The Fall of the House of Usher
Short story by Edgar Allan PoeWikipedia
124
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Search complete. 124 mentions across 43 episodes found for "The Fall of the House of Usher".
Oct 30, 2026
OctoberHOST
Just most of them.
OctoberHOST
Moving on to House of Usher.
OctoberHOST
That's Poe, isn't it? Can someone who reads books tell me? House of Usher...
OctoberHOST
Edgar Allan Poe, is it? Yeah, I think it is.
OctoberHOST
The Fall of the House of Usher is his whole story that he wrote, that crazy Edgar.
OctoberHOST
Man, so kind of like we have Theater of Blood and Madhouse are very similar premises.
OctoberHOST
I'm about to talk about 1960s House of Usher and 1961's The Pit and the Pendulum.
OctoberHOST
Not quite the disparity in quality.
Ryan DunsGUEST
Thank you for inviting us.
Nadya WilliamsHOST
And together, we're going to talk today about three of Poe's works, The Raven, and then also two short stories, The Telltale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher.
Nadya WilliamsHOST
And in the process, we'll consider what makes Poe America's spookiest classic.
Nadya WilliamsHOST
So I have to ask the first question, which is kind of setting the foundations, but what is a classic anyway?
Steven KnepperGUEST
So that's kind of an interesting thing too.
Steven KnepperGUEST
American literature kind of comes of age with Gothic literature and it's deeply marked by it.
Nadya WilliamsHOST
So one more definition question before I ask my next question about spooky classics, but you mentioned Gothic literature, and that's a term to which we'll return, of course, because Pose, the fall of the House of Usher, especially, is a Gothic story.
Nadya WilliamsHOST
What do we mean when we say that?
HanaHOST
Yeah.
HanaHOST
And, like, a lot of her fantasy stuff can go into, like, I mean, she has done horror retellings of, like, The Falls of the House of Usher.
HanaHOST
Yeah.
HanaHOST
Which is a gothic book.
KeeganHOST
Because after all, many of these other stories by Blackwood more or less play on the nerves by weaving a spooky atmosphere.
KeeganHOST
in much the same way that Poe did in The Fall of the House of Usher.
KeeganHOST
And while I might choose to talk about some of these other Blackwood stories another year, The Man Who Found Out is in a way even a stranger story because of the fact that Blackwood wrote it.
KeeganHOST
Because in many ways, Professor Mark Ebor seems like a stand-in for Blackwood himself, But the underlying logic of a story like this seems like something more out of the cosmic pessimism of an H.P. Lovecraft rather than a hermetic optimist like Blackwood, if we could call him that.
Haley Toumaian PriceHOST
In Philadelphia, Poe began working for Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, where he published more articles, stories, and reviews.
Haley Toumaian PriceHOST
And this included the well-known William Wilson and The Fall of the House of Usher, which are both supernatural horror stories.
Andrea ShaenanigansHOST
Mm-hmm.
Haley Toumaian PriceHOST
He was kind of starting to gain even more reputation as not only a literary critic, but also as an author specializing in gothic horror.
ScarletHOST
So let me talk about this one, because this is, this is rumored, okay? This is completely alleged, so, but it is interesting, whatever, it was cool to read.
ScarletHOST
So, of course, you're familiar with The Fall of the House of Usher.
JanaeHOST
by
ScarletHOST
Edgar Allan Poe um and so allegedly Edgar Allan Poe drew inspiration from an actual house that uh that existed in the 1600s okay and this house was known as the Hezekiah Usher house okay so it dates back to the 1600s belonged to Hezekiah Usher who was a bookseller however in the 1800s at one point the house was like demolished and so allegedly edgar allen poe drew uh inspiration from this because if you've read the fall of the house of usher i think there's very similar themes to the idea that
JanaeHOST
there's a
ScarletHOST
disappearing house disappearing family you know spooky house etc and so again all alleged i don't want to start rumors but it was interesting you might so yeah
JanaeHOST
that's cool yeah i am always here for anything about poe like that's for sure same
ScarletHOST
and there's like no uh record of him even knowing about the hezekiah usher house so but it's like i don't know it it checks the box for fall of the house of usher oh for sure and also the fact that it's called the fall of the house of usher and the
Sean Philip CooperHOST
We don't have the narrator being indulged by Dupin to offer his unfortunate reckons about what's transpired.
Madeline PotterPANELIST
I think it's an interesting one because if you think about, you know, The Fall of the House of Usher or Cask of Amontillado, you have these first person narrators who are quite involved and you don't trust them and they manipulate the characters.
Madeline PotterPANELIST
They manipulate you.
Madeline PotterPANELIST
They're a bit unhinged.
EamonHOST
And that might be a governess, but it might be Jonathan Harker, who's a sort of a state agent solicitor in Dracula.
EamonHOST
It might be the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.
EamonHOST
We remember the young solicitor sent to sort out the papers and the paperwork in Eel Marsh House in The Woman in Black.
EamonHOST
And then, of course, you mentioned it last time, Brian, there's governesses in both Jane Eyre, but also in The Turn of the Screw.
Dave RobertsHOST
And a lot of them, I'll be very honest with you, I'm not a huge Poe enjoyer in as much as I don't actively go out to watch movies based on Poe works.
Dave RobertsHOST
But I did watch The Fall of the House of Usher, and there's a lot of references to Poe work in there, which you can then extrapolate to this movie.
Dave RobertsHOST
So yeah, it's very good.
Dave RobertsHOST
I think the thing that I struggled to begin with was...
BelleHOST
Okay, so I think we talked about it in a previous episode.
BelleHOST
I'm just going to bring it up because it's, you know, tis the season.
BelleHOST
Earlier in the year I read What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, which is, for anyone who doesn't know, a retelling of The Fall of the House of Ushers.
BelleHOST
Is that right? Jen, I can feel like your face is judging me.
BelleHOST
Okay, cool.
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