Working around or alongside dead bodies is not a job everyone can handle.
Indeed, it takes a strong stomach, massive discipline, not to mention bravery.
Of course, most people who are brave enough to work as a doctor, nurse, coroner, or a mortician usually also have a high level of compassion as well, honoring the life of the person they are working for.
Particularly if they are superstitious, and wonder if that very person might still be in the same room with them, just out of their bodies.
An idea easy enough to laugh off, but indeed, many of these people have first hand experiences of haunting, sometimes scary encounters of finding themselves in the presence of spirits.
"Redditors who have worked around death/burial, what’s your best ghost story?
Some Unfinished Business, Maybe?
"I used to be a security guard at a hospital."
"One night, while doing my rounds, I went into the surgery wing and was walking down a hallway when I saw a doctor looking at the whiteboard where all the scheduled surgeries are written down."
"I said 'hello doctor' and kept going."
"The doctor didn’t say anything back, just kept studying the whiteboard."
"When I got back to the security office, I was telling one of the guys that’s been there for years about how I greeted this doctor and he didn’t say anything back, I asked if thats the a**hole they told me to watch out for."
"I was asked where I saw him and I said the surgery ward, and he gave me a smirk."
"He then explained that the surgery ward closes at 9pm and that all patients are moved into the monitoring wards; there should be no one there."
"He then asked me if this doctor was studying the schedule board."
"I said yes and he then told me that I just met Dr. Luisitti."- addictedpunk
A Sign Of Comfort, Or Foreboding?
"I worked within hospice and long-term care."
"The spookiest phenomenon was the man in the corner."
"It happens all the time for people actively dying."
"They see a shadowy man in the corner of their room."- LeftandLeaving9006
Poor Guy. Both Of Them.
"Not me, but a colleague found a dead person in a dark smoke filled burned out building during the mop up of fire fighting operations."
"As unfortunately happens sometimes, you find them by stepping on them."
"If they're still intact you kinda bounce off them."
"If they're fried, you can often crunch them up pretty bad under your heavy boot."
"Well this guy stood right on a badly burned corpse's sternum."
"Crunch, right into the chest cavity."
"When he tried to pull his foot out it got stuck on the ribs and the body came up at him."
"Burned up arms flailing about."
"He needed quite a bit of counseling, poor dude."- demoneyesturbo
All In A Day
"I have several stories from when I worked as a Mortuary Transport Tech."
"The job was basically transporting the deceased from where they were to where they needed to go."
"Turns out dead people can have a lot of appointments."
"One time though I had an experience I’ve never forgotten."
"I was dropping someone off at the Science Donation place."
"This is when you donate your body to science and they take it from there."
"So I wheeled in the deceased, unlocked the freezer, and did all my stuff I had to do in there."
"I placed him on the board, got the lift out, and placed him on the shelf."
"The interesting thing about the freezer was that most everything, once it’s processed, was wrapped in this blue tape type thing."
"And you could definitely tell what was inside."
"Legs, hands, feet, etc."
"Kind of interesting to me at the time."
"Anyway, I shut the freezer and locked it back up, and started wheeling the gurney back over to the garage door."
"The science drop off and processing area was a big L shape, with the freezer off to the larger long portion, and then you turn the corner and there’s desks and filing cabinets and whatnot."
"I about had a heart attack as I turned the corner and there is just this guy standing there examining files in the file cabinet."
"Looked just like you or me."
"Dressed modernly, but out of place for what people normally wear back there."
"I stopped and said that he’d have to forgive me but he almost gave me a heart attack."
"It didn’t look like he heard me at all, or even knew I was there."
"I should mention this was also about 1am, and I’d never seen anyone at the place this late."
"So I said, 'well, sorry if I startled you or anything', and went on about my finishing up stuff."
"Got the gurney back in the van, closed and locked the large garage door from the inside, all the while this guy is just standing there, staring at an open file in front of him, not paying any attention to me."
"I had to use the bathroom so I told him that’s where I’d be going and I’d be right back."
"Again, no response."
'I thought maybe he’s deaf and couldn’t hear me."
"So I went to the bathroom, and came back to the garage and the guy is gone but the file cabinet is still open."
"I didn’t know where he went, and I hadn’t heard anyone walk down the hallway past the bathroom."
"I checked and made sure everything I was responsible for was still locked, and it was."
"So I just announced that I was going to be leaving and locking up to set the alarm."
"No response."
"And that’s what I did, and left."
