Growing up, I never realized the magnitude of attention my hometown received. While today Anoka stands as a modern and growing town, it retains its rich historical background through proud traditions and celebrations. What was your favorite part of Halloween as a child? Most would definitely answer “candy,” but ask any person from Anoka and they will tell you long stories about the magical month-long celebration in the Halloween Capital of the World.

With low hanging oak trees, abandoned asylums, and dozens of haunted bars and timeless inns, Anoka is the picturesque face of Halloween. In fact, there is even an organized ghost tour, showcasing multiple sites that have reported consistent paranormal activity.

Anoka held the first Halloween celebration in the world in 1920. The reason was not necessarily to have fun, but rather to prevent children and teens from putting the “trick” in “trick or treat,” creating a safer nighttime environment for the community. Since then, the town has experienced tragedies and natural disasters, inspiring countless urban legends and ghost stories. After claiming its famous title, Anoka has been drawing in tourists every October for the parade and other events.

It’s an enchanting coincidence that a place with such a title is home to so many urban legends and paranormal activity. Having attended Anoka High School for four years, I frequently walked the trails behind the school, not knowing that they led to one of the most haunted asylums in the country. Once the “First State Asylum for the Insane,” this collection of brick buildings built in 1892 are all connected by underground tunnels. These tunnels have been the setting of hundreds of campfire ghost stories -- some fiction, and some derived from unsettling personal experiences.

While the old buildings may offer entertaining stories, the history surrounding the asylum is much more telling of medicinal neglect in the 1900s. The institution has been the subject of many reports due to neglect and abuse of the mentally ill patients who have been admitted throughout the decades. One aspect of this dehumanization remains today in the front lawn of my former high school. Every day, school busses full of students pass right by the cemetery once belonging to the asylum -- only instead of names on the headstones, a series of numbers identifies the deceased.

Some less unpleasant -- yet still chilling -- ghost stories come out of the Anoka County Historical Society building, where an empty rocking chair greets you by moving on its own. Just down the street at Billy’s Bar and Grill, a former hotel, you can hear phantom dishes breaking and reportedly even have your hair pulled by an invisible hand.

All horror stories - real or imagined - aside, Halloween in Anoka is a time for fun and excitement for all ages. There are tours of haunted buildings and cemeteries, the Orange Tie Ball, a pet costume contest, a medallion hunt, house decorating contests and many, many more events.

The Parades are the pinnacle of the celebration, however. The Grand Day Parade draws participants and spectators from far and wide. The Big Parade of Little People features all of the children from Anoka schools dressed in their favorite costumes as well as the middle school marching bands and other groups. Ghoulish teachers and administrators join them, adding to the fun.

And if there were other claimants to the title “Halloween Capital,” the United States Government recently pushed them aside. On September 29, Anoka played host to stamp collectors and government officials when the U.S. Postal Service issued its first ever Halloween-themed postage stamps, featuring four jack-o’-lantern stamps on their “First Day of Issue.” They were postmarked Anoka, Minnesota giving the government’s stamp of approval to Anoka as the official “Halloween Capital of the World.”