🔗 Share this article

"People refer to this place an enigmatic zone of Transylvania," explains a tour guide, his exhalation creating clouds of vapor in the chilly dusk atmosphere. "Numerous visitors have vanished here, it's thought it's an entrance to a different realm." This expert is leading a visitor on a nocturnal tour through what is often described as the world's most haunted grove: Hoia-Baciu, a square mile of old-growth local woods on the edges of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

A Long History of the Unexplained

Accounts of strange happenings here extend back a long time – the grove is named after a local shepherd who is said to have vanished in the long ago, along with his entire flock. But Hoia-Baciu came to international attention in 1968, when a military technician called Emil Barnea photographed what he reported as a unidentified flying object suspended above a round opening in the middle of the forest.

Many came in here and vanished without trace. But don't worry," he states, turning to his guest with a grin. "Our tours have a 100% return rate."

In the decades since, Hoia-Baciu has attracted yoga practitioners, shamans, extraterrestrial investigators and supernatural researchers from worldwide, interested in encountering the unusual forces believed to resonate through the forest.

Contemporary Dangers

It may be among the planet's leading pilgrimage sites for lovers of the paranormal, this woodland is at risk. The western districts of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of more than 400,000 people, described as the tech capital of the region – are advancing, and developers are campaigning for permission to clear the trees to build apartment blocks.

Barring a small area containing locally rare specific tree species, the forest is not officially protected, but Marius is confident that the company he helped establish – a dedicated preservation group – will assist in altering this, encouraging the authorities to acknowledge the forest's significance as a tourist attraction.

Eerie Encounters

When small sticks and fall foliage split and rustle beneath their boots, the guide tells some of the folk tales and claimed supernatural events here.

• A popular tale describes a five-year-old girl disappearing during a family picnic, only to return half a decade later with no recollection of the events, showing no signs of aging a single day, her clothes shy of the smallest trace of dirt.
• Frequent accounts explain cellphones and photography gear mysteriously turning off on stepping into the forest.
• Reactions range from absolute fear to states of ecstasy.
• Certain individuals report noticing strange rashes on their skin, hearing unseen murmurs through the woodland, or sense fingers clutching them, despite being sure they are alone.

Scientific Investigations

Although numerous of the tales may be impossible to confirm, numerous elements before my eyes that is certainly unusual. All around are vegetation whose bases are warped and gnarled into fantastical shapes.

Various suggestions have been given to explain the deformed trees: powerful storms could have bent the saplings, or typically increased radioactivity in the earth explain their strange formation.

But scientific investigations have turned up inconclusive results.

The Legendary Opening

The guide's tours permit visitors to take part in a little scientific inquiry of their own. As we approach the clearing in the trees where Barnea photographed his renowned UFO photographs, he hands the visitor an electromagnetic field detector which registers EMF readings.

"We're venturing into the most energetic section of the forest," he comments. "Try to detect something."

The plants suddenly stop dead as they step into a flawless round. The single plant life is the short grass beneath our feet; it's clear that it hasn't been mown, and seems that this strange clearing is wild, not the creation of human hands.

Fact Versus Fiction

This part of Romania is a area which stirs the imagination, where the border is blurred between reality and legend. In countryside villages belief persists in strigoi ("screamers") – supernatural, form-changing vampires, who return from burial sites to frighten regional populations.

Bram Stoker's renowned character Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and the historic stronghold – a Saxon monolith located on a stone formation in the Carpathian Mountains – is keenly marketed as "the vampire's home".

But even myth-shrouded Transylvania – actually, "the territory after the grove" – feels tangible and comprehensible versus the haunted grove, which appear to be, for causes related to radiation, environmental or purely mythical, a hub for fantasy projection.

"Inside these woods," Marius states, "the boundary between fact and fiction is very thin."