[adapted]

by
Edgar Allan Poe

“His heart is like a lute hanging on the wall; the moment you touch it, it makes a sound.”
—De Béranger

During a dull, dark, and quiet day in the autumn, when heavy clouds hung low in the sky, I was riding alone on a horse through a very gloomy part of the countryside. As the evening grew darker, I came close to the sad-looking House of Usher.

I don’t know why—but the first time I saw the building, I felt a terrible sadness come over me. I say terrible, because there was none of that strange beauty or poetry that often comes with scary or lonely places. I looked at the house and the simple land around it—the bare walls, the empty windows that looked like eyes, some messy weeds, and a few white, dying trees—and I felt a deep sadness in my soul. It felt like waking up from a dream after taking a drug. It was like falling from a magical world into the boring real one. My heart felt cold and heavy. My thoughts were full of sadness, and not even my imagination could make them feel better or more meaningful.

What was it, I wondered—what made me feel so shaken when I looked at the House of Usher? I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t understand the strange thoughts that filled my mind as I stared at it. I had to admit that some simple things in nature can affect us in strange ways—and that understanding how and why is something beyond human knowledge. I thought maybe, if the parts of the scene had been arranged differently, I wouldn’t have felt so sad. With that in mind, I turned my horse toward the edge of a black and still lake that lay next to the house. I looked down into the water—and shivered even more—when I saw the strange reflection of the grey weeds, the dead tree trunks, and the windows that looked like empty eyes.

Still, I planned to stay in this sad house for a few weeks. The owner, Roderick Usher, had been one of my close friends when we were boys. But many years had passed since we had last met. A letter from him had recently reached me in a faraway part of the country—a strange and urgent letter that made it clear I had to come in person. The handwriting showed signs of nervousness. He wrote about a serious illness of both body and mind, and about how much he needed to see me. He called me his best, and in fact his only, close friend. He hoped that spending time with me might help him feel better. The way he wrote it—the feeling behind the words—left me no choice. I answered his letter by coming to see him, even though the invitation seemed very strange.

Even though we had been close as boys, I really didn’t know him well. He had always been very quiet and private. Still, I knew that his family was very old, and for a long time had been known for being very sensitive in both body and mind. Many of them had created great works of art. Lately, the family had also been known for quietly giving money to help others, and for a deep love of music—not just normal music, but complex, hard-to-understand music.

I also knew something very strange about the Usher family: even though they were old and important, no side branches of the family had ever grown. In other words, the Usher family had always passed from father to child in a straight line. There were almost no cousins or uncles. I thought about this as I looked at how the strange house matched what I had heard about the people who lived there. Maybe the house and the family had influenced each other over hundreds of years. Because there were no side branches of the family, and everything had always been passed straight down from parent to child, the family and the house had become one. People in the nearby villages even used the name “the House of Usher” to mean both the family and the building they lived in.

I have said that looking down into the still black lake made my first strange feeling even stronger. There is no doubt that the more I felt this growing fear—this superstition, we might call it—the faster it grew. I have known for a long time that this is often true with fear. Fear feeds itself. Maybe that was the only reason why, when I looked back up at the house from its reflection in the water, I suddenly imagined something very strange. It was such a silly thought that I only mention it to show how strongly I was feeling things. I had scared myself so much that I almost believed the house and its land had their own strange air around them—air that was not like the clean sky’s air, but seemed to rise up from the dead trees, the gray walls, and the still black lake. It felt like a sick, ghostly fog—slow, heavy, barely visible, and gray as lead.

I shook off the feeling like waking from a dream and looked more carefully at the building. The main thing I noticed was that it looked very, very old. The color had faded badly over time. Tiny fungi covered the whole outside, hanging in a fine net from the edges of the roof. Still, nothing had really broken off. The stones were all still in place. It was strange how the building still held together so perfectly, while the stones it was made of looked ready to fall apart. It reminded me of old wood in a forgotten basement, where it has rotted slowly for many years without fresh air. Other than showing signs of this slow decay, the building looked stable. But if someone looked very closely, they might notice a thin crack. It started on the roof and ran down the front wall in a zigzag line, until it disappeared into the dark water of the lake.

