Mortals who saw the Hunt were in grave danger: it was thought to presage some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. Mortals getting in the path of or following the Hunt could be kidnapped by the spectral rampage and dropped many miles from home or brought to the land of the dead.

Not only humans but also animals were in grave danger; In England when Herne drove the Hunt across the skies people would hide away in their houses and lock away their animal, as any animal found out-of-doors during the Hunt would be chased and perhaps killed.

The Norwegian oskorei stops either at places where someone has been or shall be murdered, in a manner to the Baltic werewolves described by Olaus Magnus in Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555), who, like the oskorei, come uninvited, drink up the ale and mead in the cellars, and whose Yule visit also portends a death in the approaching year. In England, the Wild Hunt comes to fetch the souls of the evil; in Jutland, the Hunt's strong riding foretells war and its passing through a house in West Jutland is a sign of great bad luck to come (Olrik, "Odinsjageren i Jyland", Dania VIII, p. 146). Landstad reports how the Telemarker Tor saw the "Aasgaardsreiden" with his brother Gredgard riding in the host. He hurried at once to his brother, only to find him sitting "dead as a stock or a stone" (Norvegs Folkslagsminne 13, p. 17).

Certainly the hounds are everywhere supposed to be portents of death and disaster, and a belated traveler hearing them would fling himself face downward on the ground to avoid seeing them (cf. the precautions taken by the miner and his daughter, in Clun Forest, seeing Edric the Wild and the Hunt prior to the Crimean War - Edric is said to appear whenever England is threatened with invasion and leads the Hunt towards the foe). Henderson (Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, 1879) tells us:

"Sometimes they appear to hang over a house, and then death or calamity are sure to visit it. A Yorkshire friend informs me that when a child was burned to death in Sheffield, a few years ago, the neighbours immediately called to mind how the Gabriel hounds had passed above the house not long before."

In the Zimmerische Chronik, one man bandages a ghost and becomes ill, another man answers the hunt with the same result. In Pomerania and Westfalia, the Hunt chases travellers to death. M. Landstad cites a Telemark story of the "Aasgaardsreid" leaving a dead man hanging where they had drunken the Yule ale. "He was dressed as a Nummedaler and had silver buttons on his best. The Aasgaardsreid had taken him in Nummedal and carried him along, and they had presumably ridden so bard that he had burst" (Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 13, p. 20).

The motif of the living person who is picked up by the horde and carried somewhere else is particularly common in Germany and in Norway. A curious form of this theme which is unique to Norway has people undergoing a sort of involuntary separation from their bodies, which lie as if dead while their souls are faring with the oskorei, as Landstad describes: "She fell backwards and lay the whole night as if she were dead. It was of no profit to shake her, for the Asgardsreid had made off with her." The woman then awakes to tell how she had ridden with the host "so that fire spurted under horse-hooves" (p. 15). In Pomerania, doors are closed against the Hunter to keep children from being carried off; in Bohuslän, it was said that "Oden fares from up in the air and takes creatures and children with him."

A number of the tales of the Wild Hunt describe the punishment of someone who mocks at the hunt, as in Neuvorpommern, where "A miller's boy stood before the mill, when the Wild Hunt went over him. 'Take me with!' the youth cried. 'Half part!' Wode said, and as he came back, cast a human leg before the mill, crying, 'Häst du wullt jagen / Kannst ok mit gnagen!' -- If you wanted to hunt, you can also eat. The boy tried to get rid of the leg in all possible ways, but nothing worked" (Jahn, Volkssagen aus Pommern und Rugen, pp. 7-8). Variants of this story are repeated a number of times in Northern Germany.

Those who help the Hunter or members of his train, however, are often rewarded with gifts. In the Strassburger Chronicle's example of the Freiburg woman who bandaged her dead husband, the woman was given "a great golden head, from which she should drink ... the woman held the head in her hand, and nothing happened to her. It was found afterwards, that the golden head was good, and had been no betrayal.

The devil had certainly stolen it somewhere." Those who hold the hounds of the Danish Wolmar are given apparently worthless trifles which later turn into gold. In the North German stories, similarly, the foam which a hound-holder wipes from the Hunter's horse turns into gold pieces (Jahn, p. 12), and a man of Boeck who fixed Frau Gauden's carriage wheels was given the dung of her hounds, which afterwards became gold (Grimm, III, p. 926). A combination of both themes appears in another North German tale in Jahn's collection, where the man who calls to the Hunt is given a horse-leg with the words, "There have you also something for your hunting," but the next day the horse-leg has become gold (p. 30).

While it takes a foolhardy person to interfere with the Hunt, only the courageous survive when the Hunt accosts them. In "Local Traditions of the Quantocks" (Folklore XIX, 1908, p. 42), C.W. Whistler reports that a man

 "dared to cross the path in the dark, and was overtaken by the Wild Hunt as it passed overhead. And when he looked up, there was the devil himself following the hounds and riding on a great pig. What was worse, the devil pulled up and spoke to him. 'Good fellow,' he called, 'how ambles my sow?' The man was most terrible feared, but he knew that he must make some answer, so he replied, 'Eh, by the Lord, her ambles well enough!' And that saved him, for the devil could not abide the name of the Lord, so that he and his dogs vanished in a flash of fire!" Another well-known Mecklenburg legend has Wod engaging in a tug-o-war with a peasant whom he meets on the way, but the man is clever enough to tie the chain to an oak, so that Wod cannot pull him up into the air. "'Well pulled!' said the hunter, 'many's the man I've made mine, you are the first that ever held out against me, you shall have your reward.'"

The peasant is then given some blood and a hindquarter from Wod's stag, which have turned into gold and silver by the time he has reached his cottage (Grimm, III, pp. 924-925).