Gaslighting in Literature.
- A profoundly important aspect of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is taken to the absolute extreme, with every aspect of the past being constantly altered and treated as if it had never been altered, with dissent to this process punishable by the Ministry of Love.
- Used as a roundabout method of murder in I, Claudius, where Claudius' superstitious brother Germanicus is tormented to death by a variety of inexplicable occurrences. The culprit? His young son Caligula, who got in touch with his inner psycho very early on.
- Joe Pickett: The bad guys in Out of Range uses drugs and psychological trickery to turn game warden Will Jensen's depression into paranoia, which ultimately drives him to suicide. They attempt to do the same thing to Joe when he takes over the post.
- In the novel Kind of Cruel, in keeping with one of the major themes concerning the difference between memories and stories, Jo frequently gaslights Amber, her sister-in-law by being chummy with her one moment, viciously lashing out at her the next, then snapping back to normal and acting like nothing unpleasant transpired at all. Amber herself even notes Jo tends to do this when nobody else is around, making it even harder for Amber to be sure if Jo's behaviour was real or imagined.
- Caroline B. Cooney's Losing Christina trilogy deals with a seemingly charming husband and wife duo who enjoy doing this to young women For the Evulz. The main plot of the series involves one of their latest targets, Christina, figuring out what they've been doing and trying to convince people of their real nature, all the while holding onto her own sanity.
- Elizabeth from Miracle Creek has attacks of rage every few weeks that involve hurting Henry in some way, like pinching or scratching him. Afterwards, she matter-of-factly tells him that he was hurt in some other way, like being scratched by the neighbor's nonexistent cat, and watches his eyes dart back and forth as he tries to figure out which version to believe. If she repeats her lies often enough, Henry will forget what really happened.
- Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: Used on the reader in Well of Ascension. Sazed discovers an ancient Terris document carved in metal, and makes a rubbing, not knowing that the god Ruin can alter any text not written on metal. Ruin subtly changed the details in the prophesy to make it look like it was coming true. That's not the gaslighting part, though, just manipulation. The trick is played on the reader in the quotes in the chapter header. The quotes are from the genuine article, but many appear out of context long before the cast discusses the doctored version, to give the reader a sense of unease. For example, one header says the writer was struck by the hero Alendi's stature and how he towered over others, but the doctored version claims that he was struck by his small stature and the fact that he could still tower over others.
- In Mr. Mercedes, Brady, while ostensibly "fixing" the victim's computer, uses this to drive Olivia to suicide. The offender had stolen the victim's car to drive it into a crowd of people, then rigged the victim's computer to play voices masquerading as those who died in this attack.
- In the V. C. Andrews standalone, My Sweet Audrina, Audrina's whole family engages in gaslighting (particularly to fake the passage of time), leading her to believe she is someone else after her rape.
- Used on the main character as a worthiness test in Neverwhere by producing an illusion of him in the mirror looking like a crazed beggar in the subway instead of a hero in a room in the castle trying to find a magic key. The goal is to make him think he hallucinated the whole book plot until that point, see how low he had fallen and commit a suicide in despair.
- In the children's book The Night It Rained Pancakes (adapted from a Russian folktale), a Russian peasant does this to his impressionable brother not to make his brother question his sanity, but to make their feudal lord question the brother's sanity so he won't believe the brother's claims that gold was discovered on their land.
- In Northanger Abbey, this is one of the tactics that John and Isabella Thrope use to try manipulating Catherine. They insist that Catherine has promised them everything from a dance to a carriage ride to marrying John and then accuse her of either having a poor memory or lying herself when she protests.
- In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Palace of the Red Sun, the Sixth Doctor basically inflicts such a fate on Protector Glavis Judd, a ruthless conqueror who has spent his own career manipulating others by causing problems on other worlds so that he can step in and 'save' the people from their supposedly corrupt rulers. After the Doctor is able to send Judd five hundred years into his own future, he's dismissed as a lunatic who just thinks he's Glavis Judd and is sent to an asylum with others who share that delusion. Judd is last shown no longer sure of his own identity in the face of so many other people proclaiming they're him.
- In the first Percy Jackson and the Olympians novel Chiron and Grover do this to Percy in order to keep him safe from monsters. If a powerful demigod like Percy becomes aware of what he is then his scent gets stronger and attracts even more monsters. When Percy is attacked by a monster both Chiron and Grover act like nothing happened and question if Percy is feeling quite alright. It causes Percy to question his sanity for some time. To give credit to Grover he feels very guilty about it and apologizes to Percy. Chiron never does so.
- The Perfect Run: Several people are trapped in abusive families this way, constantly told about how important their work is, and how the family needs them, and how it's them against the world... special mention goes to Narcinia, who had her mind shattered after Augustus murdered her family. Then he gave her to his friends to raise, and they used her power to make drugs.
- In the Mary Higgins Clark novel Remember Me, a couple goes away for the summer to recuperate from the death of their young son. However, the woman is relentlessly plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and hallucinations about the accident in which he was killed (and she was driving the car, leaving her with considerable Survivor Guilt as well). Her husband insists that she needs to be confined to a mental hospital, but he turns out to be a Red Herring. His concern, while overbearing, was genuine. It turns out that the culprit is his ex-girlfriend, who's trying to drive her insane to the point of killing herself so that she can get him back. The nightmares have been induced by the sounds of the accident and a child's crying being piped into the house—the reader might recall at some point that the ex is a real estate agent and that it was she who "kindly" found the house for them.
- Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not: In "The Adventure of the Madman", Moriarty sprinkles powdered Devil Foot Root on the wood Dr. Seward is burning to heat his asylum: hoping to send the doctor mad so no one will ever believe there was a patient called 'M'.