After seeing all this, I rode across a short bridge to the house. A servant waiting there took my horse, and I walked into the front hall through a tall Gothic doorway. A quiet servant led me silently through many dark and twisting hallways to the room where his master was waiting. I don’t know why, but everything I passed on the way made my strange feelings even stronger. The decorations—carved ceilings, dark wall hangings, black wooden floors, and strange, dusty family trophies that rattled as I walked—were things I had seen before in other old houses. I told myself they were familiar. But even so, I was surprised at the strange and gloomy thoughts they made me feel. On one of the staircases, I met the family doctor. His face looked both sneaky and confused. He spoke to me nervously, then quickly walked away. At last, the servant opened a door and brought me into the presence of his master.

The room I entered was huge and tall. The windows were long and narrow, with pointed tops, and were so high above the black wooden floor that no one inside could reach them. Weak red light came through the lattice-like glass, lighting up some of the objects nearby. But the corners of the room and the ceiling, which was shaped like an arch and covered in carvings, were too dark to see. Heavy curtains hung on the walls. The furniture was old, torn, and not very comfortable. Many books and musical instruments were lying around, but they did not make the room feel alive. I felt like I was breathing in sadness. A strong, deep, and hopeless gloom filled the whole room and everything in it.

When I walked in, Usher got up from a sofa where he had been lying down. He greeted me with energy and warmth, but at first I thought it seemed a little too much—like someone forcing themselves to be friendly because they were bored with life. But then I looked at his face and saw that he was truly glad to see me.

We sat down. For a few moments, he said nothing. I looked at him and felt both sorry and amazed. No man had ever changed so much in such a short time as Roderick Usher had! It was hard for me to believe that this was the same man I had known when we were boys. His face had always been unusual. His skin was pale like a dead man’s. His eyes were very large, wet-looking, and bright. His lips were thin and very pale, but they had a beautifully curved shape. His nose looked like a fine one from old Hebrew statues, but his nostrils were wider than usual. His chin had a nice shape, but it stuck out so little that it showed he lacked strong will. His hair was soft and thin like spiderwebs. All these features, plus a very wide forehead above the temples, made a face that was hard to forget.

Now, all those features looked even more extreme than before, and they had changed so much that I almost didn’t recognize him. His skin was now extremely pale, and his eyes shone in a way that shocked and even scared me. His silky hair had been left uncut and grew wild, floating around his face like a mist. It was hard to believe he was a regular human being.

His behavior also surprised me. He seemed confused and inconsistent. Soon I saw that this came from his weak and hopeless efforts to control a constant nervous shaking. I had expected something like this because of his letter, and also because I remembered he was always this way as a boy. Also, his body and mind seemed built for this kind of weakness. Sometimes he acted full of energy, and then suddenly he would become silent and gloomy. His voice kept changing too. Sometimes it was shaky and uncertain, like he had no energy at all. Other times, it was strong and quick—sharp, heavy, slow, and deep—like the voice of someone addicted to alcohol or opium during one of their most excited moments.

This was how he spoke about why he had asked me to visit. He said he really wanted to see me, and that he hoped my company would comfort him. Then he talked more about his illness. He said it was part of his nature and ran in the family. He didn’t think there was a cure. It was, he said, a simple nervous disorder that would go away soon. But it caused many strange feelings. Some of the things he said about it were both interesting and confusing. Maybe the way he spoke made them seem more serious.

He said his senses were far too sensitive. Only the plainest food was okay for him. He could wear clothes only if they were made of certain fabrics. All flowers had smells that bothered him. Even soft light hurt his eyes. He could only listen to certain sounds, and those had to come from stringed instruments—other sounds made him feel afraid.

He was completely controlled by a strange kind of fear. “I’m going to die,” he said. “I must die because of this terrible fear. That’s how I will be destroyed. I’m not afraid of the future itself, but of what it will do to me. Even the smallest thing might push my soul into unbearable fear. I’m not afraid of danger unless it leads to terror. In this weak and sad state, I know that sooner or later, I will lose both my life and my mind in some battle with the horrible ghost of FEAR.”

I also learned, now and then, through small and unclear hints, another strange thing about his mind. He believed in some superstitions about the house he lived in—and where he had not left for many years. He believed there was a kind of power or force in the house. The way he talked about it was too unclear to explain here. But he believed that just the look and feel of the house—its shape, its old gray walls and towers, and the dark pond in front of it—had, over time, affected his spirit and his health.

Still, he admitted—though a bit unwillingly—that much of his sadness came from something more natural and easier to understand. His sister, whom he loved deeply, had been sick for a long time, and now she was clearly dying. She was his only companion for many years and the last living member of his family. “When she dies,” he said with a sadness I’ll never forget, “I’ll be the last of the Ushers. Alone, weak, and hopeless.”

