Georgetown Historic District
Georgetown Ghost Tours is the Washington product of Alexandria Colonial Tours, the Old Town Alexandria company that says it has run ghost tours since 1985 and whose current owner, per its team page, has run it since June 2001. The Georgetown site names Glenridge Tours, 201 King Street, Suite 302, Alexandria, as the operator; the Destination DC listing spells it Glenn Ridge Tours at the same address. The walk is new in 2026: the site carries a 2026 copyright line, its booking page lists twelve Friday-to-Sunday dates from October 16 to November 8, 2026, and its first traveler reviews are dated October 2026.
The tour meets outside the Truist Bank at 2929 M Street NW, at 30th Street, and runs about 90 minutes. Its listed itinerary opens outside the Old Stone House at 3051 M Street NW, which the National Park Service says was built in 1765 and is the oldest structure on its original foundation in Washington. It continues through Georgetown's streets to St. John's Church on O Street, where construction began in 1796 and the church was consecrated in 1809, with an exterior designed in the Federal style by William Thornton, according to DC Historic Sites. It passes the Halcyon at 3400 Prospect Street and ends at the Exorcist Steps, the stairway beside the former Capital Traction Company streetcar station of 1895 to 1897, which the National Park Service notes figures in the 1973 film The Exorcist.
Sources
- https://www.georgetownghosttour.com/
- https://www.alexcolonialtours.com/georgetown-tours
- https://www.alexcolonialtours.com/
- https://www.alexcolonialtours.com/the-team
- https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/glenn-ridge-tours
- https://www.nps.gov/places/old-stone-house.htm
- https://historicsites.dcpreservation.org/items/show/526
- https://www.nps.gov/places/capital-traction-company-union-station-exorcist-steps.htm
Apparitions
These are the tour's own claims and what outside sources say about the names it uses. They are legend, not established fact. The stop-by-stop stories below come from the itinerary the operator publishes for the tour.
Outside the Old Stone House, the itinerary says, the guides tell of eleven ghosts said to linger inside. At the Halcyon it teases a former resident it calls Georgetown's most eccentric, who it says has not let death stop his life's work. At St. John's Church the guides tell of spirits seen and heard nearby; the itinerary does not tie a haunting to the church itself.
The "Witches of Georgetown" is a name that WETA's Boundary Stones and The Georgetowner tie to Margaret Ann and Belle Laurie, spiritualist mediums who held séances in a Georgetown townhouse in the 19th century. WETA places the house where 3327 N Street NW stands today and repeats the story that Belle levitated a piano while she played. It judges it likely that the Lauries used stage tricks, reports that Mary Todd Lincoln was among their clients, and notes that their later claim that President Lincoln visited their parlor rests on a single 1891 memoir, adding that there is no real evidence he believed in the séances.
The tour ends at the Exorcist Steps, where its website says the guides reveal the facts behind the possession case that inspired the film.
Notable Entities
The Witches of Georgetown (tied by WETA to Margaret Ann and Belle Laurie)
Where this legend is told