"I’m not sure who he was, or is, or what happened."
"But it was definitely an odd experience and one I still remember perfectly."
"I have a few other memories about my time at the job, if anyone else wants to hear."
"Nothing like what happened above though."- OlliverClozzoff
Unsettling Doppleganger
"I was once working at a mortuary and had to go pick up a man from the medical examiner’s office."
"When you do that (at least where I’m from) you get a receipt when they release the body to you."
"The receipt has all of the personal belongings that are with the deceased."
"When I brought the man back to the office I opened up the body bag to make sure all the belongings were there and double checking the receipt."
"When I opened up the bag I was stunned to find this dude looked almost exactly like me."
"He was my age, had similar tattoos In similar spots, had the same long hair I do, even had the same style of jewelry I was wearing."
"It took me so off guard that I stood there in an existential crisis until the embalmer came in and was like 'hey SpartanM00 how’s it goin—ahhh holy sh*t that guy looks like you!'"
"It’s the only case I’ve had nightmares about."
"I’ll be the one in the body bag with the deceased man opening me up."- SpartanM00
The More You Know
"Corpses move when you cremate em."
"People who don't know this get spooked a lot."- rocharox
The Unseen Help
"During my apprenticeship, I worked at a funeral home said to be 'haunted' by an old funeral director assistant who had a heart attack in the building and died."
"All he ever did was mess with the chapel lights and if you called him out, something like 'John the family is coming, please don't' they would return to normal."
"Not really sure if I believe it was really haunted, but saying something always fixed the issue so I kept doing it my entire time there."- _bobbykelso
Nightmare Inducing
"I used to work in a nursing home."
"The residents in certain rooms would complain about a man in their room at night but hallucinations are common in the elderly so it wasn't really noticed."
"One night I was moping the dinning room which had huge windows over looking the garden, it was around 1am so pitch black outside and low lighting inside."
"I had this horrible feeling of being watched so looked up and reflected in the window was a man behind me."
"He had a brown suit in, a bowler hat and the cruelest look on his face, he grinned and his mouth was too big."
"This happened in seconds and when I turned around there was obviously no one there but I'll never forget that look of evil on his face."
"I paid more attention to the residents after that and they'd all seen the same man, he just enjoyed terrorizing people."- mycatiscalledFrodo
Holding Out Hope
"I used to be a driver for a funeral home corporation."
"Like, drive the hearse and pick up the bodies."
"Never had anything creepy happened, a few funny things, a few traumatic things."
"In general it was a chill job."
"However, I did get incredibly uncomfortable one night picking up a man who died at home."
"He still had the defibrillator leads on his chest and his eyes were closed, which is unusual because the eyes are always open."
"He just looked like he was asleep or unconscious."
"Not rigid or pale or anything."
"I just had this sinking feeling for about half an hour in traffic that he was going to suddenly gasp and wake up in the body bag."
"Then it hit me."
"That would be the coolest thing ever."
"I’d take him home and he’d be back with his family."
"So I just kind of drove slowly and turned up some music and sang along and talked to him."
"When I got him to the funeral home I left him out of the cooler for about an hour while I did paperwork and played on my phone."
"When I got another call I checked on him and his limbs had started to stiffen."
"I was kind of bummed."
"I put him in the cooler and went on my next call."- Chemistry-Least
Working alongside the dead is a challenging. poignant, and frequently scary occupation.
As you always have the feeling that someone is watching you.
And more often than not, you may be right.
As much as we'd like to assume spirits, ghosts, and paranormal happenings are relegated to movies and books, plenty of real-life stories abound.
Inexplicable sightings, things heard, and cold pockets of air are encountered by plenty of people all the time.
It's up to you if you want to believe them. But it's hard to argue with the conviction of the contributors to a recent Reddit thread.
Redditor ihadanightmarewithu asked:
"What is the scariest / paranormal story you have ever experienced?"
Many people talked about the things that caught their eye once upon a time.
Two Places At Once
"I was staying with a group of friends rock climbing in Spain. Really creepy air bnb, lots of strange things happened while we were staying there. The creepiest was one morning we were getting ready for the day, packing food and generally getting our things together, and I went upstairs to grab something."
"As I was heading back downstairs I walked past my friend's boyfriend on the landing and saw him turn and go into his and my friend's room; I think I asked him something but he didn't reply. I thought 'rude' and headed downstairs."
"Walked into the kitchen and he was there sorting food out with my friend."
