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There was some serious monkey business going on inside a Spirit Halloween store in Plano, Texas on Monday night. Literally.
That’s because someone’s pet monkey got loose in the store, stunning customers while swinging from the rafters and running around on the shelves. The fact that it happened inside a store filled with all sorts of make-believe items only served to add to store customers’ confusion.
For more than 30 minutes, the monkey climbed and traversed the store’s displays, climbing pillars and hanging from the ceiling.
“My daughter looked up and she said, ‘What in the world?’ and she’s like, ‘Is that a real monkey?’ and I looked up and said, ‘Well, it’s got a diaper on so I guess it is real,’” Spirit Halloween customer Arlene Pinkston told NBC DFW News.
One customer caught the monkey on video
Naturally, because it’s 2025, Pinkston took out her phone to take some video of the chaos inside the store. Chaos that was possibly caused by the pet monkey getting spooked by the store’s animatronic products.
“It was entertaining,” Jimmy Harris, an employee at the store, said. “A lot of people just stood and watched it for like 30 minutes, the whole time, they were like, ‘monkey,’ and we had kids trying to catch it.”
At one point during the mayhem, police were called and an officer showed up at the store. According to the police statement, “He observed the monkey swinging from the rafters wearing a diaper. Eventually, a cookie was offered to the monkey by the owner, and was able to gain control of it.”
Luckily, police also reported that the monkey was unharmed, as were all of the Spirit Halloween customers and employees. No mention was made about why someone brought a pet monkey to the store.
Pinkston, however, wasn’t around to see it all end. She bailed, she said, after the monkey “jumped down on the floor and ran past my leg, and at that point I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve had enough.'”
In a statement issued by Lisa Barr, Spirit Halloween’s Vice President of Marketing, she thanked staff and local responders for their assistance in corralling the monkey. Barr also added, “While this is certainly not a typical day at Spirit Halloween, we’re glad it ended on a positive note.”