- Pet monkey escapes at Spirit Halloween store in Plano, Texas.
- Shoppers watched as the monkey swung from rafters for 30 minutes.
- Employee says animatronic display likely scared the monkey.
- Police used a cookie to lure the animal back to its owner.
- No injuries reported; the monkey was unharmed.
On what was supposed to be an ordinary Halloween shopping trip, customers at a Spirit Halloween store in Plano, Texas, found themselves in the middle of an unforgettable scene, part comedy, part chaos, and entirely unexpected. Video below.
The laughter started with confusion. Arlene Pinkston and her daughters were browsing through costumes when her daughter suddenly froze, eyes wide.
“My daughter looked up and she said, ‘What in the world?’ and she’s like, ‘Is that a real monkey?’” Pinkston recalled. “And I looked up and said, ‘Well, it’s got a diaper on so I guess it is real.’” Pinkston told NBC 5 DFW.
Above them, a small monkey, clearly someone’s pet was swinging from poles and rafters, darting past hanging decorations, and leaving startled shoppers either laughing or reaching for their phones. Pinkston did what any 21st-century witness would: she hit record.
Spirit Halloween employee Jimmy Harris said it all happened so fast that even the store’s spooky animatronics couldn’t compete with the real-life spectacle.
“It was entertaining,” Harris 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.”
As it turned out, one of the store’s creepy motion-activated displays had spooked the monkey, causing it to dart away from its owner. For half an hour, the furry escape artist leaped from display to display, turning the costume shop into what onlookers jokingly described as a “Halloween jungle.”
Eventually, local authorities arrived to restore order to the chaos. According to the Plano Police Department, the responding officer found the runaway primate mid-swing still wearing its diaper and seemingly having the time of its life.
“He observed the monkey swinging from the rafters wearing a diaper,” police said in a statement. “Eventually, a cookie was offered to the monkey by the owner, and was able to gain control of it.”
The sweet peace offering worked. The monkey calmed down and returned safely to its owner without incident. Police confirmed that no one was hurt, and the animal didn’t pose any danger to customers other than the risk of laughing too hard.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the only monkey news making headlines that week. In Missouri, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department reported that three Rhesus monkeys were on the loose after a transport truck from Tulane University crashed outside Heidelberg.
It seems October wasn’t just the month of ghosts and goblins, it was also the month of monkey mayhem.
For Pinkston and the rest of the Plano shoppers, that day will be a story retold for years to come — proof that sometimes, real life is stranger (and funnier) than fiction. Halloween is all about unexpected frights and surprises, but few could have imagined a costumed store turning into a circus, complete with a diaper-wearing acrobat.
And as Spirit Halloween prepares to close its doors after another spooky season, locals in Plano can’t help but laugh, remembering the day a monkey stole the show literally.