"Everyone swore he'd been downstairs the whole time, plus there was only one staircase and it would have been impossible for him to overtake me and get to the kitchen before me without me noticing. I went back upstairs and checked their room and there was no one up there but me."
"I've never experienced anything creepy or inexplicable before we stayed in that air bnb and I'd say I'm v. sceptical about supernatural/paranormal stuff but multiple things happened on that trip that spooked me."
Classic
"A floating head."
"I was putting beef in the slow cooker because I wanted it done for morning, it was late at night. I reached up to grab some seasonings, and heard creaking. I told my kids to get in bed."
"I see something out of my peripheral vision and there was no body but a head of a bald, pale man floating 3 1/2 maybe 4 feet off the ground in the middle of the floor. It's face kept looking as if it was sad, or like it was begging. It locked eyes with me....I froze."
"I had a darker wall, with a coat rack with my husbands work jackets so it stood out like a store thumb. I looked away thinking it was my imagination but when I looked back it was still there so I ran out the back door because I'd have to pass it to get upstairs with my husband and kids."
"I ended up calling him on my phone to come walk me in. I was wide awake, not sleepy, not out of it, on no medication. I have no reason to see that ever."
Presences, Seen and Felt
"When I was a kid my mom took my sister and I on vacation. I only remember this happening one night while we were there but the hotel we stayed at was pretty much all flats with one bedroom. I slept in the bed with my mom and my sister was on the pull out sofa. I can't remember if I was trying to go to sleep or woke up in the night to this but I just know everyone else was asleep."
"It was really dark with just a little light from the street outside coming in on the sides of the curtains. On each side of the bed stood a black silhouette and it felt like they were all staring right at me acknowledging their presence. I didn't feel threatened or afraid of them at all and turned on the bedside light and not surprisingly nobody was there."
"I turned the light back off and there they were still in the same positions. I just looked at them for a while but must have eventually fell asleep. The only other detail of that experience I remember is waking up the next day and mentioning it at breakfast and my sister saying she felt like she was being watched the whole night. I have no explanation for it but it's a memory that has stuck with me over many years now."
-- obev369
Paranormal?
"One time I was going home in my car and saw a guy that appeared to have no arms no hair and a longa** neck in a JUST a hoodie no pants no underwear trying to climb a tree in the woods with their legs and idk know if that's paranormal but it was such a fu**ing weird experience that I think it qualifies"
-- Setoz_
For others, it was all about the things they heard.
Preferred Number
"This is something I've never been able to rationalize."
"For months after my dad died, we were getting landline calls where no one would answer on the other end. This was in 2002, so, while robo callers were a thing, it definitely wasn't as prevalent as it is today, but we did assume they were probably wrong numbers or something. (We didn't have any phones that displayed caller id at the time.)"
"Well, one time, after getting yet another call with only silence on the other end, I jokingly said, 'Dad, if that's you, call my cell phone.' "
"I want to preface this by saying I rarely ever got calls on my cell phone, and never spam calls in those days. I was 18 with an unlisted number that only my family and a few friends had."
"Just a few minutes later, my phone rang with a number I'd never seen before. With what I'd just said fresh in my mind, I kind of freaked out and didn't answer. I was on my way out to go somewhere with my mom, so when we got in the car, I told her what happened. We made the decision to call the number back."
"It never rang, but there was activity at the other end: muffled static and the sound of numbers being dialed slowly. It was the weirdest thing. Both my mom and I said hello, but no one ever answered."
"Has anyone ever had something like that happen to them when dialing a number? I've never had it happen before or since."
-- huglife247
And the Crying Stopped
"About 10 years ago (I'd have been 24) I was still living with my parents. My bedroom was in the basement. One night, around 3am I was woken up to the sounds of a young child crying. It sounded like it was coming from just outside my window. I couldn't just look out the window because it was covered in ivy, so I quickly hopped out of bed to go help the kid."
"As I got closer to my bedroom door I could hear the crying was actually on the other side of the door. I opened the door. No one is there and the crying stopped. Spooked, I immediately jumped back in bed and the crying started again."
"Later that day at dinner, my family was sitting around the table and I brought up my experience I had. One of my sisters told a story about how when she was a kid she'd always leave her room at night to go sleep with my parents because she'd see a little girl walking out of her closet."
