I was born and raised in Washington, DC, within the actual limits of the city (so not Virginia, not Maryland – I have a DC address and a DC phone number). The city itself is not very large, so when a movie or show is filmed in DC, I can usually tell at least what neighborhood the scene was shot in.
I had never seen The Exorcist before this viewing, but I was struck by the extensiveness of the filming in DC. The famous steep set of stairs that Father Damien falls down to his death near the end of the movie are stairs that I am very familiar with. I remember hiking up and down them with my friends to get from Georgetown down to the Potomac waterfront. I remember climbing them in the dark with my parents after watching the July 4th fireworks from Key Bridge, crossing the Potomac below Georgetown. I have memories of these steps rooted in my actual experiences.
Now, however, since I have seen The Exorcist, a new layer of memories and emotions has been added in my mind when I think of these steps, a layer that is no longer rooted in physical experience.
The setting of this movie in DC, a place so familiar and important to me, has served to influence my emotional response to the death of Father Damien more so maybe than for my classmates. If this movie was set anywhere else in the world, I would not have this same mixing of reality and horror in my mind as I do now. In the future, I’ll stand on that middle landing and think about both a dead man and a stunning fireworks show, even though only one of those events is real.
DC has taken extra lengths to integrate reality and horror in this place. In October of 2015, the Mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, declared that these steps would be a DC Tourist Site. You can watch the video of her doing so in a news segment by ABC here. These places are firmly linked, a blending of physical and fake, and now a set of stairs that will always have two layers of memories for me, all because of my deep connection to Washington, DC.