As he spoke, the Lady Madeline (that was her name) slowly walked through the far end of the room and, without seeing me, left. I was filled with surprise and even fear, though I didn’t know why. I felt a strange numbness as I watched her walk away. When the door finally closed behind her, I looked quickly at Roderick. But he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only see that his thin fingers had turned even paler, and tears were running through them.

Lady Madeline’s illness had confused the doctors for a long time. Her body was slowly wasting away. She often had strange attacks that seemed like she was in a deep, frozen state, as if dead but not really dead. Still, she had stayed out of bed until the day I arrived. But that very evening, she gave in to her illness. Her brother told me this at night, very upset. I was told that the moment I had seen her would likely be the last—that I would not see her again while she was still alive.

For the next few days, neither Usher nor I said anything about her. During this time, I tried hard to cheer up my friend. We painted and read books together, or I listened quietly as he played wild, made-up music on his guitar. As we spent more time together, and he opened up more to me, I realized how hopeless it was to try to lift his spirits. His sadness was so deep, it spread like a fog over everything he saw or thought about.

I will always remember those many serious hours I spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. But I cannot really explain what we did or studied during that time. His thoughts were full of strange ideas that gave everything a weird, dream-like glow. I will never forget the sad songs he made up and played. One thing I remember clearly is how he twisted and changed the tune of the last waltz by Von Weber in a strange and painful way.

He also made strange paintings. His imagination would focus deeply on them, and he added little details slowly, until the pictures became so vague and odd that they scared me—though I didn’t know why. Even now, I can still see them clearly in my mind. But I couldn’t describe more than a little of them in words. The way they were so plain, so simple, gave them a strange power that grabbed and shocked you. If anyone ever painted pure ideas, it was Roderick Usher. At least for me, in that strange and creepy place, the ghostly shapes he painted on the canvas filled me with a strong, unbearable fear—a fear I never felt even when looking at the powerful but more real paintings by Fuseli.

One of the strange ideas from my friend—less abstract than the others—can be described, though only weakly, in words. One small painting showed the inside of a very long, rectangular vault or tunnel. The walls were low, smooth, white, and had no breaks or decoration. Certain details in the painting made it clear that this tunnel was far below the surface of the earth. There was no exit seen anywhere, and no lamp or torch gave light. Yet, somehow, a strong light filled the space and covered everything with an eerie, unnatural brightness.

I just spoke of that strange condition of Usher’s hearing that made almost all music painful to him—except for certain sounds from stringed instruments. Maybe it was because he limited himself so much to just the guitar that his music sounded so strange and dreamy. But the fiery speed and ease of his made-up songs could not be explained by that alone. His playing—and often the words he sang along—were the result of great mental focus and intensity. I had mentioned before that this happened only during certain times of deep emotion or mental pressure.

I remember one of those songs very clearly. I think it stood out to me even more because, as he performed it, I felt for the first time that he might fully realize how close he was to losing his reason. The song, which he called “The Haunted Palace,” went very nearly like this:

I.
In the greenest, brightest valley,
Where kind angels used to stay,
Once a tall and lovely palace—
Shining—stood in proud display.
In the land of Thought’s great kingdom—
It stood there!
No angel ever flew past
A place more fine or rare.

II.
Golden flags, so bright and shining,
Waved upon its roof so high;
(This—all this—was in the old days
Under a happy sky);
Every soft breeze that passed by gently,
In that sweet time,
Carried with it lovely perfume
From walls so white with grime.

III.
People walking through that valley
Saw through windows glowing bright
Gentle spirits dancing, singing
To a lute in perfect light;
All around a throne where sat
(A noble king!)
A ruler full of strength and grace—
So proud, so wise a thing.

IV.
And the palace door was glowing
Red with gems and pearls galore;
Through it came a stream of music,
Flowing out forevermore—
Echoes soft with lovely voices,
Trained to sing,
Songs that told the clever stories
Of the kingdom’s kind old king.

V.
But sad things in dark robes gathered,
Took the ruler’s crown away;
(Ah, we cry, for no tomorrow
Brings back his shining day!)
Around his home, the light and color
That once had grown
Is now a tale we barely whisper—
A memory overthrown.

VI.
And the travelers through that valley,
Looking in the red-lit glass,
See strange shapes that dance and twist
To music rough and crass;
And like a dark and rushing river,
Through the pale door
A wild crowd runs and never stops—
They laugh, but smile no more.

