Dublin Halloween parade scam tricks thousands into packing Irish capital’s streets for free
Thousands of people gathered in Dublin, Ireland on Thursday night for an unlikely Halloween party. Videos and photos posted on social media showed crowds of people gathered in central Dublin, but it appears they were all fooled by what appears to have been an internet hoax.
“People waiting for the Halloween parade,” one social media user posted on Thursday, with a photo showing crowds lining Dublin’s O’Connell Street, the capital’s main thoroughfare.
They noted that there were no police or event workers at the scene, and “no official announcement, people waiting on the wrong side of the road,” concluding: “Someone pulled a big #fake #Prank.”
The non-event was advertised on the website myspirithalloween.com, which promotes many Halloween events around the world, including in cities in the US and UK, Mexico and Australia.
The website advertised a fake show in Dublin, saying it was organized by the real Irish Macnas group. The event was then promoted by social media users on TikTok and Facebook, according to comments posted online by Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, which looks at the spread of misinformation online.
The website may have been created to generate advertising revenue and included fake reviews, real photos of past Macnas Halloween events, fake social media pages on Facebook, and AI-generated text, O’Connor said.
Some of the events advertised on the site were not genuine. A page on the site that had provided details about the planned Dublin show had been changed as of Friday to say “cancelled.”
“This site claims to be based in Illinois, but all signs point to the person(s) behind it being based in Pakistan,” O’Connor said in a post on X.
In an attempt to disperse the crowds on Thursday evening, Irish police posted a statement online saying: “Contrary to information being circulated online, there is no Halloween parade scheduled to take place in Dublin City Center this evening or tonight.”
“All those who have gathered on O’Connell Street in anticipation of this demonstration are asked to disperse safely,” the Irish National Police said in an X post.
Irish state broadcaster RTÉ reported that large crowds caused brief disruption to Dublin’s tram lines.
