🔗 Share this article

"Locals dub this location a mysterious vortex of Transylvania," remarks a local guide, the air from his lungs forming clouds of mist in the chilly evening air. "So many people have gone missing here, many believe it's an entrance to a different realm." The guide is escorting a traveler on a evening stroll through frequently labeled as the planet's most ghostly woodland: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of old-growth native woodland on the outskirts of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

A Long History of the Unexplained

Accounts of strange happenings here go back hundreds of years – this woodland is called after a area shepherd who is said to have vanished in the long ago, accompanied by two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu came to worldwide fame in 1968, when a military technician called Emil Barnea photographed what he reported as a unidentified flying object suspended above a circular clearing in the heart of the forest.

Many came in here and never came out. But no need to fear," he continues, addressing his guest with a grin. "Our tours have a flawless completion rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has brought in meditation experts, spiritual healers, ufologists and ghost hunters from across the world, interested in encountering the strange energies believed to resonate through the forest.

Current Risks

Despite being one of the world's premier pilgrimage sites for lovers of the paranormal, this woodland is facing danger. The outlying areas of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of a population exceeding 400,000, described as the Silicon Valley of eastern Europe – are expanding, and real estate firms are advocating for authorization to remove the forest to construct residential buildings.

Aside from a small area home to regionally uncommon specific tree species, this woodland is lacking legal protection, but Marius hopes that the initiative he was instrumental in creating – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will contribute to improving the situation, persuading the local administrators to acknowledge the forest's significance as a visitor destination.

Spooky Experiences

While branches and seasonal debris snap and crunch beneath their shoes, the guide recounts various traditional stories and reported supernatural events here.

• A well-known account recounts a young child going missing during a family outing, only to reappear after five years with no memory of the events, showing no signs of aging a single day, her garments without the slightest speck of dust.
• Frequent accounts explain smartphones and imaging devices mysteriously turning off on stepping into the forest.
• Feelings range from full-blown dread to feelings of joy.
• Some people claim observing strange rashes on their skin, hearing disembodied whispers through the woodland, or feel palms pushing them, although sure they are alone.

Study Attempts

Despite several of the accounts may be hard to prove, numerous elements before my eyes that is definitely bizarre. Everywhere you look are plants whose trunks are curved and contorted into unusual forms.

Different theories have been given to account for the abnormal growth: that hurricane winds could have altered the growth, or typically increased radiation levels in the earth account for their crooked growth.

But research studies have turned up insufficient proof.

The Famous Clearing

The guide's excursions permit visitors to engage in a modest investigation of their own. As we approach the opening in the forest where Barnea took his renowned UFO photographs, he hands his guest an EMF meter which measures EMF readings.

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

The trees abruptly end as the group enters into a flawless round. The only greenery is the short grass beneath the ground; it's obvious that it's not maintained, and appears that this unusual opening is wild, not the work of landscaping.

The Blurred Line

The broader region is a place which fuels fantasy, where the border is unclear between truth and myth. In rural Romanian communities superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – undead, shapeshifting bloodsuckers, who rise from their graves to frighten nearby villages.

The famous author's well-known fictional vampire is forever associated with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – a medieval building perched on a stone formation in the Transylvanian Alps – is actively advertised as "the vampire's home".

But despite folklore-rich Transylvania – truly, "the place beyond the forest" – seems tangible and comprehensible in contrast to the haunted grove, which appear to be, for causes related to radiation, atmospheric or entirely legendary, a nexus for fantasy projection.

"In Hoia-Baciu," Marius comments, "the division between reality and imagination is very thin."