(Plano, Texas) It’s no surprise that shoppers at Spirit Halloween stores can be frightened by the animatronics. There are so many of them scattered everywhere. The motion-activated ones scare people by far the most, jumping out at them or screaming. What they’re not used to are monkeys swinging overhead from the building rafters, trying to escape the madness of the animatronics.
A Real-Life Scare at Spirit Halloween
While shopping at a Spirit Halloween store in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex this week, customers were frightened and in awe of a monkey wearing a diaper swinging from store displays and the ceiling rafters. No, it wasn’t a store animatronic display; it was a live pet monkey causing the chaos.
Download the KTYL Mobile App NowHow the Monkey Got Loose
A customer brought their pet monkey into the store, and while they were shopping, some of the store’s animatronic displays spooked the pet monkey, causing it to leap from the owner’s control and break free. The monkey ran around the store and was hanging precariously from the store rafters for approximately 30 minutes. Arlene Pinkston tells NBCDFW it was like a scene from Animal Kingdom.
Caught on Camera: Monkey Swings from the Rafters
Pinkston’s daughter first caught a glimpse of the monkey, thinking it was a store display, but when she noticed it was wearing a diaper and it was moving naturally, they knew it was a real monkey. Pinkston started recording video of the rogue monkey inside the Plano Spirit Halloween store.
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Plano Police Called to the Scene
Store employees called the Plano Police Department for assistance. Upon arrival, officers witnessed the monkey swinging from the rafters, too. The owner was eventually able to coax the monkey back down with a simple cookie treat.
A Halloween Story No One Will Forget
This will be one costume shopping experience that these Spirit Halloween customers will not soon forget.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
LOOK: 14 Things That Will Make You Nostalgic for Halloween in the ’80s1980s-era Halloween had its own vibe, from the waxy candy bags to the widespread fear of razor blades in apples. Think you can handle the nostalgia? Keep scrolling if you dare! Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz 
Looking back at these photos, those costumes were actually more terrifying than a high-end werewolf or zombie getup. [Costume photos: transylvania90210, Pontiac Exchange, StarWarsDan.] 
Rarely did a kid actually enjoy participating. You were either mortified if your costume drew too much attention or even more horrified if you didn’t have one and still had to march. Video Dotti notes that today’s parades come with plenty of guidelines, but in the 1980s, there were no rules. It wasn’t unusual to see both gory and cute costumes parading down the halls at the same time. Watch for the kid dressed as a priest.
The slightly suped-up versions had metal brads that let the decorations have moving appendages, perfect for putting on a little puppet show as you hung them up. [Photo: CherryMoonFactor via Etsy] 
And of course, there was always that one kid who tried to wear it as an upside-down mask. 
[NOTE: They still do this! Check out UNICEF’s website, where they say you can add “Some Meaning to Your Halloweening” which is pretty genius.] 
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LOOK: How Halloween has changed in the past 100 yearsStacker compiled a list of ways that Halloween has changed over the last 100 years, from how we celebrate it on the day to the costumes we wear trick-or-treating. We’ve included events, inventions, and trends that changed the ways that Halloween was celebrated over time. Many of these traditions were phased out over time. But just like fake blood in a carpet, every bit of Halloween’s history left an impression we can see traces of today. Gallery Credit: Brit McGinnis 
Halloween gained popularity in the United States in the 1840s by way of a massive Irish immigration to escape the Irish Potato Famine. The Pagan roots of the celebration may be what led to it being popular with farm communities and people looking to connect with the land as the seasons turned. Natural elements often showed up in costumes of this time.
In past generations, Halloween was integrated closely with mischief—namely, pranks. Throwing cabbages and stealing garden gates were among the most popular shenanigans. Nowadays, well-known pranks like egging houses or hanging toilet paper from tree branches can result in hefty fines.
As Halloween gained popularity stateside, unique methods of celebration began cropping up. Parties by the 1930s were standard fare in Halloween festivities and by the 1950s, Halloween parties were mostly held at homes instead of in downtown centers: a byproduct of the baby boom at the time and the holiday being increasingly focused on children.
If you were trick-or-treating in the 1940s or before, you would likely receive a popcorn ball, nuts, fruit, or money. Manufactured (and pre-wrapped) candy didn’t fully take off in the United States until the 1970s. Why? Parents were worried about the potential tampering of handmade treats.
Irish immigrants who introduced Halloween to America chose to carve pumpkins instead of their traditional turnips, echoing the legend of a cursed man who navigated his way with a light in a turnip. It wasn’t until the 1960s that America would see the Howden pumpkin, a pumpkin bred especially for Halloween carving. Its shallow flesh and sturdy stem make it perfect for carving—but not ideal for eating.
