All we know about Dublin Halloween parade hoax that duped thousands and caused mayhem in city centre
Thousands of people lined O'Connell Street on Thursday evening after being duped into believing that a Halloween parade would be taking place, with the incident making headlines around the world
Thousands of people lined O'Connell Street in Dublin city centre on Thursday evening in anticipation of a Halloween parade which did not take place.
Revellers flooded the city's main thoroughfare after rumours circulated online suggesting there would be a parade running from Parnell Street to Christchurch Cathedral.
However, when members of the public gathered on O'Connell Street, it soon became clear that they had been duped by what initially appeared to have been an elaborate online hoax.
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The incident, which has been picked up news outlets around the world, led to Gardaí issuing a statement calling for people to disperse the area safely. With confusion still reigning over exactly how thousands of people fell victim to the hoax, we have rounded up everything we know so far about the bogus parade, from how the rumours first began to what those behind the false reports have said.
How the rumours started
Reports that a Halloween parade would be taking place from 7pm until 9pm in Dublin city centre originated on myspirithalloween.com, a Pakistan-hosted website that creates AI-generated news.
The website claimed the parade was being organised by Galway arts ensemble Macnas, an award-winning theatre company who held parades around Halloween last year in both Galway and Dublin.
When myspirithalloween.com advertised the fictional parade online, it made its way through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) onto multiple news and social media sites, spreading the fake news. Soon, social media users on TikTok and Facebook posted about the fake event and spread awareness of it.
Thousands gather on O'Connell Street
By 7pm on Thursday, thousands of people, some dressed in Halloween costumes, had gathered on O'Connell Street in anticipation of the event.
Images and videos shared on social media showed large crowds lining the street waiting for the fake event to start, with many people looking bewildered that no such parade was taking place.
In a post shared an X, one witness to the chaos wrote: "People waiting for a halloween parade. No Gardai around, no official announcement, people waiting on the wrong side of the road... Someone did pull a big #hoax #Prank."
Garda appeal
The gathered crowds caused problems for the city's public transportation, with Red Line Luas services between Smithfield and The Point and Green Line services between St. Stephen's Green and Dominick Street interrupted for about half an hour. The disruption led to Gardaí issuing an appeal for those gathered on O'Connell Street to leave the area.
A Garda spokesperson said: "Please be advised that contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled to take place in Dublin City Centre this evening or tonight. All those gathered on O’Connell Street in expectation of such a parade are asked to disperse safely."
Website owner apologises for 'embarrassing mistake'
The man who runs the myspirithalloween.com has since apologised for the confusion on Thursday night, claiming that the initial report was a 'mistake' rather than an elaborate hoax.
myspirithalloween.com claims to be based in Illinois in the United States, but is actually hosted in Pakistan, with the owner of the website, who identified himself as Nazir Ali, denying claims that the site was acting with malicious intent. Ali claims that the bogus report was a genuine mistake that got out of hand.
“It was our mistake and we should have double checked it to make sure it was happening. But newspapers are reporting that we posted it intentionally and this is very, very wrong,” he told the Irish Times.
"If we had heard before the day that the parade was not going to happen we would have removed it but no one alerted us. We are highly embarrassed and highly depressed and very sorry.”
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