"As she left her room and got to my parents' door waiting to be let in because the door was locked she'd see the little girl walking up the stairs that were right there. After her telling this story my youngest sister looked scared and asked, 'the little girl, is she wearing a pink nightgown with shoulder-length brunette hair?' "
"Now my other sister was scared because that is exactly who she saw. My youngest sister told how she had similar experiences with that little girl coming out of the closet at night or walking up the stairs at night."
"I'm convinced that something happened either in that house before we moved in or on that land that my parents' house was built on."
-- JSparx597
Crying From Afar
"Not my story but my moms, apparently when I was just a baby I was always a calm sleeper and once when my mom was having a friend over downstairs they could hear a baby crying so they naturally went to check on me and I was still calmly asleep..."
"...but every time they went back downstairs they could hear some more crying, but apparently the crying was somehow off in a different way as well, one day when mom and dad were downstairs watching tv while I was sleeping upstairs, they heard crying and finally pinpointed the thing that was off..."
"...apparently it came from the opposite side of the house compared to my room and that room had the latch to the attic. Creepy stuff, but I'm not that surprised. This place is totally haunted in my book, I once heard my mom call me downstairs while I was home alone."
-- lukkisboi
Finally, some people interacted directly with the spirits.
Advice From Beyond
"So once while I was home alone, my neighbor knocked on my door. This was when we still lived in Oklahoma, and I was homeschooled. He was bit younger then me but we still played Halo together. I was thirteen at the time."
"I let him in and we had a conversation about what I thought the afterlife would be like, and this was really odd for him. We talked for a few minutes before he decided to leave. When my parents got home they told me he had a heart attack at school and died."
-- Maxraser33
One Time Only
"I once felt a hand on my face when I was sleeping. I had the covers covering my entire face and felt something push down lightly and then a bit harder."
"I was absolutely terrified and when I finally mustered up the courage to look, nothing was there. It never happened again but there have been a few times where something similar has happened."
A Very Helpful Ghost
"I was staying in the Banff Springs Hotel in 95 for a snowboard trip and I was leaving the room and forgot my jacket."
"When I remembered right at the door, I turned around to grab it from the bed where I left it and it was being held 2' above the bed like it was being being pinched by fingers."
"The moment I turned around it dropped to the bed."
"That blew my mind!"
"My GF's sister at the time was working concierge and she said there was a bell hop ghost and gave the paper story...lol It wasn't threating at all, but was crazy to see!"
-- GTR4L1F3
Here's hoping you manage to sleep well despite all these spooky stories!
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Do you believe in ghosts?
Most people are skeptical. After all, there is no conclusive evidence that ghosts exists. Mediums can be easily sniffed out as charlatans or opportunists, looking to profit off of people's grief.
Yet this little nagging voice in the back of our heads continually asks...what if there's some truth there?
u/TheDashingMan asked:
"Paranormal believers of reddit, what made you believe? (Serious)"
Here were some of those answers.
Just A Reflection?
When I was younger my mom used to invite random neighborhood children over for dinner and parties so they could eat.
At my sisters birthday party everyone was outside getting ready to hit the piñata. My father noticed a girl sitting inside staring out the window at us. We have a large window beside front door. He told me to go inside and ask her to come out and join the party.
I ran up the walkway, looking at her through the window as I went towards the door and then as soon as I passed through the doorway, losing sight of her for a few seconds, she was gone. My dad thought she had fallen. (Theres a couch in front of the window so he thought she fell on the couch).
I looked around for her but couldn't find her so I told my dad. He helped me look for her but still nothing. No one else saw her except me and my dad. My mom said she didn't recall inviting any girls with our description of her. We forgot about it until some years later though I don't really know exactly how many.
My dad and I were sitting in the living room watching TV. From my dad's armchair you can see into the kitchen a little bit. Me and my dad were talking about the show we were watching when he suddenly got quiet. He said my name and motioned for me to come over to him. He told me to look at the microwave. I saw that girl's reflection in the microwave, exactly the same as before. I ran into the kitchen and my dad followed but again no one was there. We were both pretty spooked so we went out for ice cream until my mom came home.
I thought it was a neighborhood kid playing a prank on us the first time. But seeing her the second time unchanged in our kitchen many years later made me start believing in ghosts.
A Benevolent Visit
Shortly after my mother died, I heard her call my name and I turned around and she was standing before me, smiling. Then she simply vanished.
I've never hallucinated before or since, I have no mental problems, etc, so I feel like I have to at least entertain the possibility it was for real.
Moving On
A few years ago my great-grandmother was in her last few days. My family lives a couple of hours away and I wasn't really able to get there. I had just seen her a couple of weeks before that and had personally made peace with the inevitable.
One night I had a dream where my great-grandmother and I had a nice, long conversation in the house that she had lived in when I was a young kid. We talked about her life and experiences, my life, and my future. It was the most vivid and lucid dream I've ever had.
The next morning, my mother called with the bad news that my great-grandmother had passed during the night, probably about 11pm. I don't know at what time I had that dream, but I definitely didn't go to bed before 11.
A Good Ethereal Feeling
When I moved in with my boyfriend he told me there was a (ghost) man that had always followed him wherever he lived. I am a firm believer in the paranormal anyway, but it really didn't bother me after some reassurances that he was benevolent. Not long after moving in, our roommate's girlfriend started staying over more often and this ghost hated her. If she'd use our bathroom the faucets would both turn on full blast. This would always cause her to run out of the bathroom with her pants around her ankles.
The ceiling fans would turn on by themselves, the TV would increase volume on its own. You had to unplug it to get it to stop. We replaced the TV, that one did the same thing.
After a few months of weird stuff happening, I awoke to the feeling of someone sitting at the foot of the bed. I felt the bed compress as though a real person had sat down. I jerked up and looked around and saw nothing but there was an imprint in our comforter where someone had sat. Several more weeks go by and finally the same thing happened again, only this time there was a man there. Big hat, trench coat, looked like he was straight out of a western. After a few seconds he disappeared. I told my boyfriend about him and his response was "Oh good, he finally let you see him".
After that it just became normal. He sat at the end of the bed most nights while I was pregnant and then after the baby was born he must have went in and sat with her. We would still catch glimpses of him here or there and you'd hear footsteps when home alone. We eventually broke up and I gotta say I miss the ghost way more than the boyfriend.
The Same Nightmares
Experiences. My own and other people's. There are things nobody understands that happen. This is one of many stories:
My grandma + uncles bought a house together in 2008 because it was unbelievably cheap. Every man who was married or in a relationship who slept in a particular room in the house would wake up from the same nightmare. We later found out a woman who had been assaulted by her husband's married friends had hung herself there 30 years prior and the house had been going from owner to owner ever since. They (my family) did a bunch of purification rituals and finally ended up locking that room up for good. And that kept it okay for a while but 3 years later, my grandma also passed in the same house so nobody wanted to stay there anymore and they sold it again. For the same unbelievably low price they got it in the first place.
I have many other stories that are just inexplicable if not for something supernatural or other dimensional.
"Nun"sense
3 things for me. two were/ are sightings and one was an experience that saved my life. Firstly was in my first house, i was alone in the house with the bathroom door locked as i was taking a shower. i turn to get the soap and there was someone standing right outside the shower door! I thought my room mate came home and was messing with me so i told him to get lost.... only after finishing my shower i find that the door was indeed locked!
Second was that in my current house we often have "nuns" walking across the corridor from the spare room to our bedroom, still happens on occasion today........
Lastly it was about 5 years ago when something pulled me back from a pedestrian crossing just as a lorry went barrelling through the red light whilst the driver was looking to his left.........i surely would have been severely injured if not killed. there was absolutely no one near me to have been able to pull me backwards....
In Moments Of Need
I have two spooky incidents that happened after my dad died.
First time is that my dad passed away while we were out of the country (it was very unexpected). A couple days before he passed he had issues sending and receiving texts/calls - his phone was always on for business calls/emergencies when we were on vacation/traveling. Several days after we get back home and are planning his funeral with my family. I'm confessing to my them that he embarrassed me at dinner and my last conversation with him was us arguing before he passed and felt horribly guilty.
Just as I explained that, I hear my phone go off and see a text from my dad. We had his phone charging in the kitchen so it was already creeping us out that none of us had touched it for the past few days. I opened the text and it said "I love you, love dad". I obviously lost it and so did my family. My logical mind says that it's just a text he sent while I was testing his phone the week prior that finally went through but his phone was on and connected for at least 3 days back home and the text came at that exact moment.
A month or so after my dad passed, I was driving to the first family get together since the funeral and I was sort of in a funk that this is the first family outing without my dad. As I'm driving through a rural area, I hear my dad's voice yell at me to stop. (He taught me to drive and I was very familiar with his panic yells). I slam on my brakes at an intersection with a green light for me and an 18 wheeler comes barreling through the intersection. If I didn't stop I would have definitely been hit. Once again could be grief and thinking about the times my dad taught me how to drive but still weirds me out to this day. Haven't had any other weird instances since these and it's been almost 8 years now.
