In classic gothic fiction, another essential characteristic is doppelganger, a ghostly counterpart of a character, and Poe incorporated it massively in "The Fall of the House of Usher." To specify, Lady Madeline is a parallel of Roderick Usher; the twin sister is the identical "ghost " to him and haunted him, resulting in his insanity and death. Likewise, Roderick Usher could be deemed as a doppelganger of the narrator. Upon entering the mansion, the narrator's loss of reason was destined; he was influenced by the gloom, depression of Roderick Usher, forcing him to abandon his rational mind instinctively. Aside from human figures, the family mansion itself could have and could be doppelganger.The mansion seemed to be a family curse to its owner and haunted the spirit of its proprietor at this moment. Besides, before entering the house, the narrator gazed upon the surrounding tarn "" a atmosphere. in the form of an inelastic vapor or gas "dull, sluggish, and faintly discernable."along with the house's reflection in the tarn. The reflection haunted the house itself. By embodying multiple doppelganger, not only did Poe boost the intense spook, but he reached a unprecedented success of unifying terror and literary beauty.
As the story moving forward, more and more unexpected events popped out and what capture us in surprise were Lady Madeline's burial, her reappearance, as well as the collapse of the house in the end. However, these terrifying events aren't the only factors giving rise to readers' anxiety; what prickles our nerves is the foreshadowing. When describing the interior of the house, the narrator was reminded of "a wood-work which [had] rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air " which foreshadows Lady Madeline's entombment in a vault which was "small, damp and utterly without means of admission of light.