Georgetown Ghost Tour & Exorcist Steps Night Walk DC

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.78 (769 reviews) 87% rated it 5 stars

Free cancellationTravelers' pickLikely to sell out

1/10

Duration1h 30m

GroupUp to 15

LanguagesEN

Mobile ticketAccepted

Georgetown's Haunted Houses & the Real Story Behind The Exorcist

You'll walk Georgetown's haunted streets at night with a licensed guide, hear documented stories of deaths, curses, and Civil War hospital hauntings, see the Old Stone House yard and the real Exorcist Steps, and finish in 90 minutes. Family-friendly but genuinely unsettling — the kind of tour that sticks with you after dark.

1h 30m

Step-by-step itinerary

Nighttime haunted Georgetown walking tour

Hear stories at Old Stone House
Visit Civil War hospital apartments
Walk spooky streets with ghost stories
Stroll old high street shops
See haunted 18th-century home
Walk cobblestone streets by Georgetown University
Visit the Exorcist Steps

The Experience

The Old Stone House sits quiet on the Georgetown street, but the guide mentions something about a boy who died there centuries ago and never quite left. You weren't expecting that part — the tour description said family-friendly, and it is, but there's a weight to these stories that hits different when you're standing in front of the actual building at night, the windows dark, the cobblestones under your feet older than the country. The guide walks you through what happened in this 18th-century home, the documented accounts, the letters people left behind. It's the kind of history that doesn't make it into the textbooks.

The walk moves through Georgetown's Victorian row houses and tree-lined blocks, and the guide points out which apartments nobody stays in for long — the ones that used to be Civil War hospitals, full of the kind of suffering that apparently doesn't fade. You pass the campus of Georgetown University at night, the dark spires visible above the cobblestones, and hear about Abraham Lincoln's son and a nanny whose attachment to her charges outlasted her own life. There's a house where the ghost of a man who hated electricity still flickers the lights. None of it feels like a gimmick when you're actually there, walking the same streets, listening to the documented stories and the local legends tangled together.

The tour ends at the Exorcist Steps, the actual staircase from the horror film, and the guide explains how the movie was based on a real Georgetown incident. You walk down the creepy stairs at night — yes, you do — and it's the kind of moment that makes you understand why this neighborhood has held onto these stories for so long. The whole thing takes 90 minutes, includes access to the yard of the oldest haunted building, and you've got a licensed guide the whole way. It's not a jump-scare experience; it's more like someone opened a door to the neighborhood's actual past and let you look inside.

What’s included

Your 90-minute tour includes a licensed guide leading you through Georgetown's haunted streets at night, access to the yard of the Old Stone House (the oldest residence in DC), stories about deaths and curses documented in historical letters and journals, a walk past the Civil War hospital building with its lingering reputation, views of Georgetown University's dark spires on the cobblestones, and the walk down the famous Exorcist Steps from the horror film based on a true local story.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPets welcomePublic transport nearby

Operated by DC by Foot

Is this one for you?Book this if you want Georgetown's darker history told by someone who knows the documented stories and the local legends — the 90-minute nighttime format and licensed guide mean you get the atmosphere and the facts without arranging a private historian or wandering the neighborhood guessing which houses have the stories.