After its collapse, the foreboding ruins of Usher House lay untouched for 160 years outside Crowley, Virginia, until Roderick Usher and his sister, Madeleine, both physicians, rebuilt it as a sanatorium. Gloom and a sense of dread permeate this new house, too, and the modern Roderick, like his ancestor, is troubled by strange visions and mounting feelings of terror, especially concerning the health of his sister. Madeleine, who insists she is fine, grows paler and weaker by the day. With no one else to turn to for help, Roderick calls his old friend and former college roommate, John Charles Poe. Poe is a reporter for Crowley's weekly paper - a job he took years ago, to prove to his father he wasn't a worthless son. Though he has long since inherited the family fortune, he hangs on at the paper for the same reason he drinks too much bourbon - it has become a daily habit. On his thirtieth birthday, John Charles Poe received the most unusual part of his legacy - the casket, a three-foot-long wooden box containing the personal papers, journals, and literary notes of the Poe men, including Edgar Allan, whose notes on his classic short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," may contain the key to saving Madeleine and Roderick, the last of the Ushers.