In this story, the twins Roderick and Madeline Usher inhabit their ancestral home, which has become a house of doom and gloom. Moreover, the house is cracked and divided by a fissure that runs from the roof all the way down into the foundations. Roderick is a man of the world, who has returned home because he feels weak, agitated, nervous and a 'bounden slave' of his fear for the future. His twin-sister Madeline, who always lived to herself in the house, suffers from a mysterious disease that is characterized by apathy, a gradual wasting away and attacks of catalepsy. The sinister and exited physician of the family is powerless against this disease. After one of the catalepsy attacks Roderick declares his sister dead and temporarily entombs her in a cellar under the house. However, Madeline isn't dead and after she awakens from her stupor she breaks out of the cellar and violently attacks her brother, killing him and herself. After this double murder-suicide, the fissure rapidly widens and the house collapses into the waters of the deep tarn in which it once stood.