The Exorcist Steps

This guide to the steps beside M Street in Georgetown starts with a 1973 stunt double's tumble down all seventy-five stone stairs for the film The Exorcist, and the padding crews rigged to keep him safe. It goes back to 1895, when George Killeen built the steps as a plain public right of way beside a cable-car barn belonging to the Capital Traction Company's cable-car operation. Long before the movie, locals had already nicknamed them the Hitchcock steps, half tribute to suspense films, half a joke about how steep they looked.