Bullet Holes and Blues at Indiana’s Slippery Noodle Inn

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 5, 2026 · How we verify

Indiana’s oldest continuously operating bar sits a few blocks south of Monument Circle, and the Slippery Noodle Inn has spent most of its life collecting stories: roadhouse stories, brothel stories, gangster stories, and, for the last several decades, ghost stories. It is a working blues club with live music most nights, a kitchen, a long bar, and a reputation among Indianapolis ghost hunters that has outlasted several of the building’s owners.

Nothing about that reputation is verified. What follows separates what the building’s history actually records from what visitors and staff say they have experienced inside it.

Quick Orientation

• Opened: 1850, originally as the Tremont House
• Renamed: 1963, by Harold and Lorean Yeagy
• Listed: National Register of Historic Places since 1982
• What it is now: a blues bar and restaurant, counted among the notable live music venues near downtown Indianapolis
• Access: open to the public during business hours, no ticket required

From Tremont House to Roadhouse: The Building’s First Century

The bar opened in 1850 under the name Tremont House, at a moment when Indianapolis was becoming a genuine crossroads. The National Road had been opened through the town in 1827, the first major federally funded highway in the United States, and the first railroad to serve the city, the Jeffersonville, Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, had begun operating in 1847. Indianapolis Union Station followed in 1853 and was the first of its kind in the world. The city’s official slogan, “Crossroads of America”, still reflects that history. A drinking house on the south side of downtown in 1850 was sitting in the middle of all that traffic.

Over the following century the building took on the roles that transient trade tends to produce. Accounts of the property describe it operating at various points as a roadhouse and as a brothel before it settled into its current identity as a music venue. Those earlier uses are the seedbed for nearly every ghost story attached to the place, which is worth keeping in mind: the hauntings and the history are told as a single narrative, and the narrative is largely oral.

Bullet Holes and the Dillinger Connection

The most repeated claim about the building is that members of the John Dillinger gang used it for target practice, and that bullets remain lodged in its interior walls. Dillinger is an authentically Indianapolis figure, described as a notorious American gangster and buried at Crown Hill Cemetery on the city’s north side, alongside three U.S. vice presidents and a president. The bullet story is told at the bar as fact and is part of why people come. It should be understood as tradition rather than documented event: there is no contemporaneous record establishing who fired the shots or when.

The Yeagys and the Name That Stuck

In 1963, Harold and Lorean Yeagy took over the establishment and gave it the name it carries today. That change marked the shift from a building with a checkered past to a deliberately preserved piece of the city’s nightlife. In 1982 the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places, one of more than 260 properties and historic districts in Marion County to carry that listing. The Register recognizes historic significance. It does not, of course, say anything about ghosts.

The Dueling Brothers, the Lady Upstairs, and the Cowboy

Four recurring accounts make up the bar’s haunted reputation. All of them are reported experiences and secondhand tradition, not established fact.

• The dueling brothers. Local telling holds that in the late 1800s two brothers fought inside the building over a woman, and that one of them died. Both are said to linger. This is the oldest of the stories and the hardest to check, since no name or date travels with it.
• The lady upstairs. Staff and visitors have described the figure of a woman in the upper rooms, generally associated with the building’s brothel period. Reports range from a full apparition to a sense of presence in an otherwise empty room.
• The cowboy. An apparition of a man in western dress has been reported in the portion of the property said to have served as a stable. The story attached to him is that he was murdered on the premises.
• Ordinary strangeness. The bulk of what people actually report is smaller: unexplained sounds, lights that flicker without a cause anyone can find, and objects that move or turn up somewhere other than where they were left.

Bars are noisy, old buildings settle, and wiring in a structure that has been altered repeatedly since 1850 will do unusual things. None of that disproves anything, and none of it makes a case either. What can be said plainly is that the accounts have been consistent enough, over long enough, to become part of how the Noodle presents itself.

Visiting the Slippery Noodle Inn

This is the easiest kind of haunted location to visit, because it is a business that wants your custom. The bar operates as a live blues venue and restaurant, and it is regularly listed among the significant performance spaces clustered near the central business district. You can walk in, order food, and hear a band without any arrangement in advance.

A few practical notes. The upper floors, where much of the reported activity is said to occur, are not general public space, so do not go wandering. If you want to see the bullet marks, ask a bartender rather than inspecting the walls yourself. Weekend nights are loud and crowded, which is excellent for music and poor for listening to a building. Anyone hoping for a quieter experience is better served early in the evening or midweek.

Never trespass, and always get permission before any kind of investigation.

Sources

• 2020 Population and Housing State Data (US Census Bureau)
• Total Gross Domestic Product for Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN (MSA)
• 2020 U.S. Gazetteer Files (Census (official))
• Metro Indianapolis Export Plan
• Capital at the Crossroads of America, Indianapolis: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
• Wikipedia: Indianapolis

Ghost Tours Nearby

Wicked Wraiths of White River: Indianapolis Ghost Tour★ 4.1 (111)from $26The Ghosts of Indianapolis Tour Family Friendly Haunted Historyfrom $30Indianapolis Adults Only Ghost and True Crime Tourfrom $35

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