Irish crowd waits hours for Halloween parade, only to find it was fake

DUBLIN: In a rather intriguing yet disturbing revelation, a Pakistan-based artificial intelligence-powered website has been found to be behind a hoax Halloween parade in Dublin that led to thousands of people gathering for an event that didn’t exist in the first place, The News reported on Monday.

The publication, citing United States-based news agency Vice, said that a large number of people dressed in different costumes gathered on a main road of the city in connection with the Halloween festival in the country’s capital.

The people who gathered to participate in the parade kept waiting for the start of the parade, but with the passage of time, their wait became longer.

Owing to the large number of people gathering, the surrounding roads were also blocked after which the police had to be mobilised and the people gathered for the parade were removed from there.

The police announced that there was no parade scheduled in Dublin, adding to the surprise of those gathered for the parade.

US media has reported that the fake announcement was made by a website called “My Spirit Halloween” — hosted in Pakistan — which said that the Halloween Day Parade would be held on Thursday evening from 7pm to 9pm.

Although the reason for this false declaration by the website has not been revealed, many people believe that the website’s purpose was to earn money from advertisements.