Since opening in downtown Spokane in early 2022, Petunia & Loomis LLC has grown a loyal base of customers who appreciate the bizarre and unusual.

The oddities and antiques shop offers a variety of curiosities, decorations, and heirloom items, including porcelain dolls, horror novels and comics, occult tools, taxidermy, and wet specimens — animals that died of natural causes that are preserved in isopropyl alcohol and displayed in glass jars.

Jesse and Sam McCauley, a married couple, originally launched Petunia & Loomis in a 1,000-square-foot space in the Paulsen Center downtown, at 421 W. Riverside.

“The reception we got from people was really good, and the community we've built around it has become a lot bigger than we ever really anticipated it to be,” Jesse McCauley says. “We've gained a lot of really loyal customers, and we've tried to do a lot of events and things that have brought a lot of like-minded people together.”

The McCauleys relocated Petunia & Loomis to a 2,300-square-foot space at 224 N. Howard, sandwiched between Atticus Coffee & Gifts LLC and Boo Radley’s Inc. in November 2024.  

It was a rough start transitioning to the new space, Jesse says. Two weeks after Petunia & Loomis opened its Howard Street location the building flooded, and then flooded again about two months later.

“At the end of June and pretty much all of July last year, we were closed because they had to replace our floors and they had to drywall a bunch of stuff,” he explains.

However, the popularity of the shop’s new location outweighed the lost profits from being closed for repairs, he says.

“Having Atticus and Boo Radley's by us and being towards Riverfront Park, we're a lot more in the face of customers, so a lot more people found us,” Jesse says. “It's still pretty much a daily occurrence that someone comes in and says 'I didn't even know you guys were here.' We have a pretty strong social media following amongst TikTok and Facebook and Instagram, but new people still find us all the time.”

In 2025, record growth was achieved even with the setback, he says, noting that, "Last year, despite being closed for pretty much a whole month, it was our best year ever."

In addition to retail offerings, Petunia & Loomis hosts events. On July 18, the McCauleys, who are Petunia & Loomis' only employees, will host a free meet-and-greet event featuring Reby Hardy, the author of children’s book “Life of a Gothic Baby,” a model, actress, and former professional wrestler who designs pinball machines. Jesse says his love of wrestling and the gothic subculture led him to invite Hardy to Spokane for a visit.

Later in the year, the store will host its annual holiday season event, during which customers can pose for free photos with an actor dressed as Krampus, a folkloric half-goat, half-demon inverse of Saint Nicholas popularized across central Europe.

"One compliment we get quite often is ... 'Thank you for keeping Spokane kind of weird,'" Jesse says. "We do weird stuff. We have weird things."

The "weirdness" at Petunia & Loomis was recently amplified with the addition of a full human skeleton. Originally donated to a university in Idaho to be used as a teaching tool after the person died about 100 years ago, the skeleton spent time at a middle school before an acquaintance of Jesse’s acquired it.

While the skeleton isn't currently for sale, some people come to the shop just to see the remains, he says. 

The McCauleys recently completed an interstate expansion with the opening of a Petunia & Loomis booth at Stardust Vintage Emporium, a vintage mall in the Sacramento, California, metropolitan area.

“We visit family down here a couple of times a year, and it was one of those things where we found the place and we really liked it, and they didn't really have oddities,” Jesse says. “They had more midcentury modern and vintage stuff, but we saw an opportunity to bring something that they didn't have.”

Petunia & Loomis operates Monday to Saturday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Looking ahead, the McCauleys are planning to steadily grow the oddities shop. 

"We just want to continue to keep growing, keep doing cool stuff in Spokane, have unique things and events, and cater to that crowd that may not be into ordinary things, but like things that are a little bizarre or strange or curious."