A house on the border of Cottage City and Mount Rainier that inspired “The Exorcist” has new owners, and they were not aware of its storied past before buying it.

The three-bedroom bungalow was the site of the exorcism of a 14-year-old boy in 1949 that was reported in the Washington Post, inspiring a Georgetown student named William Peter Blatty to write a best-selling book and screenplay, which eventually became a supernatural horror film in 1973 winning two Oscars.

New owners Danielle Witt and Ben Rockey-Harris told Washingtonian  they did all their research on the home, but did not realize the house’s past, though it did explain why they were able to buy the house so cheap.

That may be by design. The Post story describes the teen as “a Mount Rainier boy” — which led to a long-running local legend that the house was on Bunker Hill Road, where a small park with a gazebo now stands.

The park was nicknamed “Satan’s Lot” and some local parents even refused to let their children play there.

But Greenbelt historian Mark Opsasnick made a convincing case in 1999 that the house was actually in Cottage City, and Exorcist-fans have been known to show up in the driveway and snap a photo — even though the movie changed the house to an upscale Georgetown manor that looks nothing like it.

You can read the Washington Post story from 1949, “Priest Frees Mount Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip,” here.

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