Wilde Jagd

The Wilde Jagd (also known variously as Wild Hunt/Chase, Woden's Hunt, Herod's Hunt, Gabriel's Hounds, Cain's Hunt, the Devil's Dandy Dogs, and in North America Ghost Riders) was a folk myth prevalent in former times across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it.
Seeing the Wild Hunt 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 and brought to the land of the dead. Even just hearing the sound of the Wilde Jagd was enough to cause madness or death.