Hundreds of people lined O’Connell street on Halloween night evening in anticipation of a Halloween parade that did not exist.
The fake parade was advertised by the site myspirithalloween.com. The site compiles Halloween events occurring all over the world and provides information on them.
The website states to be based in Illinois in the US, but the Facebook page in connection with the website states that the administrators are based in Pakistan.
Nazir Ali, who identified himself as the owner of the business and website, told the Irish Times that it was human error that caused this mistake, and not an intentional misleading.
He said that the team believed there would be a Halloween parade based on reports of previous events in Dublin. Using this information on previous parades, they advertised for this parade believing one would be held.
Ali has apologised for the mistake and highlighted how “highly embarrassed and highly depressed” himself and his team are.
The parade was set to start at 7pm, but an hour later Gardaí announced on social media that no event was scheduled to take place and asked the people who gathered to “disperse safely”.
It is unclear the exact number of people who were on O’Connell street for the hoax parade, with reports varying from the hundreds to the thousands. . Irish filmmaker Bertie Brosnan, who was in attendance, said that “people were packed five to 10 deep, lined up all the way down around the corner as far as the spire. Thousands were there.”
There were no official communications about the event, event security, barricades or planned Gardaí presence. The parade was meant to start at Parnell Square and travel along O’Connell Street to end in Temple Bar.
The hoax parade caused delays to Luas operations along O’Connell street. There were disruptions for around half an hour on both the red and green lines, between Smithfield and The Point and St Stephen’s Green and Dominick Street, respectively.
Photo by Sam Boal for Collins Photos
