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For generations of Indianapolis teenagers, there was one place you went if you wanted to prove you were brave.
You drove out toward Fall Creek Road.
You found the secluded property hidden among the trees.
And somewhere in the darkness, you looked for the blue lights.
According to one of Indiana's most enduring urban legends, an eccentric millionaire lived there alone, mourning the death of his beloved wife. Unable to let her go, he supposedly preserved her body inside a glass coffin within his home.
Around her coffin burned eerie blue lights.
Vicious dogs guarded the property.
And anyone foolish enough to trespass might discover that the strange stories whispered about the place were true.
Indianapolis knew it simply as the House of Blue Lights.
There was only one problem with the story.
The dead wife in the glass coffin never existed.
But almost everything surrounding that legend was strange enough that perhaps Indianapolis never needed to invent her in the first place.
The man at the center of the story was Skiles Edward Test, a wealthy Indianapolis businessman, inventor, real estate investor, and heir to a prominent local family.
In 1913, Test purchased a farmhouse at 6700 Fall Creek Road and moved there with his first wife, Josephine.
Over the following decades, the ordinary farmhouse became anything but ordinary.
Test had an inventive mind and enough money to indulge it.
He covered the exterior of the farmhouse with white opaque glass tile and constructed additions using glass block. Glass appeared throughout the interior as well.
Around the property, Test created an increasingly elaborate private world.
There was a small rail system.
There was his own power plant.
There were extensive animal facilities.
And then there was the swimming pool.
Test constructed an enormous 40-by-80-foot pool equipped with a solar heating system. Beside it stood an elaborate three-story diving complex and bathhouse with an elevator, basement, and sun deck.
He even created a motorized surfboard.
For Indianapolis in the first half of the twentieth century, the estate must have seemed like something from another world.
But one detail would eventually give the property its legendary name.
Skiles Test loved the color blue.
He decorated trees around his property with blue lights, particularly during the Christmas season, and blue insect lights also glowed around the swimming pool.
Seen from the darkness beyond the estate, those scattered blue lights shining through the woods were unforgettable.
And somewhere around the era of World War II, a story began spreading.
Test's wife, people whispered, had died.
The grieving millionaire had refused to bury her.
Instead, he supposedly placed her preserved body inside a glass coffin and surrounded it with blue lights.
Some versions said the coffin stood inside the house.
Others placed it somewhere else on the estate.
Dogs supposedly patrolled the grounds to keep outsiders away.
For local teenagers, seeing the mysterious coffin became a challenge.
Sneaking onto the House of Blue Lights property became an Indianapolis rite of passage.
But the legend collapses under one rather significant historical fact.
Skiles Test's wife was not lying dead inside his house.
In fact, the three women Test married during his lifetime all outlived him.
There was no embalmed wife.
There was no glass coffin containing her body.
And there was no grieving widower maintaining a shrine to his dead bride.
But there were coffins on the property.
Just not human ones.
Test adored animals and kept large numbers of dogs and cats on his estate. He created separate areas for them and maintained a private pet cemetery.
When some of his animals died, they were buried with remarkable care.
Cats and dogs were placed in small caskets. Some were reportedly lined with carpet, and graves were marked with miniature stones or identifying plaques.
Imagine being a teenager creeping through those woods at night after hearing stories about coffins on the property and then actually discovering tiny graves and caskets.
The truth may have helped feed the legend rather than destroy it.
At first, Test apparently found some of the rumors amusing.
Eventually, there was nothing amusing about what they caused.
Curious teenagers and thrill seekers repeatedly invaded the estate.
Some sneaked into the swimming pool.
Others entered buildings.
Trespassers released animals from their enclosures, damaged property, and started fires.
On several occasions, vandals reportedly used dynamite.
The legend had transformed a man's private home into a public dare.
By the 1950s, Test erected fencing around the property in an attempt to keep people out.
It did not end the fascination.
If anything, the fences made the House of Blue Lights seem even more mysterious.
Skiles Test died on March 19, 1964.
What happened afterward demonstrated just how deeply his strange home had embedded itself in Indianapolis folklore.
A three-day estate auction was held that May.
Approximately 50,000 people descended on the property.
Some came to purchase belongings.
Others came because, after years of stories, rumors, midnight adventures, and whispered legends, they finally had permission to see the House of Blue Lights for themselves.
Among the unusual objects offered from the estate were hundreds of pet caskets.
Still, no preserved wife in a glass coffin appeared.
After Test's death, the property deteriorated.
The house and surrounding structures suffered from continued trespassing and vandalism, and despite interest in preserving the unusual estate, the buildings were eventually demolished in 1978.
The House of Blue Lights disappeared.
But the land did not.
Test had wanted his property to remain useful to the community. More than eighty wooded acres eventually became Skiles Test Nature Park, preserving a portion of the landscape that once surrounded his extraordinary home.
Today, visitors walking through the park will not find the white glass-covered farmhouse.
They will not find the enormous swimming pool or its towering diving platforms.
They will not find Skiles Test standing guard over his eccentric collection of inventions and animals.
Nature has reclaimed much of the property.
Yet traces of its former life have lingered.
Old fencing, pieces of concrete, drains, broken ceramics, and remnants associated with the former estate have been reported throughout the woods over the years.
And then there are the blue lights.
Long after the house itself vanished, stories continued that strange blue lights could occasionally be glimpsed among the trees.
Whether anyone is actually seeing something unexplained is another question entirely.
Lights from nearby roads, homes, vehicles, reflections, and the expectations created by decades of folklore provide perfectly ordinary possibilities.
There is also little reliable evidence that the original House of Blue Lights was genuinely haunted while Skiles Test lived there.
Its reputation was built primarily from urban legend.
And perhaps that is what makes this story so fascinating.
The House of Blue Lights demonstrates that a place does not necessarily need a documented ghost to become haunted in the imagination of an entire city.
There really was an eccentric millionaire.
There really was a secluded estate hidden in the woods.
There really were blue lights.
There really were dogs and cats.
There really was a private cemetery filled with tiny animal graves.
There really were coffins.
And thousands of people really did sneak through the darkness hoping to discover something forbidden.
The only thing missing was the dead woman at the center of the story.
Maybe that is how the best legends survive.
They contain just enough truth to make the impossible part seem believable.
The House of Blue Lights is gone now.
But on a wooded piece of land along Fall Creek Road, Indianapolis preserved the place where the legend began.
And somewhere between the real Skiles Test and the fictional grieving widower created by generations of storytellers, the House of Blue Lights became something neither history nor demolition could completely erase.
A ghost story without a ghost.
And one of Indiana's strangest legends.
Visitor Information:
Skiles Test Nature Park
6828 Fall Creek Road
Indianapolis, Indiana 46220
Phone: 317-327-7180
The original House of Blue Lights and its outbuildings no longer stand. The former estate is now part of Skiles Test Nature Park, operated by Indy Parks. The park is open from dawn to dusk and admission is free. Visitors can explore its paved trail and several gravel and dirt side trails, but should remain within public areas and avoid disturbing historic remnants or natural features.