History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital

By Roxy Orcutt

History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital takes a look into why the small village of Anoka, MN, has been declared (by Congress and everything!) to be The Halloween Capital of the World. This fun look at the elements that make up this unique town, from the rivers along its borders and limestone underfoot to the historical locations and rich characters that helped put Anoka on the world map—to those characters who have seemed to stick around long after their time—History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital mixes together the popular ghost stories of Anoka as well as answers to the question inhabitants are so frequently asked: ''Why is Anoka the Halloween Capital?''

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9780878399949

Roxy Orcutt

Roxy Orcutt is a self-professed Professional Halloween Lover. She grew up obsessing over ghosts, ghouls, haunted houses, witches and all things spooky. Roxy runs the year-round website The Halloween Honey. She lives in Anoka, Minnesota, The Halloween Capital of the World, with her family, which includes, of course, a black cat.

Book preview

History and Hauntings of The Halloween Capital

Roxy Orcutt

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

St. Cloud, Minnesota

Copyright © 2014 Roxy Orcutt

All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 978-0-87839-774-7

eBook ISBN: 978-0-87839-994-9

First edition: September 2014

Published by

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

P.O. Box 451

St. Cloud, MN 56302

www.northstarpress.com

To my parents Don Leuthard and Debbie Seifermann, for raising me to be a curious and open-minded person.

And to my husband Jim, for being able to put up with that curious and open-minded person.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Halloween Honey’s Paranormal Playground

1: Welcome to The Halloween Capital of the World

2: The Land of Ghosts

3: On Both Sides: A Brief History of Anoka Before 1920

4: Michief and Mayhem

5: The Formative Years of Anoka Halloween

6: Forest Hills Cemetery and the Gray Ghost

7: Patting Themselves On the Back

8: Anoka Halloween’s Bridge to the Great Depression

9: The 1930s

10: The Very First Anoka Halloween Button

11: Anoka State Hospital

12: The Pumpkin Bowl and The Dating Game

13: Modern Halloween Celebrations

14: The Grand Day Parade

15: Halloween Tragedy and Controversy

16: Identity and Party Papers & Costumes

17: Colonial Hall

18: Tell No Tales

19: Why Would You Want to Leave?

Acknowledgments

A mural painted on the back on a business in Anoka. (Photo by Christy Urick.)

Introduction: The Halloween Honey’s Paranormal Playground

My mother, Debbie, has worked in Anoka, Minnesota, for the last twenty-five years. When you work in Anoka for that long you are bound to encounter the Anoka Halloween Committee in some capacity. Mom certainly did! Her boss was heavily involved with the Anoka Halloween Committee for a time in the late 1990s. Mom helped out when she could with bookkeeping duties and whatnot for the committee. One day after school when I was fourteen or fifteen, I found myself hanging out at Mom’s work. The Anoka Halloween Committee had received letters from an elementary school in Kansas asking why Anoka, Minnesota, was called The Halloween Capital of the World. Mom’s boss spotted me perched next to her desk, looking bored, and tasked me with answering these children. How fun! My first writing gig!

The letters from the kids were sweet, handwritten in that large-lettered, soft-penciled style on wide-lined paper, mandatory for elementary school student adorableness. I wrote two letters that afternoon. First, I answered the children correctly. I told them the tale of the 1920 organization and mounting of a city-wide celebration on Halloween night to keep kids out of trouble. My second letter, the one I was going to show to my mom’s boss as a joke, was downright evil. Quite literally. I made up a story about how Anoka was founded by devil worshippers and as time went on the town folks had to be more secretive about their Satanic dalliances, so they regulated one night a year, Halloween night, to celebrate their dark lord. The big secret was that Anoka’s founders were going to pass this off as some innocent festival to the rest of the nation and thus was born Anoka, Minnesota: The Halloween Capital of the World.

I amused myself more than anyone else with the second letter. My mom read it and rolled her eyes as she handed it back to me with a scoff; clearly she was used to my smart-aleck behavior at that point. Her boss met the second letter with the same head-shaking style. Obviously, that letter was not sent to the schoolchildren in Kansas, but I think that day was pivotal for me. It was then that the festival I loved so, so much—the Anoka Halloween Celebration—truly captured my imagination. I was always in awe of the celebration as a small child, but at that particular age, the undesirable, awkward, in-your-own-head-everything-is-lame age of mid-adolescence, I felt something was not so lame. Mockable, clearly, but not uncool.

In these past fifteen years or so I have written about Anoka a lot. There were jokey memos to my fellow co-workers at my first office job, in which I cracked jokes about Anoka, the townspeople, and Halloween. I tried my hand at fiction about Anoka and the Halloween celebration, pages and pages of writings about the town and Halloween. I can’t think of a time since that day so many years ago where I didn’t want to write about Anoka and Halloween. Or not talk about it. Or not experience it. The spirit of Anoka Halloween caught me that day and it hasn’t let go since.

The city of Anoka has always been a part of my childhood tapestry; I think that is why it is so magical to me. I still see the town through a child’s eyes.

I didn’t grow up in Anoka. Rather, I grew up in a rural town about twenty-five minutes north, called Oak Grove. I think that’s why I might see it so differently than those who have grown up here. Anoka was a special place for and my heart has always been here. My mom’s work was where I would spend summer days and afternoons after school ever since I was in kindergarten. My aunt Carla, uncle John and cousin Adam have lived in Anoka my whole life. Their house was a second home to my sister Cori and I growing up. I thought their house was everything a house The Halloween Capital of the World should be: an old house from the 1920s, re-finished, with whispers about a ghost haunting the bathroom off the hallway; two black cats, Susie and Cleo, who were the two witchiest cats I’ve ever known; and Carla’s kitchen corkboard filled with years and years of Anoka Halloween buttons. I would sometimes just stand in front of the corkboard and pick out my favorite design, which seemed to change each time I gazed at the board.

I couldn’t believe how easy it was to walk to places in Anoka. Oak Grove was so rural and I lived on a dirt road. Anoka had sidewalks and shops and rivers. And the best part, Anoka had witches and pumpkins everywhere you turned, all year long.

To me, Anoka was magic.

Now, I understand what that magic is: it’s history, rivers, beautiful homes, industrious people. It’s that little something special, something indescribable.

It’s something supernatural.

My first true memory of a Halloween night in Anoka was one of the most memorable Halloweens in years, for not only myself but for the entire state of Minnesota.

I experienced Halloween like any other kid growing up in the Midwest. The weeks-long planning of costumes, the fresh plastic smell when trying it on for the first time (my mother was not crafty, so we bought our Halloween costumes) the magic of transforming into not only another person for a night, but into something scary. I was always something scary. I never went for that princess stuff when I was a little girl. I knew what Halloween was for, and it was to be scary.

I