🔗 Share this article Exploring the Planet's Most Ghostly Woodland: Contorted Trees, UFOs and Spooky Stories in Transylvania. "They call this location an enigmatic zone of Transylvania," remarks a tour guide, the air from his lungs producing puffs of condensation in the cold night air. "Numerous people have disappeared here, some say it's a portal to a different realm." The guide is guiding a guest on a nocturnal tour through what is often described as the world's most haunted woodland: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of old-growth indigenous forest on the fringes of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca. Centuries of Mystery Reports of bizarre occurrences here date back centuries – the forest is called after a regional herder who is believed to have disappeared in the long ago, accompanied by 200 of his sheep. But Hoia-Baciu came to worldwide fame in 1968, when an army specialist known as Emil Barnea took a picture of what he claimed was a UFO suspended above a oval meadow in the heart of the forest. Countless ventured inside and vanished without trace. But don't worry," he states, facing his guest with a smile. "Our excursions have a flawless completion rate." In the decades since, Hoia-Baciu has drawn yoga practitioners, traditional medicine people, ufologists and ghost hunters from across the world, curious to experience the strange energies said to echo through the forest. Modern Threats It may be one of the world's premier destinations for supernatural fans, this woodland is facing danger. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of over 400,000 residents, called the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe – are expanding, and construction companies are advocating for approval to cut down the woods to build apartment blocks. Except for a small area home to regionally uncommon specific tree species, the grove is not officially protected, but Marius is confident that the company he was instrumental in creating – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will contribute to improving the situation, persuading the government officials to acknowledge the forest's significance as a visitor destination. Spooky Experiences While branches and fall foliage split and rustle beneath their boots, Marius recounts numerous folk tales and alleged supernatural events here. One famous story describes a five-year-old girl disappearing during a group gathering, then to reappear five years later with no recollection of her experience, having not aged a moment, her attire without the slightest speck of dirt. Frequent accounts explain mobile phones and imaging devices inexplicably shutting down on venturing inside. Feelings include full-blown dread to moments of euphoria. Various visitors report seeing unusual marks on their skin, hearing disembodied whispers through the forest, or sense palms pushing them, even when convinced they're by themselves. Study Attempts Despite several of the tales may be hard to prove, there are many things clearly observable that is definitely bizarre. Everywhere you look are vegetation whose stems are curved and contorted into unusual forms. Various suggestions have been suggested to explain the deformed trees: that hurricane winds could have altered the growth, or typically increased electromagnetic fields in the ground explain their strange formation. But formal examinations have discovered no satisfactory evidence. The Legendary Opening Marius's excursions allow visitors to participate in a little scientific inquiry of their own. When nearing the opening in the forest where Barnea took his renowned UFO photographs, he hands the traveler an electromagnetic field detector which registers energy patterns. "We're stepping into the most energetic part of the forest," he comments. "Discover what's here." The plants abruptly end as they step into a complete ring. The single plant life is the trimmed turf beneath the ground; it's apparent that it's naturally occurring, and seems that this strange clearing is organic, not the creation of human hands. Fact Versus Fiction The broader region is a area which fuels fantasy, where the division is unclear between fact and folklore. In traditional settlements superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, shapeshifting bloodsuckers, who rise from their graves to frighten regional populations. The novelist's renowned character Dracula is permanently linked with Transylvania, and Bran Castle – a medieval building located on a stone formation in the Transylvanian Alps – is keenly marketed as "the vampire's home". But despite legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the land past the woods" – seems real and understandable versus these eerie woods, which give the impression of being, for factors nuclear, atmospheric or purely mythical, a center for creative energy. "Within this forest," the guide says, "the line between truth and fantasy is remarkably blurred."