(UPI) Hundreds of people gathered on the streets of Dublin, Ireland, to attend a Halloween parade that turned out to be a complete hoax.

The would-be spectators gathered in the Dublin City Center on Thursday evening after a website called My Spirit Halloween spread false rumors of a Halloween parade that was supposedly going to make its way from Parnell Street to Christchurch Cathedral from 7-9 p.m.

The Gardai, Ireland's national police, issued an alert on social media warning that the parade was a hoax.

"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 post said. All those gathered on O'Connell Street at present, in expectation of such a parade are asked to please disperse safely.

The gathered crowds caused problems for public transportation, with Red Line services between Smithfield and The Point and Green Line services between St. Stephen's Green and Dominick Street being interrupted for about half an hour.

Ciarán O'Connor of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank said the hoax was apparently perpetrated as a means of generating ad revenue for the My Spirit Halloween website.

O'Connor said on social media that the "site claims to be based in Illinois but all signs point to person(s) behind it being based in Pakistan."

He said people started to share the site, thinking the information was genuine, and posts proliferated on Facebook and TikTok, leading to the large turnout for the fake parade.

The owner of the website, who identified himself as Nazir Ali, said the fake parade listing was a simple mistake.

"It was our mistake and we should have doubled checked it to make sure it was happening. But newspapers are reporting that we posted it intentionally and this is very, very wrong," he told The Irish Times.

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