Poe’s stories “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” exemplify the most important features of the gothic genre. In both stories the setting is on a desolate place, in a gothic building, and we know from the beginning of the stories that something horrible will happen. In “Ligeia” it is a gloomy abbey “in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England” (Poe 56) and in “The Fall of the House of Usher” it is a melancholic mansion in a “dreary tract of country” (Poe 76). Both stories are about death which is shown in a disturbing way, but also about illness and people’s fears. Ligeia and Roderick look like dead people or ghosts and suffer from unusual illnesses. The characters in the stories are also aware of strange sounds, but first they think that it is just imagination and later they are scared. In both cases the dead return to life, but we do not know if they have actually been dead. The narrator in Ligeia is an opium addict, so that can also be interpreted as only his imagination. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” Roderick says that they have put her living in the tomb. All in all, these elements make the stories mysterious and they are elements of gothic stories.