Have We Met It Yet?
I don't know how much I believe in most paranormal things, but when I think about the topic, I can't help but think of the mantis shrimp can see. The human eye can sense red, green, and blue, and with varying combinations of those three colors, we get to enjoy millions of colors. The mantis shrimp has 16 different receptors, meaning the mantis shrimp can see in potentially trillions of colors we are physically incapable of even imagining.
I believe that it's not just possible, but almost guaranteed, that there's a huge portion of knowledge we're locked out of because we, as a species, simply are lacking whatever specialized organs that would allow us to study and explain. Problem is, try imagining a brand new sense. How do you explain it to others that have never felt it? If you can't feel it, how do you build a machine that translates it into senses you CAN experience?
There's just so much we don't know that we don't know. Current scientific evidence suggests the paranormal doesn't exist, but I'm willing to say there's every chance that we don't know how to interact with that part of the universe yet and that one day the supernatural skeptics (myself included) may be completely proven wrong.
Poltergeist
When my family and I moved into our new home things started to freak us out. We would hear people talking in other rooms and sometimes we would hear footsteps coming from the attic.
I told my friends when they visited and they laughed at me. The. All of a sudden a lamp turned on and then off by itself. It was weird but we just thought the outlet or the lamp switch is broken. However, when I took a look I found out that the lamp wasn't even plugged in.
Another day my mom was in the living room and 3 windows and a couple glass things broke simultaneously all of a sudden and she heard voices in another room.
Fun With Jane
I used to work at a daycare, and there was a one classroom that always housed the two year olds. Year after year, the kids would whisper in a corner. When asked who they were talking to they would, without fail say "Jane".
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Being a ghost would be an excellent opportunity for pranks. Being incorporeal and/or invisible means not getting caught, and presents a plethora of new ways to mess with people.
Reddit user u/BlameSociety1 asked:
"If you were a ghost, what things would you do just to mess with people?"
'Game Of Thrones' Fans' Desire To Have A Dire Wolf Of Their Own Has Left A Particular Dog Breed Suffering Greatly
The dire wolves of Game of Thrones aren't a fantasy concocted by George R.R. Martin, who conceived the series. They were once real.
The dire wolf is an extinct species of the genus Canis and lived in the Americas during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs. They feature heavily in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, as protectors of the Stark children.
They've also proven quite popular despite being sidelined on the HBO series.
The dire wolves (most notably Jon Snow's very own Ghost) are so popular, in fact, that many fans of the show have desired to own dire wolves of their own.
Here's where Siberian huskies come in: Their shaggy fur coats and other features make them the near spitting image of the dire wolves on the show, and fans have scooped them up from breeders as the show's popularity has soared.
But huskies are a high maintenance breed and fans unable to deal with these demands have abandoned their pets in animal shelters across the United States and the United Kingdom.
As National Geographic points out, huskies require considerable care and attention:
"Huskies are a particularly high-maintenance breed. They have an innate need to run—a lot. They're not particularly easy to train. And when they don't get the at least two hours of daily exercise they need, they can be very destructive."
"But people are increasingly buying them without doing their research, which often results in a lifestyle clash: The husky is frustrated by a lack of proper exercise and stimulation, and the owner doesn't understand why their dog is acting out."
A KOVR-TV report reveals "the number of abandoned huskies has soared eight-fold across the country" since Game of Thrones debuted in 2011.
Marnie Musser, who works at the Sacramento County SPCA, told the outlet that shelters have indeed seen an influx of huskies:
"We have seen an influx in our shelters. And this is actually not just in our community but around the nation... They [huskies] can be absolutely delightful pets, but they have to be well-trained and have focus. And they have to have a lot of stimulation and exercise."
Dan O'Neill, a veterinarian and senior lecturer in companion animal epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College in London, U.K., is concerned about what will happen to huskies once the demand for them drops:
"The novelty value will be gone. Those rapidly breeding for profit may see a reduction in demand. And then you have the issue of what happens to all those dogs?"
These reports have prompted both fans of the show and animal advocates to urge people to end the cycle.
Game of Thrones actor Jerome Flynn (who plays the sell-sword Bronn) has even teamed up with PETA to get the message out:
Be responsible, everyone. An animal isn't just a fad. It's a life.