The play was a success, and adaptations soon proliferated across the entertainment industry, beginning with the British movie Gaslight in 1940. Worse still, to keep his wife in the dark, he’s slowly trying to convince her that she’s insane. Manningham was involved in the crime and is now hunting for the hidden riches. When a former detective reveals to her that a previous resident of the house was murdered, leaving behind as-yet-unlocated jewels, it becomes clear that Mr. Bella is made to believe that she’s imagined these observations, too. She then begins to hear noises coming from the attic at night, which coincides with the flickering of the gas lights.Īs lighting a gas lamp can interrupt the flow of gas to other already-lit lamps, the implication is that someone is lighting one in the attic, causing the others to dim. Manningham blames his wife, Bella, for a series of missing belongings, though she has no memory of having done anything with them. In December 1938, London’s Richmond Theatre premiered Patrick Hamilton’s latest play: Gas Light, a psychological thriller set in the 1880s. Its oft-overlooked origin story features appearances by Vincent Price, Ingrid Bergman, and-most importantly-some actual gas lights. To gaslight a person is to psychologically manipulate them into distrusting their own memories or even their entire sense of reality.

While the term gaslighting gets bandied about with casual inaccuracy these days, its definition is a little more complicated than simply lying to someone.

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