opened the door for it the first time his chances of survival are unlikely. He checks the porch outside his front door. The snow is shallower on the porch, but enough to leave tracks. Danny finds tracks, but not footprints. Instead, he finds hundreds of handprints all over his porch. He says that it will be dark soon, wondering what the creature actually is. He says that it was right, and that he is sorry.