I remembered well that the poem we read made us start talking about something Usher strongly believed. I don’t mention it because the idea was new (others have thought the same), but because he believed it so deeply. His belief, in general, was that plants could feel. But in his troubled mind, the idea became even wilder. He believed that even things without life could sometimes feel. I don’t know how to fully explain how serious he was about this. He thought the stones of his old family home had gained a strange life. The way the stones were placed, the fungi growing over them, the dying trees nearby—all these, he said, had created a kind of strange, living energy around the house. He even thought this strange energy had affected his family for generations. He believed this invisible force had shaped their lives and made him into the man I saw now. I won’t comment on these beliefs. They speak for themselves.

The books that Usher had loved for many years matched these strange ideas. We read together things like Ververt et Chartreuse by Gresset; Belphegor by Machiavelli; Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg; The Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; books on palm reading by Robert Flud, Jean D’Indaginé, and De la Chambre; Journey into the Blue Distance by Tieck; and City of the Sun by Campanella. One of his favorite books was a small edition of Directorium Inquisitorium by Eymeric de Gironne, a Dominican. He would also read long passages from Pomponius Mela about strange creatures in Africa, dreaming over them for hours. But his greatest joy was reading a rare, strange book written in old Gothic print—it was a prayer book for the dead called Vigiliæ Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiæ Maguntinæ.

I couldn’t help thinking about this dark book and how it might be affecting his mind when, one evening, Usher suddenly told me that his sister Madeline had died. He also said he planned to keep her body for two weeks before burying it. He would keep it in one of the old vaults inside the house. He gave me reasons for this that I didn’t question. He said the doctors had asked too many questions about her strange illness, and that the family graveyard was too far away and in an unsafe place. I remembered the strange look on the doctor’s face when I first arrived, and so I didn’t argue. It seemed like a strange but harmless plan.

Usher asked me to help him prepare for her temporary burial. We put her body in a coffin, and together we carried it down to the vault. This dark and heavy air made our torches burn weakly. The room was small and damp, with no light at all. It lay deep beneath the part of the house where I slept. Long ago, it had been used for dark purposes, like a dungeon. Later it was used to store gunpowder or something else that could easily catch fire, because parts of the walls and floor were covered in copper. The huge iron door was also covered this way, and it made a sharp screeching noise when we opened it.

We laid her body on wooden stands. Then we partly lifted the lid of the coffin and looked at her face. That was when I first noticed how much she and Usher looked alike. Usher must have seen what I was thinking, because he softly said they had been twins, and they had always shared a deep connection. But we didn’t look at her for long. Her appearance filled us with awe. Her sickness, like many cataleptic illnesses, had left her face with a faint color and her lips with a slight smile. It made her look strangely alive, which was frightening. We closed the lid and fastened it. Then we locked the heavy iron door and slowly returned to the shadowy upper rooms of the house.

Now, after several days of deep sadness, I noticed a change in my friend’s strange behavior. His usual way of acting was gone. He no longer cared about his daily habits or hobbies. He walked quickly and unevenly from room to room, without any clear purpose. His pale face became even more ghost-like. The brightness in his eyes was completely gone. His voice, once rough now and then, now always shook like he was very scared. Sometimes I thought he was keeping a dark secret but didn’t have the courage to speak about it. At other times, I thought it was just the madness in his mind, because I would see him staring at nothing for hours, as if he was listening to something that wasn’t really there. It’s no surprise that his condition frightened me. I slowly started to feel the strange effects of his wild thoughts and superstitions.

It was especially one night—seven or eight days after we had placed Lady Madeline in the underground vault—when I truly felt the power of these feelings. I went to bed very late, but I could not sleep. Time passed slowly as I lay awake. I tried to calm my nerves with reason. I told myself I was just being affected by the dark room and its gloomy old furniture—the heavy curtains, which moved and rustled in the wind outside. But these thoughts did not help. A strong shiver went through me. I suddenly felt a heavy fear sitting on my chest, even though I had no real reason to be afraid. I sat up with a gasp, looking into the deep darkness of the room. I listened carefully—though I didn’t know why. Something inside me told me to listen to the strange, soft sounds that came now and then through the storm. I didn’t know where they came from. I was so full of fear that I quickly dressed again. I knew I would not sleep. I began to walk back and forth in the room, trying to shake off the awful feeling.

