"People refer to this place the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," states a local guide, his breath forming clouds of mist in the crisp evening air. "Countless visitors have disappeared here, some say it's an entrance to a different realm." Marius is leading a traveler on a nocturnal tour through commonly known as the planet's most ghostly forest: Hoia-Baciu, a square mile of primeval native woodland on the fringes of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.
Stories of unusual events here go back a long time – the forest is titled for a area shepherd who is said to have vanished in the long ago, together with 200 of his sheep. But Hoia-Baciu gained international attention in 1968, when an army specialist named Emil Barnea photographed what he claimed was a unidentified flying object floating above a oval meadow in the heart of the forest.
Numerous entered this place and never came out. But rest assured," he states, addressing the traveler with a smirk. "Our excursions have a flawless completion rate."
In the time after, Hoia-Baciu has drawn meditation experts, traditional medicine people, ufologists and ghost hunters from across the world, interested in encountering the unusual forces said to echo through the forest.
It may be one of the world's premier destinations for lovers of the paranormal, this woodland is under threat. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of over 400,000 residents, called the tech capital of Eastern Europe – are encroaching, and real estate firms are campaigning for authorization to cut down the woods to construct residential buildings.
Except for a small area housing locally rare specific tree species, the forest is lacking legal protection, but the guide hopes that the organization he was instrumental in creating – a dedicated preservation group – will contribute to improving the situation, encouraging the authorities to acknowledge the forest's importance as a tourist attraction.
While branches and seasonal debris split and rustle beneath their boots, the guide tells numerous folk tales and alleged supernatural events here.
Despite several of the tales may be hard to prove, numerous elements clearly observable that is certainly unusual. All around are trees whose trunks are bent and twisted into fantastical shapes.
Various suggestions have been suggested to explain the deformed trees: strong gales could have bent the saplings, or inherently elevated electromagnetic fields in the ground explain their unusual development.
But scientific investigations have discovered no satisfactory evidence.
The expert's tours allow guests to engage in a little scientific inquiry of their own. Upon reaching the meadow in the forest where Barnea took his well-known UFO images, he hands his guest an electromagnetic field detector which registers EMF readings.
"We're stepping into the most active area of the forest," he states. "Discover what's here."
The trees suddenly stop dead as the group enters into a complete ring. The sole vegetation is the short grass beneath the ground; it's clear that it hasn't been mown, and appears that this strange clearing is organic, not the work of landscaping.
The broader region is a area which stirs the imagination, where the border is blurred between truth and myth. In rural Romanian communities belief persists in strigoi ("screamers") – supernatural, form-changing bloodsuckers, who return from burial sites to frighten nearby villages.
The novelist's well-known character Dracula is forever associated with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – a Saxon monolith perched on a stone formation in the Carpathian Mountains – is keenly marketed as "the count's residence".
But despite myth-shrouded Transylvania – literally, "the territory after the grove" – feels real and understandable compared to the haunted grove, which appear to be, for causes nuclear, environmental or simply folkloric, a center for creative energy.
"In Hoia-Baciu," Marius states, "the division between truth and fantasy is extremely fine."
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