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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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Minnesota's First Cottage-Plan Asylum, 1900–1999, With a Numbered Cemetery and Underground Tunnels
3301 7th Ave N, Anoka, MN 55303
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Grounds and cemetery are freely accessible. Buildings are not open to the public.
Access
Limited Access
Open campus grounds and cemetery; uneven surfaces, no maintained paths to historical structures
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1900 · First Minnesota State Hospital Built to Cottage Plan · Minnesota Mental Health Reform History · On-Site Patient Cemetery
The first 100 male patients arrived at Anoka State Hospital on March 14, 1900, transferred by train from St. Peter State Hospital. The state had designated Anoka as a transfer institution for patients classified as 'incurables' — a category that reflected Victorian-era psychiatric thinking rather than clinical prognosis. Architect Clarence H. Johnston Sr., who also designed the Glensheen mansion in Duluth, laid out the campus in the cottage plan: individual residential buildings arranged in a semi-circle, each housing roughly 50 patients, connected by underground tunnels. The design was intended to reduce the institutional feel common to the period's large single-block asylums.
Over the following decades the campus expanded significantly. Electroshock therapy was introduced in 1946; tranquilizers arrived in 1955. In October 1949, Governor Luther Youngdahl visited the hospital on Halloween and made a public gesture of burning patients' restraints, pledging to modernize care. The patient population peaked and then declined sharply after the 1960s as community-based outpatient models replaced long-term institutional care.
The last patients were moved to a new secure treatment facility in 1999, ending 99 years of continuous operation. The state transferred the historic campus to Anoka County. As of 2020, county corrections and human services offices occupy several buildings; three cottages were renovated into transitional housing for homeless veterans in 2017, with a fourth added in 2019. The hospital cemetery, located near Anoka High School, holds approximately 400 patients buried between 1900 and 1965 — initially marked only by numbers. Through the work of the advocacy group Remembering With Dignity, named headstones replaced the numbered markers.
Sources
The tunnel network connecting Anoka State Hospital's cottages has generated the most persistent paranormal accounts. Witnesses describe phantom footsteps, cold spots, voices, and what some characterize as laughter in the lower passages. Several former employees placed the highest density of unusual activity in the tunnels rather than the patient wards above.
The cemetery adds another dimension to the site's reputation. For decades, bodies were buried under numbered stakes with no names; the late-stage restoration of identities by Remembering With Dignity brought public attention to the 400 people interred there. The cemetery remains publicly accessible and is among the quieter, more historically legible stops on the campus.
Anoka bills itself as America's Halloween Capital — a civic identity that predates and now encompasses the hospital's reputation. That framing has drawn paranormal investigators to the site consistently, though no formal academic or institutional investigation of the campus has been published.
The campus remains partially accessible; visitors may walk the grounds and the hospital cemetery, which sits about a quarter-mile from the main buildings near Anoka High School. Do not enter any structures — several remain in use by Anoka County and others are unsafe.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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