Here is a word you have almost certainly used this year: gaslighting. Here is where it comes from: a 1944 film about a man searching his own attic, night after night, for a dead opera singer's hidden jewels. The jewels are not a detail in that film. They are the entire plot, and the psychological torture the title now describes was simply the means of looking for them without his wife noticing.

That is the thesis of this piece. Halloween-season films, horror most of all, but not only horror, use jewellery constantly, as texture, as costume, as something glinting in low light. But every so often a piece of jewellery stops being decoration and becomes the mechanism the story actually runs on, the thing the plot cannot resolve without. Six of those, in roughly the order film history produced them, in the same spirit as our profile of Attilio Codognato, the Venetian jeweller whose own signature was skulls, snakes and poison rings, the same territory this season keeps returning to.

In Brief: across six films that define the Halloween watchlist, in Gaslight (1944), a dead opera singer's royal jewels, sewn into a stage costume instead of kept in a case, are the entire motive for the film's psychological abuse, which is where the word "gaslighting" comes from. Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Hereditary (2018) both use a pendant as the physical proof of a conspiracy the heroine can't yet see. Crimson Peak (2015) marries its heroine with a ring slipped off the finger of the woman who will try to kill her. Practical Magic's Owens family symbols went from 1998 film to a real, buyable fine jewellery collection in 2026. And Netflix's Wednesday gave its heroine an obsidian talisman that is, within the show's own logic, a genuine conduit to the dead.

The one that gave us a word: Gaslight (1944)

Opera singer Alice Alquist is murdered in her London home; her jewels, a gift from a royal admirer, vanish with her. Ten years later, her niece Paula returns to the same house, newly married to the charming pianist who accompanied her singing lessons, and who now spends his nights convincing her she is losing her mind: moving objects, dimming the gas lamps, insisting she imagined it. He is, we eventually learn, her aunt's murderer, and he married Paula for one reason only, to search the house he could never fully search the night he killed for the jewels.

The jewels themselves turn up exactly where Alice Alquist hid them: sewn onto the costume she wore as the Empress Theodora, in plain sight the entire time. George Cukor's film, and the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play it adapted, gave the English language its term for sustained psychological manipulation designed to make someone doubt their own perception, and the manipulation in question exists for no reason beyond a missing set of jewels. Take the jewels out of Gaslight and there is no gaslighting left to name.

The pendant that smells of warning: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Minnie Castevet gives Rosemary a silver pendant filled with "tannis root," insisting it will bring good luck, after Rosemary has noticed the same charm on Terry, a young woman staying with the Castevets, who dies within days. The pendant smells wrong. Rosemary tries, mildly, to refuse it, and is talked into wearing it anyway, the first in a long sequence of small concessions that end with her unknowingly carrying a child conceived for her neighbours' coven.

Tannis root isn't real; Ira Levin invented it for the novel. What the pendant is, functionally, is the film's clearest physical evidence of the conspiracy closing around Rosemary, worn by two women in sequence, the second of whom doesn't yet understand what it means that she has it. Objects with a reputation for being cursed or dangerous tend to outlive the stories that made them famous; for how that happens to real gemstones, not fictional ones, our piece on the opal curse covers the same mechanism at work on an actual stone. By the time a man dressed as the Pope extends a ring for Rosemary to kiss in her drugged dream, set with a charm identical to the one around her own neck, the pendant has stopped being jewellery and become a brand.

The sigil hiding in plain sight: Hereditary (2018)

Annie Graham's mother, Ellen, wears a pendant shaped around an odd, geometric symbol, glimpsed at the film's opening funeral; Annie is seen wearing it too. The same shape turns up carved into a telephone pole, scratched into attic walls, painted in blood. By the time the third act names it, the symbol has already appeared so many times that a second viewing of the film plays almost like a different movie.

It is the seal of King Paimon, taken from the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a real seventeenth-century grimoire, and director Ari Aster drew on the genuine seal instead of inventing a prop symbol of his own. The necklace is, within the film's logic, not a decorative object at all but a mark of ownership, worn by a woman whose relationship to her own grandchildren turns out to have been liturgical, not familial. Ellen didn't give her family jewellery. She marked her congregation.

The ring taken from the wrong woman: Crimson Peak (2015)

Thomas Sharpe proposes to the wealthy, grieving Edith Cushing with a ring. The detail most people miss on a first watch, because the film gives you so much else to look at, is where that ring came from: it is a Sharpe family heirloom that his sister Lucille wears, and Thomas asks for it off her finger, promising to give it back. It goes back, in the end, the way it went back from every previous wife: Lucille takes it.

Guillermo del Toro's costume designer, Kate Hawley, built the whole film around a visual language of Victorian mourning, Lucille as the moth and Edith as the butterfly, with Edith's belt borrowing the clasped hands of mourning jewellery and Hawley drawing on the hairwork mourners wore for their dead. Our own edit on wearing memento mori jewellery covers the real antiques this kind of costume design borrows from. The ring is the one piece of actual jewellery the plot depends on, and its origin, quietly stated and easy to let pass, tells you everything about what kind of marriage Edith has walked into before a single ghost appears.

