🔗 Share this article

"They call this place the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," states a tour guide, his breath creating clouds of vapor in the chilly night air. "So many people have vanished here, many believe there's a gateway to another dimension." Marius is escorting a visitor on a nocturnal tour through commonly known as the globe's spookiest grove: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of old-growth indigenous forest on the outskirts of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Centuries of Mystery

Accounts of bizarre occurrences here extend back hundreds of years – the forest is named after a regional herder who is reportedly went missing in the far-off times, accompanied by his entire flock. But Hoia-Baciu gained global recognition in 1968, when a military technician named Emil Barnea took a picture of what he claimed was a UFO hovering above a round opening in the middle of the forest.

Numerous entered this place and vanished without trace. But no need to fear," he states, facing the visitor with a smile. "Our excursions have a 100% return rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has brought in yoga practitioners, traditional medicine people, extraterrestrial investigators and ghost hunters from across the world, interested in encountering the mysterious powers believed to resonate through the forest.

Contemporary Dangers

It may be one of the world's premier pilgrimage sites for lovers of the paranormal, the grove is facing danger. The western districts of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of over 400,000 residents, known as the Silicon Valley of the region – are expanding, and construction companies are advocating for permission to remove the forest to build apartment blocks.

Aside from a few hectares home to locally rare Mediterranean oak trees, this woodland is lacking legal protection, but Marius hopes that the initiative he co-founded – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will assist in altering this, persuading the local administrators to appreciate the forest's significance as a travel hotspot.

Eerie Encounters

When small sticks and autumn leaves break and crackle beneath their shoes, Marius tells some of the local legends and reported paranormal happenings here.

• A popular tale describes a young child vanishing during a family outing, then to return after five years with no memory of her experience, without aging a day, her attire lacking the smallest trace of soil.
• Frequent accounts detail smartphones and camera equipment unexpectedly failing on stepping into the forest.
• Reactions include full-blown dread to feelings of joy.
• Various visitors report seeing unusual marks on their bodies, hearing disembodied whispers through the forest, or feel fingers clutching them, even when sure they are alone.

Study Attempts

Despite several of the accounts may be impossible to confirm, there are many things clearly observable that is certainly unusual. Throughout the area are vegetation whose trunks are curved and contorted into unusual forms.

Various suggestions have been given to explain the misshapen plants: strong gales could have shaped the young trees, or naturally high electromagnetic fields in the earth explain their crooked growth.

But scientific investigations have turned up inconclusive results.

The Legendary Opening

The guide's walks permit visitors to take part in a modest investigation of their own. As we approach the clearing in the forest where Barnea took his well-known UFO photographs, he passes his guest an electromagnetic field detector which measures energy patterns.

"We're entering the most powerful part of the forest," he comments. "See what you can find."

The plants abruptly end as we emerge into a perfect circle. The only greenery is the trimmed turf beneath our feet; it's apparent that it hasn't been mown, and seems that this strange clearing is wild, not the result of human hands.

The Blurred Line

This part of Romania is a area which fuels fantasy, where the line is unclear between reality and legend. In countryside villages faith continues in strigoi ("screamers") – undead, form-changing bloodsuckers, who return from burial sites to haunt regional populations.

Bram Stoker's renowned character Dracula is forever associated with Transylvania, and the historic stronghold – a medieval building situated on a cliff edge in the Carpathian Mountains – is actively advertised as "Dracula's Castle".

But including legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the land past the woods" – appears tangible and comprehensible compared to the haunted grove, which appear to be, for causes nuclear, climatic or entirely legendary, a center for creative energy.

"In Hoia-Baciu," the guide comments, "the line between truth and fantasy is very thin."