I had only walked a few times across the room when I heard footsteps on the nearby stairs. I knew at once it was Usher. A moment later, he knocked softly on my door and came in, holding a lamp. His face was pale, as usual—but now there was also a kind of strange excitement in his eyes. It was like he was laughing inside, but trying not to show it. His whole way of acting was wild and unnatural. He scared me—but after being alone for so long, I was actually glad to see him.

“You haven’t seen it?” he asked suddenly, after looking around the room in silence for a while. “You haven’t seen it? But wait! You will.” As he said this, he carefully covered the lamp’s light with his hand, rushed to the window, and threw it open to the storm.

The strong wind rushed in so fast it almost knocked us over. It was a wild and powerful night—but it was also strangely beautiful and scary. A whirlwind seemed to have gathered near the house. The wind kept changing direction, blowing fiercely in all ways. The clouds were thick and heavy, so low they touched the tops of the house—but we could still see how fast they were flying and crashing into each other. They didn’t float away like usual. I say we could see all this—even though the clouds were so thick—because we couldn’t see the moon or stars. There was no lightning either. But the bottoms of the clouds and the ground near the house were glowing. It was a strange, soft light, like a glowing gas, hanging around the house.

“You must not—you shall not look at this!” I said, shaking, as I gently but firmly pulled Usher away from the window and into a chair. “These things that confuse and scare you are just electrical events in the sky—they’re not uncommon. Or maybe they come from the rotten air around the lake. Let’s shut this window—the air is cold and bad for your health. Here’s one of your favorite stories. I’ll read it to you, and you can listen. That way, we’ll get through this terrible night together.”

The old book I picked up was called “The Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning. I had said it was one of Usher’s favorites as a kind of sad joke, not really meaning it. In truth, there was very little in its strange, boring, and clumsy writing that would interest someone with such a deep and imaginative mind like Usher. But it was the only book nearby. I hoped that the craziness of the story might somehow help distract him. History has shown that strange things like this can sometimes calm the mind. And if I had judged by the wild, overly eager way he seemed to listen—or pretended to listen—I might have thought I was helping him.

I had reached the part of the story where Ethelred, the hero, had tried to enter the home of a hermit peacefully but failed. So now he decided to break in by force. In the story, the words went like this:

“And Ethelred, who was a brave man by nature, and now even stronger because of the wine he had drunk, didn’t wait to talk anymore with the hermit—who was, in truth, a stubborn and mean man. Ethelred felt the rain on his back and feared the storm was growing stronger, so he lifted his heavy club and hit the door hard. He made a space in the wooden boards big enough for his armored hand. Then he pulled and tore with all his strength until the dry, hollow wood made loud cracking and ripping sounds that echoed through the whole forest.”

When I finished this sentence, I jumped a little and stopped reading. It seemed to me (though I quickly told myself it was just my imagination) that, far away in some part of the house, I heard a sound—very soft and hard to hear—but it sounded just like the cracking and ripping noise the story described. I told myself it was just a strange coincidence. With the windows shaking and the storm growing louder, it was easy for a small noise to slip into my ears. I kept reading:

“But brave Ethelred, now inside the door, was shocked and angry to find no sign of the evil hermit. Instead, there was a huge, scaly dragon with a fiery tongue. It was guarding a golden palace with a silver floor. On the wall there was a bright brass shield with these words written on it:

“Who enters here, a winner has been;
Who kills the dragon, the shield he shall win.”

And Ethelred lifted his mace and hit the dragon on the head. The dragon fell before him and let out a nasty breath, with a scream so terrible and harsh—and also so sharp—that Ethelred had to cover his ears with his hands to block out the awful noise, the likes of which had never been heard before.

I stopped reading again, this time with wild shock—for there was no doubt that I actually did hear a low, far-off, but harsh and strange screaming or grinding sound. I couldn’t tell where it came from, but it sounded exactly like the scream of the dragon I had just read about.

I was overwhelmed by many emotions—most of all, surprise and deep fear. Still, I kept calm enough not to say anything that might upset my nervous friend. I wasn’t even sure if he had heard the sound. But something in him had clearly changed. He had turned his chair so that he now faced the door, and I could no longer see his whole face. His lips were shaking, as if he were whispering to himself. His head had fallen onto his chest—but I knew he was awake because I could see his wide, unmoving eye in profile. His body was moving back and forth gently, in a slow and steady rhythm.

After quickly noticing all this, I went on reading the tale of Sir Launcelot. It continued like this: