The Banff Merman!

Banff's oldest celebrity resident, the Merman

This strange creature was found in the owner of the Banff Indian Trading Post, Norman Luxton's basement after he died sometime in the 1960s. Luxton also happened to be married to the first white woman in the province of Alberta.

Luxton bought the Merman in 1915 and crafted a vague story about its origins to help promote the Trading Post, which at that time sold beadwork and quilts made by natives from the nearby Stoney Reserve.

The Merman is a petrified, three-foot, half-man half-fish curio in a glass case in the back room of the Indian Trading Post, an old cabin hawking authentic native artifacts and tourist souvenirs on the south side of the Banff Avenue bridge. Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum once offered the family $300,000 for the Merman.

The Merman is bizarre enough to draw interest, looks realistic enough to maintain plausibility, and facts about it are kept vague enough to keep skeptics at bay. On the Merman's glass case is a weathered article from The Beaver magazine, dated September, 1942, with a handwritten note scribbled in the margins: "This is all we know about the Merman."

A closer look