"I looked upon the scene before me -- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain-- upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium -- the bitter lapse into every-day life-- the hidious dropping off of the veil."

A perfect American Gothic horror story. No notes.

You could summarize 'The Fall of the House of Usher' in just the word 'dread' and it still wouldn't convey how uneasy Poe makes you feel reading this story. I've read it at least several times and even had it on a class reading list at Uni where we studied it closely. I know exactly what happens in the end, and yet still when I re-read it makes me feel anxious and somehow both claustrophic and agoraphobic at the same time, so, no comfort here.

Poe demonstrates in 'The Fall of the House of Usher' that he truly understood the genre he was writing within and what makes it so effective and a good horror story so enduring.

Sure, the 'twist' at the end is horrifying, but its the terror leading up to it that stays with me. It's the way he twists a Sir Lancelot story into something grotesque and creepy, it's the uncanniness of the setting, the characters shut up in a huge, decaying house.

Not a word wasted in this one, so stop wasting time reading what some stranger on the internet thinks and go read it!