Bethesda home of ‘Exorcist’ author on the market for $3.2M

The Georgian Colonial mansion in the Burning Tree area of Bethesda boasts a host of luxury amenities fit for a famous author and Oscar winner. (Courtesy Homevisit)

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WASHINGTON — It was a terrifying novel about a possessed 12-year-old girl in Georgetown that made William Peter Blatty famous.

Now, the Bethesda manse where the late “Exorcist” author and wife Julie Alicia Blatty made their home for the past 16 years — and that may just be home to a friendly spirit — is on the market for $3.2 million.

The home at 7018 Longwood Dr. in the Burning Tree area of Bethesda, boasts six bedrooms, five full bathrooms, two half-baths and a host of luxury amenities and finishes fit for a famous author and Oscar winner. (William Blatty, who died in January at 89 multiple myeloma, won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay of the 1973 film adaptation of “The Exorcist.”)

Blatty had long-standing ties to the area, having earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Georgetown University in the 1950s.

But before moving to Bethesda, the Blattys had been living on the West Coast — in Mendocito, California.

The home was beautiful, but not quite their style at first, Julie Blatty told WTOP.

“We lived a much more casual, California life style,” she said. “Although the home is very dramatic and could be lived in a very formal way, we chose to put our favorite color, which was kind of a terra cotta, on the walls and to try to make it homy and less formal, with the use of color.”

The Georgian Colonial, built in 1988 by Rockville-based residential and commercial design firm Jeffco, features a two-story foyer with an imperial staircase, embassy-sized dining room and cherry-paneled study, according to a brochure provided to WTOP by Kara Sheehan, with Washington Fine Properties, the listing agent for the home.

The home’s lower level also features an indoor pool with electric cover, sauna, spa and theater room.

The Washington Post first reported the listing.

Did the home ever provide any inspiration for the master of horror? Any strange goings-on or anything that went bump in the night?

Well, yes, actually, Julie Blatty said.

“That kind of followed us wherever we went,” she said.

The couple’s 19-year-old son, Peter, died while the couple was living in the home, “and Peter made his presence very felt,” Julie Blatty said. In fact, William Blatty ended up writing about their experiences in the memoir “Finding Peter: A True Story of the Hand of Providence and Evidence of Life after Death.”

“He mentions some of the things that happened in the house,” Julie Blatty said. “[It was] nothing spooky or scary, just interesting phenomena that led us to believe just because of an accumulation of incidents that it was just the beneficent touch of our son, Peter, letting us know he was still with us and was happy.”