In the early 1920s, American Halloween celebrations were marked by pranks. But they became increasingly destructive. In Anoka, city leaders decided something had to be done.
Candy, pumpkins and parades: Halloween capital of the world is in full swing
Anoka, Minn., is nicknamed the “Halloween Capital of the World” for using the holiday event to distract teens from their shenanigans more than 100 years ago.
- In Anoka, Minnesota, Halloween celebrations began in 1920 to curb destructive pranks by local youths.
- The town’s civic festival, which included a parade, became a model for other cities to deter vandalism.
- Anoka bills itself as the Halloween capital of the world, hosting a month-long celebration that draws thousands of people.
- The town’s history shows that Halloween in the United States has evolved from a night of pranks to a community-centered holiday.
ANOKA, Minn. – Anoka’s Halloween tradition began more as an intervention than a celebration.
The year is 1919, and the former logging town on the Rum River, about 20 miles north of Minneapolis, is in trouble. All Hallows Eve was more of a trick than a treat.
For a while, Anokian woke up the next day to find his windows covered in soap. Barns were set on fire and turned over. A carriage that was disassembled and reassembled on the rooftop. But this time, a cow was spotted roaming downtown. Other livestock were eating math books inside the school.
At the time, American Halloween celebrations were characterized by pranks. But they became increasingly destructive. Other towns were even considering banning the holiday altogether.
In Anoka, city leaders decided something had to be done.
But instead of banning it, they took a different tack. In 1920, they organized a night parade as part of the civic Halloween celebration to keep young troublemakers busy.
More than a century later, the Minnesota town of just 18,000 people has come to call itself the “Halloween Capital of the World,” drawing tens of thousands of die-hard Halloween enthusiasts and spirited locals alike for the month-long celebration.
Anoka’s quaint red-brick downtown hosts parades including a formal orange tie ball, a giant pumpkin expo, ghost tours, zombie bar hopping, an elaborate decorating contest and the Little People’s Big Parade.
While the designation of Halloween as a capital may be controversial when combined with heavy hitters with even more macabre backstories, Anoka’s roots and history help explain the unusual path the holiday has taken in the United States, away from pranks and vandalism, to what it is today.
“People live in this town during the month of October,” Rebecca Ebnett Desens, president of the Anoka County Historical Society, told USA TODAY. “There’s a lot of fuss around here.”
But 105 years ago, unrest in the town was more feared than celebrated.
The history of Halloween, from tricks to treats
Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic ritual of Samhain, which heralds the harvest and the coming of winter. Few people know the downside of the cold like Minnesotans. It was a time when the wall between the worlds of the living and the dead was thought to be at its thinnest.
Lisa Morton, author of “Trick-or-Treat: A History of Halloween,” said people honored their deceased relatives and told terrifying stories of malevolent spirits wandering over to kidnap people and set their homes on fire.
Eventually, Celtic traditions merged with All Hallows’ Day (Aholomesse in Middle English), and the night before, All Hallows’ Eve, became known as Halloween.
Morton said Halloween became popular in the U.S. in the 1840s with the arrival of large numbers of Scottish and Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. They also have a penchant for mischief, once tying strings to cabbages and pulling them through fields at night to scare people, and carving gourds with glowing faces.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Halloween pranks evolved into knocking over outhouses, leaving manure on doorsteps, and using a spool-and-stick “tick-tock” to make frightening noises in your unassuming neighbor’s window.
In some places, people woke up to find roads blocked with bathtubs and strollers, vegetable gardens uprooted and livestock on the loose, earning the nickname “gate night.” In one case, teenage boys left a stuffed body on the tracks, causing the conductor to stop the train in fear.
As America has become more urbanized, sometimes mayhem options have become more dangerous, such as arson and pedestrian tripwires.
In 1918, nine boys were arrested in Kansas City for waxing streetcar tracks, causing a crash, the Topeka Capital Journal reported.
“The pranks started getting really destructive,” Morton said. “Many cities were considering banning the holiday entirely.”
After the cattle invasion, Anoka town leaders had had enough, said John Jost, 47, a longtime resident and Halloween enthusiast who helped commemorate the city’s holiday history.
“They were taking farmers’ cattle and putting them inside buildings, and they were not only flipping barns over, but also setting things on fire. Over the years, the situation got progressively worse,” he said. “In 1919 they said, ‘This has to stop.’
Local businessman George Green is credited with proposing the idea of a grand celebration of feasting and entertainment in 1920 to curb vandalism.
“Why don’t we keep them busy with a big parade?” he asked, according to Jost. “That was the beginning.”
Anoka secures a spot on the US Halloween map
When Halloween arrived in Anoka in 1920, businesses decorated their stores. A parade was planned for the evening with bands, confetti and 500 costumed participants, who received popcorn, candy and peanuts. Afterwards, a large bonfire was lit.
Other events included crowds competing to catch chickens, with the winners taking home the chickens, according to one report on the town’s history.
A 1920 Anoka County Union article declared, “We don’t know if the chickens enjoyed the sport, but the crowds did.”
As the next day dawned, newspapers reported that “Halloween looting was less than usual.”
