Thursday, May 2, 2024

The True Story of the St Louis House That Inspired The Exorcist

the exorcist house

“Because the real thing,” this priest explains to me, “is more frightening than the movies. When you are in the room and someone is possessed, the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Sometimes you hear it in the voice, you hear the hate in the voice. At the end of the day, what keeps “The Exorcist” alive in people’s imaginations are the questions it poses about good and evil and the reality of possession. In the 1960s, Blatty had a hard time finding cases that had the ring of truth about them, but in recent decades the number of exorcisms seems to have increased considerably.

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Most Embassy Row tours don’t venture far beyond Dupont Circle. This stretch of Massachusetts Avenue used to be called Millionaires Row where Gilded Age robber-barons built grand mansions. Today those mansions house most of Washington’s embassies, along with private clubs and statues of world heroes such as Mandela, Gandhi, and Churchill – and we will be right in the heart of it. If it was ever here at all, it could have been placed there just for the movie. The interior sequences of the psychiatric ward were captured at Goldwater Memorial Hospital, part of Coler Specialty Hospital. Once located at One Main Street on the south end of Roosevelt Island, the chronic care facility is now permanently closed.

the exorcist house

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The last person to occupy the residence, a man named Elvis Fantroy, left the building in June and hasn't been heard from since. "That's what they say," acknowledges Jean Kustura, a 72-year-old widow who for twenty years has kept watch over the north St. Louis County neighborhood from her bungalow on the other side of the infamous house. "But all of that happened back in the 1940s. I'm told the victim is still alive. He won't talk about it."

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The exorcist explained that Karras’ self-assertion is itself a kind of despair, a forgetting of the power of God. The town is called Cottage City, Maryland (near Brentwood Maryland). Maybe there was an exorcism there, but not the house from the movie. As a matter of fact, the house was plowed over and is a vacant lot now. It was during an exorcism by a Catholic priest that Roland slipped free of his restraint, broke a bedspring from underneath the mattress and used it to attack the priest, halting the exorcism and leaving the priest needing stitches. It was around this time that the family decided to move to St. Louis to seek further help, and where 8435 Roanoke Dr. became their new home.

The Exorcism of Roland Doe

“The Exorcism” is produced by “Scream” scribe Kevin Williamson, Ben Fast, and Bill Block. It wrapped filming in late 2019 but has been sitting on a shelf ever since. And Vasiliki Maliaros, who played the mother of Father Karras (Jason Miller), also passed away during production in February 1973 at age 89. Burstyn, who was 40 during the shoot, recalls being pushed to the brink filming the punishing sequence over and over again.

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The Exorcist House - Washington, D.C. 3600 Prospect Street Northwest - Washington , DC 20007

Said fence was closed when I stalked The Exorcist home, but I did find some Google Street View imagery in which it was open. As you can see below, despite the missing wing and mansard roof, the house is still very recognizable from its time onscreen. “Renting slip space in Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard, and in the Boat Basin on Nantucket, we would split the week fishing off each island, catching bluefish wherever we heard they were running,” wrote Mark, who now lives in Bethesda. Mark Koenig used to spend summers in his uncle’s house on Buzzards Bay in North Falmouth, Mass., where he and his cousin Dan had regular use of a 28-foot sport fishing boat.

the exorcist house

Nonetheless, when it was first released on the big screen in 1973, it caused quite a stir. A troubled actor’s erratic behavior on a supernatural film set sparks concern for his daughter, who questions if his struggles stem from addiction or something more ominous. Friedkin, who died in August at age 87, said his first brush with “bad karma” during production came when the statue of Pazuzu — the film’s evil spirit — didn’t arrive in Mosul, Iraq, as planned. The prop, which was built in and shipped from Burbank, California, mysteriously wound up in faraway Denmark instead. Unfortunately for history buffs, the house was built in 1950 and is really just an ordinary house. In 1993, author Thomas B. Allen wrote a book on the story of Roland Doe’s exorcism called Possessed.

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The priests — playing as the “Demons” — defeated the “Exorcists,” 45-44. Whether the child was actually possessed is still a matter of debate, but the fact that priests did perform the archaic ritual of the exorcism is not. Stafford, a real-estate investor who has never lived in the three-bedroom house, says he became aware of the "rumors" only after he purchased it out of bankruptcy this summer.

The scenes where the possessed Regan's head rotates so she appears to be looking directly backwards drew notice from audiences and critics. "All I can tell you is that the way you think I did it is not the way we did it," Friedkin told Castle of Frankenstein at the time.[28] Like the film's other special effects, it was performed live. While the movie was based on the 1971 novel by William Blatty, it was a real-life story that was the original inspiration for the chilling tale. Instead of a 12-year-old girl, it was a 14-year-old boy who was believed to have suffered from demonic possession, and 8435 Roanoke Dr. was his home during the peak of his bizarre activity.

A two-level brick house, it’s privately owned so it’s not possible to visit inside, but you can take a casual stroll down the residential cul-de-sac and observe the home where this spooky paranormal activity took place. On December 26 a movie called The Exorcist opened in theatres across the country and since then all Hell has broken loose. The MacNeils prepare to leave, and Father Dyer says goodbye. Despite having no memory of her ordeal, Regan, moved by the sight of Dyer's clerical collar, kisses him on the cheek. As the MacNeils leave, Chris gives Dyer the medallion found in Regan's room. Dyer briefly examines the steps where Karras died before walking away.

The 1973 horror classic The Exorcist was mainly filmed on soundstages in New York city, but there were several exteriors shot in Georgetown, where the film is set. The house where the possession takes place still stands, however a large fence runs in front of it now. The wing of the house which overlooks the infamous steps is noticeably absent, owing to the fact that it was only a facade built by the studio especially for the film.

Permission was obtained from the archbishop to perform another exorcism. Another priest was asked to assist, and he stated that marks inexplicably appeared on the boy’s body, along with words such as ‘evil’ and ‘hell’ – he also had his nose broken by Roland during the violent exorcism. It was 11 days after this strange activity had started that Roland’s Aunt Harriet passed away, that poltergeist activity began to be experienced in the home. It is said that in an attempt to contact his Aunt, Roland took to the Ouija board once more, and it was through this attempt at contact that he became possessed by a demonic spirit. The house used in the Exorcist movie is located at 3600 Prospect Street NW in Georgetown, Washington DC and is probably one of the most (in)famous movie locations in the history of cinema. And the 75 steep stairs right beside it, which lead down from Prospect to M Street, were actually designated a Historic Landmark in 2015.

You can find the concrete stairs descending from the corner of 36th & Prospect Streets. Following the film, the location has gained cult significance among fans. Burstyn’s first scene was filmed outside the Healy Hall, a historic venue within the premises of Georgetown University. This is the house that inspired the book (upon which the film was based).

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