In the dark shadows of the Rue Morgue, to the rhythm of the stolen, tell-tale heart, as the black cat swings on the pendulum, and the cast offers its sherry deep and dry.

As you know, get our chain back over. We open and assure you in.

Our sleepless tales for you in store, and the terror shall be lifted. Never more.

Raise yourself for the no-sleep podcast.

Welcome to the no-sleep podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings.

If you're a writer, a crafter of words, a person who conjures stories from your mind onto the page, then you've likely heard one of the cardinal rules of writing. Write what you know.

That is, write about things you know about or have experienced. And if you're a horror writer, well may god have mercy on your soul, but also you'll know about the cardinal rule of horror writing.

Write about what scares you. So you're to combine the things you know with the things that scare you.

Is it any wonder why so many horror stories involve family members doing weird, creepy, harmful, or downright awful things?

Most of us have families, so we have parents or siblings or children in our life. And when it comes to being scared by them, well that can take on many different forms.

Whether your family members are trying to harm you or whether you're terrified of something doing harm to them, horror is ripe for tales involving our family, and the darkness found within or without.

In this episode, we're presenting tales with a familiar and familial premise. And if you know the writing of Ed Guralin Poe, you'll know to be familiar with one of his best known tales, the fall of the house of Usher.

And as an aside, I hope you're like me and anxiously awaiting the Netflix series of the same name created by our friend Mike Flanagan, and starring honorary no sleepers, Kate Siegel, and Samantha Sloyen among many other stars.

It'll be coming out a little later in the year, so consider this a wetting of the appetite, so to speak.

The story is about a man who visits the Usher mansion, old and crumbling, to discover therein, Roderick Usher, a frail and timid man.

He lives there with his infirmed sister, Madeline. We learn that Roderick fears the demise of himself, his family line, and the Usher estate itself upon his passing.

Here's a short passage which outlines Usher's melancholy.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin, to the severe and long continued illness, indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative on earth.

Her decease, he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, would leave him, him the hopeless and the frail, the last of the ancient race of the Usher's.

Yes, family bonds can be ones which strengthen and uphold us, but they can also bind us and force us to suffer a loss of self, truly a fertile ground for inspiring horror.

And now, our tales come to you upon a midnight dreary, best not to ponder them while weak and weary.

In our first tale, we meet two sisters. The younger sister used to tease her older sister because she was afraid of something quite uncommon, the wind.

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