Get to know the Ghost tour docents
By Steve Florman
ACHS Board Member
One of the most enjoyable things I do as a volunteer for the Historical Society is to spend a few evenings each fall as a Ghosts of Anoka Walking Tour guide. I can’t think of a better place for ghost tours than the Halloween Capital of the World, and it’s a great opportunity to take a walk around town, share some history, and tell some stories that Anoka residents have shared with us about some of the unusual or unexplainable things which they’ve experienced in their homes and businesses.
“I love sharing the stories and the history,” agreed second-year tour guide Laura Saastamoinen. “It is fun to see the reaction of the people.”
I enjoy the stories, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the residents of the homes on the tour occasionally come out to greet my groups and tell the tales themselves. I always enjoy getting a feel for people’s reactions – from the start of a tour when I ask who’s a believer and who’s a skeptic, to the end when even the skeptics are wondering if there might not be something to all of it.
“I like volunteering as a docent because I love to tell the stories about the houses on the Ghost House Tour, and about the Armory,” said veteran docent Barb Arveson. “On most of the tours, at least one person claims to have seen a ghost along Madison, and some claim to see a shadow at one of the homes on Third Avenue South. Some are big believers in ghosts; others just love to do this for part of the Halloween activities.”
Mostly, however, what I’ve come to appreciate is the way in which the past and the present are tied together. The people who lived here long ago, and even their businesses and buildings, have left traces of themselves behind that show in modern Anoka – in the names of streets, families, and parks, in foundations and land features, and in the memories of the people who live here and who contribute to the stories we tell on every tour.
The line separating the past from the present is thin to the point of invisibility. Whether you believe that the spirits of the departed literally continue to linger here or not (and the Historical Society neither confirms nor denies the presence of supernatural beings in Anoka County!), they and their lives remain with us in sometimes surprising ways. Let me give you a couple of examples:
My son attended college in a small school in Idaho. While there, he met a young man from Nevada. When my son mentioned that he was from a small town north of Minneapolis, the other said, “It wouldn’t be Anoka, would it?” This young man was the grandson of Rick Sorenson, an Anoka boy who enlisted in the US Marine Corps during World War II and who was awarded the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save the others in his foxhole. (Spoiler: He lived!) Rick Sorenson Park, where the Halloween Parade stages every year, is named for him. The young man is the spitting image of his Marine grandfather in 1944. Small world indeed.
Anoka’s flour and lumber mills are long gone, although a few scattered remnants can be seen along the banks of the Rum north of Main Street. Washburn-Crosby Milling Company built more than one house in town as a boarding house for its workers in the 1880s, including one on our tour. Although the Washburn mill is gone from Anoka, Minnesotans encounter the company’s ghost every time we tune into a Twins game. WCCO Radio gets its call letters from Washburn-Crosby Company. And the company itself still survives – as General Mills.
That same boarding house was later the home of the Thurston brothers, who went into the furniture-making business and ran a funeral home. Although the furniture shop is gone now, the building is still there on Jackson Street, and the funeral home (now Thurston-Lindberg) is still open on West Main. The Thurstons have been a part of Anoka’s civic life for almost 140 years, and they still are.
Everywhere you look in Anoka, and around the entire county, no matter how new things seem, there are people and places and things which tie us to the past. Our tours are a lot of fun, and a great learning experience – but you are surrounded, every day, by the real Ghosts of Anoka.