Anoka: How did a small town in Minnesota become the Halloween capital of the world?
How in God’s name (or perhaps that should be Satan‘s) could there ever be one town that earns the title the ‘Halloween Capital of the World’?
It really would be like somewhere claiming Christmas as their own, or Valentine’s Day. Not only would there be several counter-arguments from several deserving towns, but there’s also a very good question about what it actually means to be the capital of any kind of holiday. The closest thing I can imagine is that Christmas at least has Santa Claus‘ home turf of the North Pole, but save Jack Skellington’s Halloweentown, one wonders what the ‘Halloween capital of the world’ even looks like.
I mean, are we talking enormous roundabouts with Jack o’Lanterns painted in the centre? Massive murals in the middle of town with witches, werewolves and Frankenstein’s Monster painted on them? The kind of high street you can walk down and pop into multiple Halloween merchandise stores before checking in with the local psychic, then finishing up with dinner at the haunted diner? It would have to be somewhere like that with spookiness in its very soul.
With that in mind, perhaps there is a town that can actually claim to be the Halloween capital of the world. Because all those examples from earlier weren’t pulled out of the ether, or from a cheese dream after watching The Nightmare Before Christmas on a loop. These are the local landmarks from Anoka, Minnesota, a town which takes the holiday so seriously, it would give Mr Skellington himself a run for his money.
What makes Anoka the world’s Halloween capital?
The irony of it all is that this love of the holiday stems from the town ditching one of its oldest, proudest and most odious traditions.
In 1920, city officials in Anoka decided that they’d had enough of Halloween pranks. In a move that was decades ahead of its time, they decided to replace the time-honoured tradition of egging the bullied kid’s house or stuffing leaves through some poor soul’s letterbox with a giant parade, one that the whole town could join in on and have fun together with
Unlike most attempts to dissuade kids from doing something cruel, this plan worked like gangbusters. In the first year alone, over 1000 kids joined the parade, and it just kept growing from there. 17 years later, 12-year-old Anoka resident Harold Blair called his hometown “the Halloween capital of the world” during a class trip to Washington, DC, and the nickname stuck. Over the next century, Anoka has spent pretty much the entire time making sure it was worthy of such a name, and it’s still going strong in 2025.
I suppose it does depend on what you’re after from Spooky Season. If you’re the kind of person who believes that the holiday should frighten the pants off you, then you’re probably not going to have that itch scratched in Anoka. I mean, this is a place whose origin story was based around making the holiday more family-friendly than it already was, so there’ll be a distinct lack of chainsaw-wielding psychos running around.
But really, who goes into Halloween for stuff like that? Like it or not, it should be a fun time for all the family, and very few places get that the way Anoka does. Perhaps that’s why it truly earns the title of Halloween capital of the world!