Hundreds of people in Dublin experienced a Halloween trick on Thursday, lining the streets in anticipation of a parade that never came. According to The Independent, the event—the Macnas Halloween Parade, a near-annual occurrence since 2013 that came back in 2023 after a pandemic hiatus—turned out to be a prank by an AI-generated advertisement out of Pakistan. There had been no real plans for a Macnas parade in Dublin this year. But evidently there is an enormous appetite for this sort of thing among Dubliners, who turned out in droves along the projected route. A witness watching the crowd from the window told the paper that people didn‘t seem to realize the parade was a hoax until an hour after its projected start time (7 p.m.), when the police showed up and started clearing people out. “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,” the Gardaí said on Twitter. “All those gathered on O’Connell Street in expectation of such a parade are asked to disperse safely.”
