Edgar Allan Poed

Gothic was a literary form in the late eighteenth century. As a literary 

term, gothic can be defined as the subgenre of the novel with eerie, supernatural 

or horrifying events. Gothic fiction is an European Romantic, portrayed fantastic tales dealing 

with the terrifying, archaic settings, which usually gives shape to concepts of exploration and exploitation of the supernatural and dark, emotional plots that investigate closely to the unconscious human mind.

Not the first but defiantly influential on Gothic literacy would be the well known Edgar Allen Poe.

Famous for many of his works, including Fall of the House of Ushers he uses mystery, madness of the main character, symbolism, dreary landscape, and fatal attractions. 

 

Mystery is very  key technique when it comes to haunted stories cause it give your work structure. Basing your story around a mystery not only makes the audience try to puzzle together sequence, but also question the outcomes. As an artist I've been told by a former art teacher that you work is successful when people question it. 

Madness of the character, or simply the unreliably of the character kind of ties onto the mystery. If the reader finds out that the main character isn't sure, then the audiences final conclusions may vary, its like if a group of people walked in a dark wooded area with one main light. If the light goes out then the group loses course and may cause separation.We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and not we nor the narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood friend, the narrator apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick has a twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response.

Most of the symbolism in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is internal. The main example of symbolism is the physical house itself. The structural "house of Usher" symbolizes the family line or "House of Usher, because family lines of the nobility in England are referred to as "Houses." The family line of the several kings and nobility of England were referred to as the "House of York" or the "House of Lancaster", etc. And adding symbolism is more of the creative aspect that does along with your story, creating a deep understanding, and reading between the lines that the audience will then again have to puzzle together while analyzing the tale.

The Imagery describing the location of the house  was very dark and gloomy, and it set a tone for the rest of the story so dreary landscape would intensify the means of being a horror. That's why all the traditional scary movies, event few current movies take place in the woods or somewhere old and dying, because it intensifies the dark mood.

Lastly fatal attractions, because the narrator was so close to Roderick, when he read "Mad Trist" all heel broke loose. He started to realize the situation he was in and barley escaped the collapsing house.

The use of fatal attractions it like keeping the meat on marinate. The author can linger with story keeping the character attracted to something that will cause a spooky conflict, and have the reader attracted to the anticipation of the characters discovery. Their are many other techniques Poe as well as other gothic romanticists use, but generally These things are what I think come together to create an engaging haunted story. And I bet the next time you watch a movie you will identify these components as well as more and you will see it for more than just the scary movie that scared you and your friends. I did this with Insidious 2 and  The Conjuring, before this blog discussion , before knowing about Poe and now I see where these movies based their story line structure from a lot better.