🔗 Share this article

"They call this spot a mysterious vortex of Transylvania," remarks an experienced guide, his exhalation forming puffs of vapor in the chilly dusk atmosphere. "Numerous individuals have disappeared here, some say it's an entrance to a different realm." The guide is leading a guest on a nocturnal tour through frequently labeled as the globe's spookiest grove: Hoia-Baciu, a square mile of ancient indigenous forest on the fringes of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Centuries of Mystery

Accounts of bizarre occurrences here extend back centuries – the forest is titled for a area shepherd who is said to have vanished in the far-off times, together with two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu achieved global recognition in 1968, when a defense worker known as Emil Barnea photographed what he described as a UFO floating above a circular clearing in the centre of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and never came out. But don't worry," he adds, turning to the visitor with a smile. "Our excursions have a 100% return rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has attracted yogis, traditional medicine people, UFO researchers and paranormal investigators from across the world, curious to experience the strange energies reported to reverberate through the forest.

Contemporary Dangers

Although it is a top global destinations for lovers of the paranormal, this woodland is under threat. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – a contemporary technology center of over 400,000 residents, described as the innovation center of Eastern Europe – are encroaching, and construction companies are campaigning for permission to cut down the woods to erect housing complexes.

Barring a few hectares housing regionally uncommon specific tree species, the forest is not officially protected, but the guide hopes that the initiative he was instrumental in creating – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will assist in altering this, encouraging the local administrators to recognise the forest's significance as a travel hotspot.

Eerie Encounters

When small sticks and autumn leaves break and crackle beneath their shoes, the guide describes various folk tales and claimed ghostly incidents here.

• A popular tale tells of a little girl disappearing during a family outing, then to rematerialise five years later with complete amnesia of what had happened, without aging a single day, her clothes shy of the tiniest bit of soil.
• Frequent accounts explain cellphones and camera equipment inexplicably shutting down on entering the woods.
• Feelings vary from full-blown dread to states of ecstasy.
• Some people state noticing strange rashes on their skin, detecting unseen murmurs through the trees, or sense hands grabbing them, even when convinced they're by themselves.

Research Efforts

Despite several of the stories may be unverifiable, numerous elements before my eyes that is certainly unusual. Throughout the area are vegetation whose stems are curved and contorted into unusual forms.

Multiple explanations have been proposed to explain the misshapen plants: that hurricane winds could have bent the saplings, or inherently elevated electromagnetic fields in the soil explain their strange formation.

But formal examinations have discovered no satisfactory evidence.

The Famous Clearing

The guide's tours permit visitors to take part in a little scientific inquiry of their own. As we approach the meadow in the woods where Barnea captured his well-known UFO photographs, he gives the visitor an electromagnetic field detector which measures electromagnetic fields.

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

The plants immediately cease as the group enters into a complete ring. The single plant life is the low vegetation beneath their shoes; it's clear that it hasn't been mown, and seems that this bizarre meadow is organic, not the work of landscaping.

Between Reality and Imagination

The broader region is a place which stirs the imagination, where the border is unclear between truth and myth. In countryside villages superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, shapeshifting creatures, who rise from their graves to terrorise regional populations.

The famous author's well-known vampire Count Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and the historic stronghold – a medieval building perched on a stone formation in the Transylvanian Alps – is heavily promoted as "the count's residence".

But even folklore-rich Transylvania – literally, "the land past the woods" – feels real and understandable compared to these eerie woods, which seem to be, for factors radioactive, environmental or purely mythical, a hub for creative energy.

"In Hoia-Baciu," the guide states, "the boundary between truth and fantasy is remarkably blurred."