The symbols that became real jewellery: Practical Magic (1998, and 2026)

The 1998 film gave the Owens sisters a visual shorthand instead of a single named piece: belladonna, the herbs and charms of a kitchen full of spells, the symbols of a family curse running back centuries. Nearly thirty years later, with the sequel arriving in 2026, the fine jewellery brand Awe Inspired turned that iconography into an actual, purchasable collection with Warner Bros.: a belladonna crystal charm necklace and potion-vial pendant, a Deathwatch Beetle signet ring set with tiger's eye or lapis, dandelion drop earrings, each piece built around a symbol the Owens women would recognise.

This is the one entry on this list where the line between the film's jewellery and your own jewellery box has actually dissolved. A fictional family's private mythology is, as of this year, something you can actually wear, which says something about how thoroughly this particular film's symbols outlived the film itself.

The talisman that actually works: Wednesday (2022–)

Morticia gives her daughter an obsidian pendant, engraved with their shared initial, as she leaves her at boarding school, explaining that Aztec priests used obsidian to conjure visions and calling it a symbol of their connection. Wednesday, characteristically, calls it a "toe-curling tchotchke." By the end of the season, the necklace turns out to do exactly what Morticia said, and more: it becomes the conduit through which her ancestor Goody Addams reaches into the physical world, passing through Wednesday to heal her wound.

Most jewellery across these films carries meaning the audience has to decode. The obsidian talisman is unusual for saying, out loud, in the dialogue, precisely what it does, and then doing it. It is perhaps the most honest piece of jewellery on this list: a gift that is exactly as magical as the person giving it claims, which in this genre is rarer than you'd think.

Quick Reference

FilmYearThe pieceWhat it actually does
Gaslight1944Royal jewels, sewn onto a costumeThe entire motive for the plot; origin of "gaslighting"
Rosemary's Baby1968Tannis root pendantMarks the heroine as the coven's property
Hereditary2018Paimon's sigil necklaceA real demonological seal, worn as a mark of ownership
Crimson Peak2015A wedding ring, taken from LucilleReveals the marriage's true mechanics before the plot does
Practical Magic1998 / 2026Owens family symbolsBecame a real, buyable collection with the 2026 sequel
Wednesday2022–The obsidian talismanDoes exactly what it's said to do: a literal conduit to the dead

Why jewellery works so well across these films

Jewellery is small, personal, and worn against the skin, which makes it an unusually efficient way to show a story without saying it. A dress can be read at a distance; a necklace invites a closer look, and these films, horror and dark fairy tale alike, favour objects that reward the audience for leaning in. It also travels between people in a way few other costume pieces do, passed from victim to victim in Rosemary's Baby, taken from one wife and given to the next in Crimson Peak, handed from mother to daughter in Wednesday. A ring or a pendant can change hands on screen in a single shot, and every time it does, it's quietly telling you who has power over whom.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the word "gaslighting" come from?

From the 1944 film Gaslight, and the 1938 play it was adapted from, in which a husband psychologically manipulates his wife to cover up his search for her murdered aunt's hidden jewels. The term now describes any sustained manipulation designed to make someone doubt their own perception or memory.

Is Paimon's sigil in Hereditary a real symbol?

Yes. The symbol is the seal of the demon king Paimon from the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a real seventeenth-century grimoire, rather than an original prop symbol designed for the film.

Can I actually buy Practical Magic jewellery?

Yes, as of 2026. The fine jewellery brand Awe Inspired released a collaboration with Warner Bros. for Practical Magic 2, built around the Owens family's symbols: belladonna, Deathwatch Beetles, dandelions and potion motifs, in sterling silver and gold, some set with tiger's eye, lapis or lab-grown stones.

What is "tannis root" in Rosemary's Baby?

A fictional herb invented by author Ira Levin, with no real-world counterpart, placed inside a pendant that the Castevet coven gives first to one young woman and then, after her death, to Rosemary herself.

Is the obsidian talisman in Wednesday a real kind of stone use?

Obsidian itself is real, a naturally occurring volcanic glass, and it has a real history of use in various cultures, including by some Mesoamerican peoples, for scrying and divination tools such as mirrors. The show's specific claim that it can act as a conduit for a specific ancestor's spirit is part of its own fictional mythology, not a documented historical practice.

Sources: Wikipedia (Gaslight, Rosemary's Baby, Hereditary, Crimson Peak, Practical Magic, Wednesday); Daily Kos and AFI Catalog on Gaslight; Filmsite on Rosemary's Baby; SlashFilm on Hereditary; FIDM Museum and Frock Flicks on Crimson Peak costume design; The Zoe Report and WWD on the Awe Inspired x Practical Magic 2 collection; Wikiquote and the Addams Family Fandom wiki on the Obsidian Talisman, accessed September-October 2026.