Although Halloween parades have been held in other places, such as Scranton, Pennsylvania, and large holiday celebrations have been held in places such as Newark, New Jersey, Anoka is credited with being one of the early adopters of large celebrations, especially those instituted to discourage destructive pranks, Morton said.
“And it was a model that really caught on, spread, and was successful,” Morton said.
Another was Independence, Kansas, which founded a celebration in 1919 to combat pranks and named it “Neewalla”, spelling Halloween backwards.
As Anoka’s celebrations continued and grew over the next decade, they included weddings, wrestling and boxing matches, and organized pillow fights.
During the Great Depression, people in some U.S. cities pooled their funds to hold house-to-house parties with various treats and homemade attractions, such as gifting costume sheets for children, setting up haunted house basements, and handing out treats and games.
In conjunction with the civic celebration, it helped promote the tradition of children dressing up and going trick-or-treating from house to house, Morton said. After World War II, companies began making packaged Halloween candy and costumes, further promoting the participatory tradition we know today.
The weddings and games soon turned into stories of local haunted houses on the town’s famous Third Avenue, home decorations, football games held at the high school stadium affectionately known as the “Pumpkin Bowl,” and minor celebrities such as the winner of the 1970 television show “The Dating Game” participating in the parade.
Some of the legend surrounding Anoka’s nickname “Halloween Capital of the World” dates back to the 1930s, but it was proclaimed by Minnesota legislators in 2003, declaring Anoka the pinnacle of coveted spooky destinations.
Anoka attracts Halloween fans and families from all over the world.
It was still August when Jost put up neon jack-o-lanterns, plaster gargoyles, spooky flamingos and Halloween banners in Anoka’s garden.
Jost was a bank employee who, like most people, grew up marching in Little People parades and trick-or-treating with his classmates, and when there were too many other activities, he created a haunted garden.
In 2020, he chaired the 100th anniversary celebration and helped write a book about its history.
“When you grow up in Anoka, it’s ingrained in you,” he says.
“It’s in your blood,” Jost said later as she walked toward the city’s iconic pumpkin carving, which resembles a fixture in the 1998 Disney Channel original movie “Halloween Town.”
Except here, his name is “Iron Jack,” a gift from city workers who assembled him from recycled iron parts to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Halloween festival.
“As an Anokian, I consider Halloween almost separate from other holidays,” Jost said. “Halloween only teeth. ”
Today, this celebration continues for a month. He said the main parade alone draws 60,000 people, with people coming from Minneapolis as well as other states and countries, from Germany to Brazil.
“There are some hardcore people doing the circuit,” Ebnet Desens said, citing tours to famous Halloween towns and haunted destination towns such as Salem, Mass., Savannah, Ga., and Hell Town, Michigan.
In Anoka, visitors can stay in a Victorian bed and breakfast, dine at Serum’s Good Time Emporium, and enjoy a drink at Billy’s Bar & Grill, located in an 1800s building known for its mob connections and rumors of ghostly visitations.
They also go on ghost tours, including an antique shop in a former doctor’s mansion with rocking chairs that rock even when no one is there, and a Masonic Hall where the lights turn off and on automatically. Paranormal fans are also drawn to the history of the former psychiatric hospital, which once performed lobotomies. It has since been repurposed as housing for veterans experiencing homelessness.
Perhaps Anoka’s embrace of Halloween made ghosts feel welcome here, Ebnet Desens said.
“It’s important to always give back.”
Today, the Halloween capital of the world is known for good old-fashioned family fun. In true “Minnesota nice” fashion, locals won’t say they’re better than other creepy cities, but they’ll say their pride is built on good citizens.
Linda Evavold, a lifelong Anokian and member of the Halloween committee, said the dozens of events they coordinate and plan throughout the year are aimed at bringing the community together and supporting each other rather than commercializing the holiday.
For Evavold, Halloween in Anoka “wasn’t necessarily all about ghosts and skeletons and the spooky. Rather, it was a celebration in our town and something that made Anoka proud.”
In an age of digital scrolling doom scrolling, Americans face an epidemic of loneliness and increasing social division, but Halloween in Anoka is a time to see each other, Evervold said.
Whether it’s bingo night, sitting around a bonfire, or watching little kids parading down the street in costume. Evervold said Halloween, now more than ever, is about bringing families and young people together rather than brushing off potential trouble.
“It’s great to be able to slow down people’s lives,” she says.
Most events are free to attendees, local or not, and proceeds from Anoka’s Halloween merchandise go toward scholarships throughout the community. The spirit of Halloween here isn’t about evil tricks: “It’s always about giving back,” Evervold said.
Serious pranks have disappeared in Anoka and across the country, but it took longer in some places, Morton said.
“In some areas, kids didn’t want to stop doing pranks, so they changed it to the night before they changed it to October 30th. And that became known as Devil’s Night,” she said.
In Detroit, as people first dumped their trash in trash cans and abandoned buildings, the city instituted a curfew and increased neighborhood patrols that helped quell the problem in the 1990s.
What about Anoka? Evnet Desens said she believes petty pranks are still happening.
But for now at least, the city’s math books remain safe.
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