Halloween was originally a religious holiday for Druids, and is still celebrated as such by Wiccans. The surrounding days were also claimed as Catholic holidays centered on honoring the dead. But pushes in America to take away “evil” elements of Halloween made the holiday more about candy than evil spirits.
1962 was the year of “The Monster Mash,” a novelty song about the spontaneous party in a mad scientist’s lab. The resurgence in Halloween parties vaulted the popularity of songs like “Haunted House” and the oft-covered “I Put a Spell on You.”
The days of paper and crepe costumes and homemade treats are largely behind us. In 2019, Americans spent roughly $8.8 billion on the holiday. In light of a sagging economy due to COVID-19, in 2020 that number is expected to fall to $8 billion in Halloween spending overall.
The signature offerings for Halloween before candy were homemade soul cakes. They were tied closely to the Catholic roots of Halloween, and were symbolically given in exchange for prayers. These days, soul cakes are few and far between—although they’re still baked on Halloween in certain parts of Europe.
In 1982, a rash of poisoning deaths were tied to Tylenol pill bottles suspected of post-manufacturing tampering. The case was never solved, which inspired a wave of fear around trick-or-treating to the point where some towns in American banned it completely. Parents since have worried about razor blades, cyanide, and cannabis in Halloween candy—though most incidents of tampered candy are reported to be hoaxes.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, plastic masks with elastic bands were the norm for Halloween. They were cheap to produce and could resemble any character a child wanted to be. The game changed when vacuum-formed latex masks came on the market.
Emerging in the 1990s, trunk-or-treat events emerged as a safer alternative to trick-or-treating. Children gather candy from the opened trunks of cars parked together in a designated parking lot. The practice can inspire creative car decorations and has been nicknamed “Halloween tailgating.”
The hyper-realistic fake blood we think of from movies like “The Shining” came about in the 1960s, invented by pharmacist John Tinegate. Nicknamed Kensington Gore, it launched re-formulations of fake blood that would appease audiences of horror movies in color. Today, most fake blood (including the kind you might buy from the Halloween store) is made with corn syrup.
Thanks to sugar rationing in America, Halloween candy all but disappeared during World War II. Communities celebrated the holiday how they could. After the war, cartoons like “Peanuts” reintroduced the idea of trick-or-treating to American children.
Charity balls are an elegant Halloween event in many regions of the United States. UNICEF introduced the Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF program in 1950 to promote their message of “children helping children” on a more local level (and provide a candy-free activity for children). Spirit Halloween stores initiated the Spirit of Children charity for children’s hospitals in 2006.
The 2010s saw an uptick in schools banning students from wearing certain costumes to school, often on the basis of sensitivity or the separation of church and state. 2016’s creepy clown sightings led schools across America to bar students from dressing as clowns for Halloween.
Dressing up as a salacious version of a cat, a ketchup bottle, or even Mr. Rogers feels like a very modern shift. The tradition actually began in the 1970s with the LGBTQ+ community in New York City. Greenwich Village’s annual Halloween Parade was the birthplace of the tradition, where it then went on to infiltrate general Halloween culture.
Knott’s Berry Farm in 1973 decorated the theme park for temporary Halloween events and experiences. Knott’s Scary Farm would go on to inspire other seasonal theme park events. Six Flags puts on Fright Fest annually, and Disneyland decorates the Haunted Mansion every year in true nightmare fashion.
People may remember houses in their neighborhoods growing up that didn’t celebrate Halloween, opting to shut off outside lights to signal that treats would be found elsewhere. But those houses have become rarer with time. In 2020, the National Retail Federation projects that 62% of American consumers plan to hand out candy.
Why not let Fido and Fluffy join in on Halloween fun? Dressing up pets in costumes may date back to 327 B.C. in China, but doing it for Halloween has only become more popular with time. In 2019, 29 million people plan to dress their pets in Halloween costumes, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
Homemade costumes have seen a recent resurgence in popularity, likely thanks to the growth of Pinterest, Ravelry, and niche communities centered around crafting. Social media and popular parenting blogs may also be a contributing factor.
The conversation around Halloween has shifted in recent years to costumes that did not offend. Schools have instituted guidelines and warnings to students, while criticism from some social commenters claims the holiday has become too political.
Perhaps thanks to a growing Hispanic population in the United States (and films like “Coco” and “The Book of Life”), there’s been a rising awareness of the Mexican holiday of Dia de Los Muertos. Taking place on Nov. 1 and 2 of every year, this festival honoring deceased loved ones is often celebrated in tandem with Halloween.
