Georgetown's 1879 landmark, center of a campus legend about a sealed fifth floor and a clock-tower death, and the backdrop for The Exorcist.
3700 O Street NW, Washington, DC 20057
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The campus is generally open to visitors; Healy Hall's exterior and Gaston Hall (when not in use) are the public highlights. No admission fee.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Hilltop campus with steps and sloped walkways; accessible routes exist but the grounds are hilly.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1879 · Flagship building of Georgetown University, the oldest Jesuit university in the US · National Historic Landmark · Designed by Smithmeyer and Pelz, architects of the Library of Congress · Associated with the 1973 film The Exorcist
Healy Hall is the architectural centerpiece of Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States. Construction began in 1877 and the building was substantially completed by 1879, designed in the High Victorian Gothic style by the firm of Smithmeyer and Pelz, who later designed the Library of Congress. Its clock tower rises above the Potomac and is visible across much of the western edge of Washington.
The building is named for Patrick Francis Healy, who served as Georgetown's president from 1873 to 1882 and drove the construction of the new hall. Inside, Healy contains Gaston Hall, an ornate auditorium used for major university events, and the Riggs Library, a rare cast-iron stack library.
Healy Hall was designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It remains in active academic and ceremonial use.
The building gained national recognition in 1973 when the campus served as a setting for the film The Exorcist. Author William Peter Blatty, a Georgetown alumnus, drew on a 1949 exorcism case he learned about as a student. Healy Hall's tower and the steep stone steps below the campus, now widely known as the Exorcist steps, are associated with the film, cementing the building's place in popular culture.
Sources
Healy Hall is the focus of Georgetown's best-known campus lore. The central legend concerns a fifth floor that, according to the university, does not and never did exist, but which students have long pointed to as the source of unexplained sounds. A related tale holds that a young Jesuit was crushed to death by the hands of the clock while working in the tower, offered as an explanation for noises overhead.
The more practical history behind the sealed-off tower is mundane: access to the clock hands was restricted after students repeatedly stole them as pranks, a tradition documented in the student press. That real explanation sits alongside the supernatural versions in campus retellings.
The exorcism strand of the lore connects to The Exorcist. William Peter Blatty, who graduated from Georgetown in 1950, based his novel on a 1949 exorcism case he encountered as a student; the film used the campus as a backdrop, and the building and the nearby stone steps became fixtures of Halloween-season ghost coverage in Washington. As with most college ghost stories, the accounts are folkloric and passed between student generations rather than the product of formal investigation.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk the front lawn and exterior of Healy Hall, view the clock tower, and see Gaston Hall and the Carroll statue. The building is the architectural centerpiece of the Georgetown campus.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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