Living In The House Of Blue Lights

What is “The House Of Blue Lights”? In my area it describes an old home that was locally famous for a baseless spooky story. It also happens to be my own home – something I re-discover every time I get up in the middle of the night.

In my area, there was a rich young heir to a small fortune who lived in a home way out in the country. The guy was something of a jet-setter (before there were jets) and was locally famous for his fertile mind and his sometimes strange ways. His name was Skiles Test (and some of his real story can be found here). The short version is that at night, there would be an aura of what appeared to be blue light over his property.

Some time after WWII, as development crept towards the Test property, lore developed that Skiles had deposited his wife’s dead body into a glass coffin that was brilliantly lit with blue lights. In reality, he had quite a number of lights on the property and from a distance they appeared blue – but were not. It became a thing in the 1960’s for high school kids to trespass onto the property – either to investigate the legend or (more likely) to impress their friends of the opposite sex with their fearlessness in the face of the macabre.

Old Mr. Test died in 1964 and the house was eventually razed. The property is now a nature park that is not too far from where I live. I have never seen any blue lights as long as I have lived in the area, so I imagine that the lore was just that – a spooky story made up from someone using too much electricity.

I think of the Skiles Test story whenever I get up in the middle of the night. This happens when it becomes necessary to either take on or offload water, two things that have become more common with advancing age. Why do I think about Skiles Test when I wake up at night?

In our bedroom there is a digital clock. One that bathes the room with a blue glow. Then last Christmas, one of our kids presented us with a room air purifier that both cleans the air and puts out a pleasant white noise that helps with sleep. It added about six little blue LEDs on its top to complete the blue aura.

Getting from our bedroom to the kitchen requires a trip through the living room, which is helpfully aided by little LEDs on a smoke detector and the WiFi range extender that is plugged into a wall outlet. The open door to an adjoining office/den is awash with the light of LEDs from a computer, modem and associated hardware there. Really, why does anyone need light bulbs?

Arrival in the kitchen for a drink of water gives us more, with LED displays from both the range, the microwave and the Mr. Coffee making the tune “Crystal Blue Persuasion” start running through my head. The water cooler breaks things up with a green LED for a little variety. With all of them together there is never a need to turn on a light when padding around the house at night, because of all of the helpful blue (or green) LEDs that are always hard at work.

I think the two bathrooms are about the only room not lit by LEDs at night, but they both have enough exposure to outdoor lights to make an extra light unnecessary. Such a thing as “the dark” doesn’t really exist at my house.

Did you know that the LED (light emitting diode) dates to the early 1960’s? Neither did I. They were quite expensive at first, and limited to red as the color they would display. I remember what a big deal those red LED displays were on the first electronic calculators I saw, and again in the mid 1970’s when red LEDs were first used for warning lights in higher priced cars.

Blue LEDs were patented in 1972, but they were too dim for commercial purposes. The electronics industry has certainly licked that problem. Early versions of this more powerful blue LED were the basis for the well-known “Blu-Ray” video player in the early 1990s.

I guess these colorful LEDs in my house are part of a spectrum because most of the bright white light generated there comes from LEDs as well. It is kind of amazing that the same indicator that lights the display on my Mr. Coffee also creates the bright white floodlights that shine onto our back yard. And they certainly use less power than the old-style incandescents. Which, I understand, are illegal to sell as of a few days ago.

But how much more money can we avoid paying the power company when all of these other appliances provide free bonus lighting for my nighttime forays into the house for various and sundry needs? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that LEDs have turned my house (and probably those of all of my neighbors) into a new contender for the title of The House Of Blue Lights.

Just to clarify, Marianne is alive and well here at home, so there is no need for anyone to come snooping around to see if she is on display in a glass coffin. And that’s the way we like it – all of the blue lights with none of the mysterious stigma.

21 thoughts on “Living In The House Of Blue Lights”

    • I know, right? I would suspect that Marianne being alive and well is not something she thinks of as “a twist”, but then again, she never knows what being married to me might bring. Maybe my being alive and well is the actual twist.

      Like

      Reply

  2. Fine essay. I’d be happy not to have to get up overnight to discharge water from my body. But there ain’t much we can do about that. And I soon will dial up Crystal Blue Persuasion, via YouTube. I’ve always loved that song. Haven’t heard it in a long while.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. Something about a blue light special just isn’t materializing, despite my better efforts.

    We’ve had the same phenomena here – all the lights overcome the need for anything at night. At first I thought my night vision was maintaining its youthful vitality then I realized there were external influences.

    A lit coffin sounds rather Lenin-esque.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I couldn’t come up with a Blue Light Special reference either. I wonder how many people even know what that was anymore? It would probably be in bad taste for funeral homes to offer such a thing. Which means it’s probably a lucrative idea these days.

      Like

      Reply

  4. I was surprised to learn the other day that regular incandescent bulbs would no longer be sold (although you can still use them) but I digress.

