Author: Cara Giaimo / Source: Atlas Obscura
When you’re renovating an old building, you expect to find some strange things hiding. Maybe there’s an old report card someone slipped into the floor, or some cool out-of-date candy wrappers. Maybe there’s a secret room or two. Or maybe there’s an entire monkey, mummified by time, hanging out in the ceiling.
As the Old Minneapolis Facebook page first reported, construction workers remodeling Dayton’s Department Store discovered the petrified primate earlier this week. Since then, people from all over the state, including the mayor of a nearby suburb and the governor of Minneapolis, have been clamoring to offer explanations for its presence. It seems this mystery—like the monkey—goes all the way to the top.
Dayton’s Department Store was founded way back in 1902. While it eventually spread to 19 locations, its flagship store is “literally at the center of Minneapolis,” explains Adam Freed, one of the administrators of the Old Minneapolis Facebook page. People who grew up in the city have plenty of memories there, whether it’s of riding the escalators up and down or visiting Santa in the eighth-floor auditorium space during the holidays.
So when Freed found the user-submitted photo and reposted it to the main page, asking members to help solve “The Mystery of the Mummified Monkey,” they jumped into action. “Finding a carcass of a mummified animal in the bones of a well-loved old department store certainly is appropriate for the site,” says Freed. “But it’s not typical.” Many offered theories. One recalled a circus on the building’s top floor. Another mentioned her boyfriend’s long-ago lost pet.
By Tuesday night, Freed says, they’d gotten a few stories that seemed to mesh. The first came from Steven Laboe, who had heard it from a Dayton’s old-timer. “He told me about the monkey who had escaped…
The post Found: A Mummified Monkey in the Ceiling of a Department Store appeared first on FeedBox.