🔗 Share this article

"They call this spot a mysterious vortex of Transylvania," states a tour guide, his exhalation producing puffs of vapor in the chilly evening air. "Countless individuals have gone missing here, some say it's an entrance to another dimension." The guide is guiding a traveler on a night walk through commonly known as the world's most haunted woodland: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of old-growth local woods on the edges of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Hundreds of Years of Enigma

Stories of bizarre occurrences here extend back a long time – the forest is titled for a area shepherd who is believed to have disappeared in the distant past, accompanied by his entire flock. But Hoia-Baciu achieved international attention in 1968, when a military technician called Emil Barnea took a picture of what he described as a flying saucer suspended above a oval meadow in the centre of the forest.

Numerous entered this place and failed to return. But don't worry," he states, turning to his guest with a smirk. "Our excursions have a 100% return rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has brought in yoga practitioners, spiritual healers, UFO researchers and paranormal investigators from around the globe, curious to experience the mysterious powers believed to resonate through the forest.

Current Risks

Although it is a top global pilgrimage sites for paranormal enthusiasts, the grove is facing danger. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – a contemporary technology center of over 400,000 residents, called the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe – are encroaching, and real estate firms are pushing for approval to clear the trees to erect housing complexes.

Except for a few hectares home to area-specific Mediterranean oak trees, this woodland is lacking legal protection, but the guide is confident that the company he was instrumental in creating – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will assist in altering this, motivating the local administrators to recognise the forest's significance as a visitor destination.

Eerie Encounters

While branches and fall foliage split and rustle beneath their shoes, Marius tells numerous local legends and alleged ghostly incidents here.

• A popular tale tells of a little girl vanishing during a group gathering, then to return five years later with no recollection of the events, without aging a moment, her clothes without the slightest speck of dust.
• More common reports explain cellphones and photography gear mysteriously turning off on entering the woods.
• Reactions vary from full-blown dread to moments of euphoria.
• Certain individuals claim seeing bizarre skin irritations on their bodies, detecting ghostly voices through the trees, or feel hands grabbing them, even when certain nobody is nearby.

Scientific Investigations

Although numerous of the accounts may be hard to prove, there are many things before my eyes that is undeniably strange. Everywhere you look are plants whose trunks are warped and gnarled into fantastical shapes.

Multiple explanations have been given to explain the abnormal growth: strong gales could have bent the saplings, or inherently elevated electromagnetic fields in the soil explain their crooked growth.

But research studies have discovered insufficient proof.

The Legendary Opening

Marius's walks enable participants to participate in a little scientific inquiry of their own. As we approach the meadow in the trees where Barnea photographed his famous UFO images, he gives the visitor an electromagnetic field detector which registers EMF readings.

"We're stepping into the most powerful area of the forest," he says. "Discover what's here."

The vegetation immediately cease as they step into a perfect circle. The single plant life is the trimmed turf beneath the ground; it's obvious that it hasn't been mown, and looks that this bizarre meadow is organic, not the work of people.

Between Reality and Imagination

Transylvania generally is a area which fuels fantasy, where the line is indistinct between truth and myth. In rural Romanian communities faith continues in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, shapeshifting creatures, who rise from their graves to frighten nearby villages.

The novelist's famous character Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and Bran Castle – a Saxon monolith located on a cliff edge in the Carpathian Mountains – is actively advertised as "the count's residence".

But including legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the territory after the grove" – seems real and understandable in contrast to these eerie woods, which seem to be, for factors related to radiation, climatic or entirely legendary, a hub for human imaginative power.

"Within this forest," the guide comments, "the line between reality and imagination is very thin."