Haunted Georgetown

11. Exorcist Steps

Washington, DC

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From the canal, backtrack up the canal towpath, cross the red bridge and go uphill from the side of the canal at the red footbridge and turn left to walk through Francis Scott Key Bridge Park. Cross M street at 36th Street between the Car Barn and the gas station and walk to the back of the parking lot. Walk all the way up these stairs and then turn around to look down the way you came. This stairwell was made famous by an appearance in the climactic scene of the 1973 film, The Exorcist, based on the novel by Georgetown graduate, William Peter Blatty. Blatty was inspired by his time at Georgetown in the 1940s, including stories of local exorcisms and hauntings on the Georgetown campus. In the film, the priest finally gets the demon out of the possessed girl, but is possessed himself in the process, and is flung out of a window of the house on the west side of the stairway into the stairs and falls, tumbling all the way down to his apparent death. As you can see, the house at 3600 Prospect Street does not have a wall directly above the stairs, and the filmmakers had to build a false facade matching the existing house in order to stage a fall from the house window.