Anoka, MN

Where Halloween is Hallowed

Each October for 80 years, ghosts and goblins, werewolves and witches, have paraded through the streets of Anoka, Minn., (pop. 18,076) where they are warmly greeted with delight, not fright. Anoka is home to the oldest communitywide celebration of Halloween in the United States, and townspeople have embraced the event as if it were hallowed.

“We all come out at Halloween and participate in some way or another,” says Bonnie Stoll, president of Anoka Halloween Inc., the nonprofit organization that spends the entire year planning the annual parade and other fall festivities.

Stoll, 52, recalls donning a fairy princess costume—sewn by her grandmother—for the parade as a child in the 1950s. She carries on the tradition by fashioning Halloween costumes for her own grandchildren, who participate in the march down Main Street.

“You’ll find that more of the costumes are purchased today,” says Stoll, a lifelong Anoka resident. “But there are still the diehards, like me, who make them for their grandkids.”

Anoka’s annual celebration got its start in 1920 when George Green and a group of other local business and civic leaders were looking for a way to divert pranksters from their Halloween tricks, such as tipping over outhouses, soaping windows, and putting chickens on roofs and cows in classrooms. The group succeeded by organizing a parade, with free bags of popcorn, peanuts, and candy for the marchers, followed by an evening-ending bonfire.

Anoka Police Chief Ed Wilberg says the celebration nowadays does a lot more than reduce pranks associated with Halloween. “That first role of giving structure to kids looking for something to do is still there, but it’s taken on a larger role than just keeping kids busy,” he says. “It brings the community together on a lot of different levels.”

For instance, bands from four area high schools join to march as the Mass Band in the Grand Day Parade each year, practicing only once before their appearance. The street-wide, block-long serpent of percussion and brass, glinting in the autumn sun, is the pulse of the parade. Many other community organizations, businesses, schools, and churches also join in the family friendly festival, harvesting the fun planted by Green and his associates.

Over the years, World War II is the only thing that has halted the Halloween celebration in Anoka. That was in 1942 and 1943. Even the weather, which can be pretty scary in Minnesota in late October, hasn’t been able to put a freeze on the festivities. Following the 1935 parade, the Anoka County Union reported that the celebration was “bigger and better than ever” despite a temperature that dipped to 14 degrees below zero.

And it continues to grow. The single-night event to distract hooligans from their usual shenanigans has grown into a weeklong celebration that culminates in a 100-unit parade—Minnesota’s third largest—that brings as many as 35,000 people to town.

This year’s celebration will include pumpkin carving and children’s costume contests, a high school football game called the Pumpkin Bowl, and the 5K Grey Ghost Run, named for octogenarian Bill Andberg, a local marathon runner whose gray-clad figure often could be seen running through a local cemetery on training runs.

The festivities, scheduled Oct. 20-27, will be punctuated by three parades—the Light Up the Night Parade, Big Parade of Little People, and Grand Day Parade. The night parade, which vanished in 1968, reappeared in 2000, along with a magic that Stoll felt had been missing for years.

“The floats lit up, and the baton twirlers had fire on their batons. I remember that,” Stoll says. “There was just a whole magic to it that you lose during the day, so when we brought back the night parade last year, we felt that magic return.”

Mary Miller is a freelance writer in Lakeland, Minn.

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