Thousands of people in Dublin took to the streets on Thursday in anticipation of a city centre Halloween parade that turned out to be fake.
The National Police informed Dubliners, asking those gathered to disperse:
“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. Should you need our help or assistance, we are out on the beat along O’Connell Street and surrounding areas throughout this evening and tonight – please do not hesitate to stop and speak with us.”
A Halloween parade announcement appeared on My Spirit Halloween, a website run by an unknown person. It featured a lot of artificial intelligence-generated content about Halloween “news” from around the world.
The site was created with the aim of ranking high in Google searches using search engine optimisation techniques. The people who created My Spirit Halloween noticed that it would be easy to rank for search queries like “Halloween parade 2024” and created several pages for that purpose.
The situation escalated when the site was noticed by locals and began spreading the word about the parade on social media. As a result, thousands of people came to the fake event. One local resident filmed from his window as crowds gathered in the street, leaving space along the road for the fake Halloween parade. One man said:
“It was hilarious. We’re still laughing.”