    Talk about a blue light special! This is an interesting post and macabre story JP. My kitchen table-top radio decreases its time display to nothing when you shut off the light, but the digital clock on the stove is visible all the way down the hall – it lights up the entire kitchen, so yes, I get what you deal with. I now keep my battery-operated alarm clocks (I’ve always had a back-up alarm clock) in the kitchen every night as it is too convenient to roll over and hit “snooze” or shut it off and then assume I’ll wake up a few minutes later. We had a woman who owned a home on a busy street and had a life-sized doll dressed like a little girl standing in her front window. There were rumors for years that her daughter was killed by a car by her own father, so this doll was placed in the window to warn other drivers to slow down for kids. It was very eerie and drew a lot of gawkers as you might imagine. Recently, the woman died at 101 years and her only child, a daughter, dispelled the urban legend and the “Detroit Free Press” did a story about it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      • JP I thought of you three times today. First I was on Outer Drive and went past that house I commented about. Just a minute later my odometer was 11,111. Not a good choice for a series of numbers to get a huge lottery prize, but significant as you quipped about my mileage of 9,099 and getting to 10,000 once. Then I remembered I wanted to comment on “Crystal Blue Persuasian” and forgot to last night … thank you for making me feel old because Tommy James and the Shondells played at our junior high school in 9th grade. Big stuff back then … tarps on the shiny wooden gym floor and students sat in the bleachers. 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Well, I am glad to hear that Marianne is alive and well. I read the story of the house and found it really interesting and found myself feeling sorry for the old man but the real mystery to me was why he didn’t employ any security guards.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. There must be thousands of these “scary house” stories across America. In the small town of Cedar Knolls NJ where I grew up there were at least three:

    There was a very small brick house on Pine Blvd.; smallest house I’d ever seen. A little old lady (possibly named Stella) lived there by herself, and the rumor was that she died and that her ghost was haunting the house and the woods near the elementary school playground. All of us stupid kids on the playground would run around calling out “Stelllllla!” trying to summon her ghost and scare people.

    At the top of Summit Ave. was an abandoned house called “Old John’s”. The rumor was that some maniac named Old John would kill any kid who entered this empty, vandalized house. A friend of mine and I walked up to the open front door and peaked in, but we were too chicken to enter.

    Then on Oak Blvd. there was an older house, probably built in the ‘teens or ’20s, white siding with green trim, larger than the other houses and set further back from the road with a curving driveway. The story, told to me as true by an adult, was that a kid (or kids) kept trespassing and/or ringing the doorbell as a prank, and the man who owned the house shot one of the kids. You can bet I stayed away from that place! I have yet to find actual corroboration for that story. All the houses mentioned above are long gone now.

    As for Skiles Test, he kind of asked for trouble by burning all those bright lights at night and making himself conspicuous. But that doesn’t absolve those teenage trespassers and vandals who probably made Test’s life miserable with stress and anxiety, and may have contributed to his medical problems and premature death.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • People seem to need to come up with explanations for things that are out of the ordinary. I remember a couple of places where similar stories swirled in the area where I grew up. I also remember a big old barn in a spot that had become surrounded by suburbia – I always wanted to go there and poke around, but there were stories about trespassers getting shot at. Which, as I think about it, was stupid, given the homes and businesses all around there. A few years later the barn was torn down and a McDonalds went up. Somebody made a fortune on that old farmstead.

      Like

      Reply

      • This abandoned farmhouse on Route 202 (Myrtle Ave.) in Boonton NJ stood near the Acme Supermarket parking lot. Supposedly some psycho was looking out the window, staring at the women as they went to and from the store with their shopping carts. Eventually the creepy house was demolished and replaced with . . . yes, a McDonalds!

        View from Supermarket Parking Lot

        Liked by 1 person

  7. I was intently reading and learning as I cruised through this post… until I got to the last paragraph, to which I burst out laughing. I appreciate the conclusion on a lighter note, else I might not look at my own blue LED’s the same way ever again. The Skiles Test story (great name) is the stuff Stephen King novels are made of, especially with the transformation to a public park. Pet Sematary came to mind.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Actually, with the advent of LED technology, think of the money a guy could save illuminating the coffin of his former missus by that method! But perhaps anyone who would do that would be crazy enough that rational thoughts like energy savings would never enter into the process.

      Ooooh, if I ever decide to write a scary novel, you may have given me the idea for it. And a perfect lead character whose name would be Blue Ray. 🙂

      Like

      Reply

  8. Our house is also never dark at night. The whole west side of our house is illuminated by our neighbors’ unusually bright porch lights. They don’t bother me, because they light just enough light into our living room and dining room to be able to see should I go wandering around in the middle of the night. In our kitchen we have outlets with built-in night lights. And in our bedroom, the lighted plug from my laptop creates a perfect about of nightlight-type illumination so that I can avoid tripping over stuff on my way to the bathroom at 4 a.m.

    But our Blue Light Special is displayed in the basement. We have water filters, and they have a re-settable timer that flashes a bright blue light when the filter ought to be replaced, which is every three months. Because Margaret and I don’t particularly enjoy that task, we usually put it off for a few weeks, and during that time the light keeps flashing. I occasionally question if our neighbors wonder why on earth we have flashing blue lights in our basement for weeks on end. But they probably just assume it’s a lighted coffin or something.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I am now sorry I never thought about threatening misbehaving children with eternity in a lighted coffin in the living room window.

      Our basement blue lighting is courtesy of a dehumidifier, with a green assist by a digital clock.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment