NoSleep is a subreddit that predominantly aims to unsettle or scare its readers. But every once in a while, you come upon a NoSleep tearjerker, a story that aims straight for your emotions.
These are stories of tragedy, lost love, grief, and sometimes, even grander emotional concepts. Many of them are beloved by readers, and more than a few of them made me cry when I first read them.
Most of these are also featured on my long list of the best NoSleep stories, where you’ll find general recommendations. And if you’re looking for more beyond that, check out my list of the weirdest NoSleep stories and the best NoSleep writers.
As always, I’ll avoid major spoilers, but a story’s premise may be necessary to explain its inclusion.
Fiction by René Rehn
With that said, here’s my list of the best NoSleep tearjerkers (last updated: July 2026).
How I became a god
It opens with a being thinking back to when it was nothing but a small creature crawling through the mud, and from there a sprawling, timeless narrative unfolds. Of all the NoSleep tearjerkers, this is the grandest in scale, and its restraint makes it so devastating. There’s no cheap sentiment, no begging for tears, just a central emotional theme that builds across eons to a final line that will sit with you for days.
He didn’t want to hurt anyone
The narrator has twin brothers who couldn’t be more different: Danny is shy and reserved, while Milo is loud and full of energy. Then Milo shows darker tendencies, and every time he does something horrible, he says one thing: “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” The story follows them as they grow up, but it’s the ending that genuinely surprised me in the best way possible.
Because You Are My Baby
The story starts with a young girl living in the forest with her mother, who isn’t a normal woman but a huge, twisted creature, a force of nature. What earns it a place among the best NoSleep tearjerkers is the love at its core: the mother’s recurring words give the story a reverence that makes its ending land even harder than it normally would.
My Best Friend Was a Mermaid
When a lonely girl spends the summer at her relatives’ home, she encounters a girl in a lake who claims to be a mermaid. Out of all of Dopabeane’s tearjerkers, this one’s the saddest, and that’s saying something. Their friendship is warm; the mermaid story is naive and childish, but then you remember you’re on NoSleep, and the ending drives that point home in devastating fashion.
Maria on the Moon
The narrator’s terminally ill mother tells him about the oceans on the moon, the ones she says were named after her. When she’s sent home with only a few days left to live, the narrator turns the house into a maze that death can’t solve. It’s a story about grief, about holding on too tight, and when death finally arrives, the emotional core hits you with everything the buildup promised. One of the definitive NoSleep tearjerkers by one of the sub’s best writers.
The Scent of Death
The narrator’s grandpa often tells the story of how he cheated death during the war using a counterfeit coin. Then he survives a horrible car crash, then cancer, and you begin to wonder whether cheating death has doomed him. The final line is the story’s true payoff, and it’s one of the best on the entire sub.
A Shattered Life
A story about a life experienced in bits and pieces, out of order, exactly as the title promises. Matt Dymerski turns what could’ve been nothing but an experiment in form into a tragedy where the structure itself becomes part of the sadness. Slowly, bit by bit, you start assembling the story’s core loss, and once you get the full picture, it’s a gut punch.
Sisters in the snow (my grandmother’s tale)
The narrator’s grandma always sets out four cups of tea. When asked why, she tells the story of her and her sisters, set against a harsh wartime backdrop. The sisters’ personalities are drawn so distinctly that it makes the story’s core tragedy feel almost personal. Then we get to the ending, which made me cry like a little bitch. This is among the most emotional entries on this entire list.
Auntie Bells
The narrator describes an old woman who walks through the neighborhood with dozens of bells hanging from her wrists and hair. While it gives her a bad reputation, the narrator still befriends her. Then, years later, when the old lady dies without kin, the narrator enters her home and learns the truth about the bells. That truth reframes the entire story, and when it hit me, I cried my eyes out.
Milk and Cookies
Every Friday evening, an old man buys a packet of milk and a bag of cookies at the gas station where the narrator works. One night, the narrator follows him to find out why. It’s the first NoSleep story that ever made me cry, and even a decade and a half later, I still remember it.
Magnum Opus, and How I got back my Jessie
After his girlfriend’s death, Mark falls apart, gets into drugs, and finds Opus, a substance that allows him to live through moments of their relationship as if they were real. But it all comes at a price. Jesse Clark writes grief in a way few others on the sub can.
What Happens When the Stars Go Out
In the present, the narrator’s being rescued by EMTs, but while he’s hovering between life and death, we get glimpses of his past and his relationship with a woman named Robin, told with an almost cinematic rhythm. The final part is what elevates it to my favorite NoSleep tearjerker, and I don’t say that lightly. If there’s only a single story from this list you can read, make it this one.
Under The Back Porch
A boy lives with an abusive father, and often hides under the back porch. One night, he meets someone there who not only protects him from the elements but also tells him where to find help. It’s not the most complex story on this list, and you may see the ending coming, but it still pulls at your heartstrings, and does so honestly.
The Good Thomas Shea
Thomas Shea was a psychopath who committed a horrible crime. That’s how the narrator opens, and from there the story spends its entire runtime complicating that statement. It’s one of the few stories that handles trauma and abuse right, and even when it veers into melodrama near the end, the sadness underneath is real and stays with you.
Remembering how to whistle
An old man forgets how to whistle, standing in a Target aisle with his wife. It’s a funny little anecdote the narrator shares with us, but then other things surface that he can’t remember. It takes a while, but once you realize what you’re actually reading, this story hits you like a truck. It’s the bleakest entry here, and one of the few NoSleep stories that genuinely destroyed me.
Skater Girl
Full disclosure: this and the next story are written by me.
It’s the summer break of 1992. The narrator, a teenager living alone, notices a girl passing him by on a skateboard, and in his head, she becomes Skater Girl. Eventually they talk, and eventually they bond. It’s a tragic, melancholic story about more than just first love gone wrong, and of everything I’ve posted on NoSleep, it’s probably the one that will leave you hurting the most.
The Room of Change
The second one of mine, and one I’m genuinely proud of.
A young boy is sent to Madame Rose’s orphanage, housed in an old Prussian mansion. It’s a place for bad kids, and life there is miserable: bullies, stern lectures, and no way out. So he takes to exploring the mansion’s hidden corners with his only friend, Tiny Joe. Eventually, the two of them stumble upon a magic room that changes its appearance every time they enter. But not all is as it seems.
And then you hit the ending, when the narrator, now an adult, returns to the old orphanage and realizes what was actually going on, and that he never connected the dots.