- A textbook example occurs in a YA novel by Steven Oftinoski that reads in some ways like an homage to The Screaming Skull, right down to its name — The Shrieking Skull. A reclusive widow is being tormented with visions of a skull and recorded screams to make her think she's being haunted by the ghost of her long-dead decapitated lover. This is so that she can be declared insane and put in a mental hospital, thus paving the way for the sale of her old mansion to a greedy developer, a sale that will make the gaslighter rich. It's her seemingly kindly doctor. The plot is only exposed when the Kid Detective starts investigating and the gaslighter, afraid they will be discovered, tries to scare him away with the skull, thus proving it isn't all in her head.
- In Skies of the Empire, Zayne imposes himself on a vulnerable-looking man and insists he's the man's nephew in order to steal archived blueprints. After deflecting answers about himself and plying the man with booze, he seems to fall for it. He actually just starts going along with the ruse until he can suss out what Zayne wants from him, but the ease with which Zayne and Nanette execute the plan suggests they've done it before.
- In Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen, Chaz Perrone is driven insane in many small ways by his wife Joey, whom he thought he had killed.
- In one Sister Fidelma story, a farmer witnesses attacks on his farm that are denied by his wife and neighbor. Their intention is to have him declared mer, insane, so that they can control the silver mine he unwittingly owns. His nervous manner and appearance mean that the local chieftains don't take him seriously.
- Solar Pons:
- In "The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet", the villain is attempting to make the title character believe he is being haunted by an Indian spirit in an attempt to have him either declared insane or to scare him to death.
- In "The Adventure of the Sealed Spire", a country rector approaches Pons after being subjected to a series of malicious pranks designed to make him appear to be going insane, such as hiding his slippers in his secretary's typewriter and murdering a friend's cat and planting the corpse in the rector's holdall.
- In "The Adventure of the Circular Room", the villain uses a specially constructed room in an attempt to drive his aunt—who was recently released from a sanitarium—to relapse into insanity so he can keep control of her fortune. he rotates the circular room while she is asleep so it looks completely different when she wakes up,and then returns it to normal before she can return with anyone to verify her claim.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Roose Bolton doesn't let not knowing what a gaslight is stop him from using this trope. What he does to Jaime and Brienne over a dinner/ meeting/ condescending debriefing in Harrenhal has very strong shades of it, for all it was just over one meal. The selection of an ill-fitting, horrible dress for Brienne (who is well aware that she's not considered attractive), the hard-to-cut food, the top-heavy goblet, and the cutlery provided for Jaime (who recently lost his dominant hand)? Not an accident. And, all tailored to hit both of their egos in some very tender places, make them uneasy... and just to amuse him, while he puts forward his version of events with no spin and no underlying threats or power-plays whatsoever. The thought of staying with him for a month when he's got no particular reason to be good to you should, rightly, make your skin crawl.
- Tywin Lannister has spent pretty much all of Tyrion's life trying to convey how much of a useless disappointment he (and society at large) finds his son to be. And, Tyrion has internalized a lot of the less-than-subtle digs (from assigning him to dangerous, demeaning or both positions to the very horrible "prank" pulled on both Tyrion and his actual daughter-in-law, Tysha), being utterly convinced that people will only ever follow him for money.
- Molly Sterling's ex-husband Rodney in Catherine Anderson's Sweet Nothings was a pro at this, convincing not only those around him but Molly herself that she was unstable and belonged in a mental ward, just so he could get his hands on her family's money.
- In Time and Again, one of the criteria used in choosing a time-traveler was to see how he reacted to apparently reason-defying events: he responded rationally and soon figured out how the testers had tricked him.
- Roald Dahl's The Twits was all about this — the titular dysfunctional couple do it to each other to begin with (for example, adding a small segment to the bottom of a walking stick every day to make the wife think she's shrinking), and have it spectacularly turned on them at the end (they're tricked into gluing themselves to the floor, and end up shrinking down into nothing in their efforts to get themselves unstuck).
- A The Vinyl Cafe short story recounts how a Chinese restaurant owner using this managed to get a bigoted regular customer to slowly feel more and more subconsciously uncomfortable and to stop coming there on his own. Over the course of a year, he slowly increased the portions that the customer received a spoonful at a time, shortened his chair with a file, and changed a painting that he liked to look at while he ate a brushstroke at a time (it used to be a summer scene, and it was turned to a winter scene by the end).
- In the Welcome to Night Vale novel The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, the title character manipulates people's surroundings, especially her "favourite", Chad in order to...persuade Chad to settle down, get married, and have children. Of course, her reasons for wanting him to do that are not particularly benevolent either.
- Where The Drowned Girls Go: The Whitehorn Boarding School of Horrors tells students that their experiences Trapped in Another World aren't real, punishes them for disagreeing, and doesn't let them graduate until they truly believe it. The students enforce this on each other, too, calling Cora's Mark of the Supernatural fake against all evidence.
- In Worm, Imp uses her ability to terrify people by misplacing or stealing their things, moving their furniture, giving them small cuts that they don't remember getting, and so on.
- In Wraith Squadron, Grinder finds himself the victim of a prank of this nature, orchestrated by Face, Phanan, and Kell. It was intentionally vicious (though ultimately harmless) because the other squad members were tired of the pranks he was pulling on them, and pulled the prank as revenge and as a warning for him to stop.
- In You Don't Own Me, Kendra reveals that Martin did this to her, constantly making her feel that she was unstable, incapable of making rational decisions or being paranoid. He also led other people to believe she was a deranged junkie. Kendra even cites the Trope Namer Gaslight by name, telling Laurie that being married to Martin was just like the movie. In particular, he insisted she was imagining things and being a Clingy Jealous Girl when she confronted him about suspected infidelity, only for it to turn out Martin not only was having an affair, he intended to replace Kendra completely with his mistress.
