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"They call this spot the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," states a tour guide, his breath forming wisps of vapor in the cold dusk atmosphere. "Numerous visitors have gone missing here, many believe it's an entrance to a different realm." The guide is escorting a guest on a evening stroll through what is often described as the globe's spookiest grove: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of old-growth indigenous forest on the fringes of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Centuries of Mystery

Reports of bizarre occurrences here go back hundreds of years – the forest is named after a local shepherd who is believed to have disappeared in the distant past, together with his entire flock. But Hoia-Baciu achieved international attention in 1968, when a military technician named Emil Barnea photographed what he claimed was a flying saucer suspended above a oval meadow in the centre of the forest.

Numerous entered this place and never came out. But rest assured," he states, facing the traveler with a smirk. "Our excursions have a flawless completion rate."

In the time after, Hoia-Baciu has attracted yoga practitioners, spiritual healers, extraterrestrial investigators and supernatural researchers from around the globe, curious to experience the mysterious powers believed to resonate through the forest.

Modern Threats

It may be one of the world's premier hotspots for paranormal enthusiasts, this woodland is facing danger. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of more than 400,000 people, called the innovation center of eastern Europe – are expanding, and construction companies are advocating for approval to remove the forest to erect housing complexes.

Except for a few hectares containing regionally uncommon specific tree species, the forest is lacking legal protection, but Marius is confident that the initiative he co-founded – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will assist in altering this, persuading the local administrators to recognise the forest's significance as a visitor destination.

Spooky Experiences

When small sticks and seasonal debris break and crackle beneath their boots, Marius describes numerous local legends and reported paranormal happenings here.

• A well-known account recounts a five-year-old girl going missing during a group gathering, only to reappear half a decade later with complete amnesia of what had happened, without aging a day, her garments without the smallest trace of soil.
• Frequent accounts detail smartphones and camera equipment inexplicably shutting down on stepping into the forest.
• Reactions include full-blown dread to moments of euphoria.
• Various visitors claim noticing unusual marks on their bodies, detecting disembodied whispers through the trees, or experience hands grabbing them, although sure they are alone.

Study Attempts

While many of the tales may be impossible to confirm, there is much clearly observable that is undeniably strange. Everywhere you look are plants whose stems are curved and contorted into unusual forms.

Multiple explanations have been suggested to clarify the misshapen plants: that hurricane winds could have shaped the young trees, or typically increased radioactivity in the ground cause their crooked growth.

But formal examinations have turned up inconclusive results.

The Legendary Opening

The guide's tours allow visitors to take part in a small-scale research of their own. As we approach the meadow in the forest where Barnea photographed his well-known UFO photographs, he passes the visitor an ghost-hunting device which detects EMF readings.

"We're entering the most powerful part of the forest," he says. "Try to detect something."

The vegetation immediately cease as the group enters into a flawless round. The single plant life is the short grass beneath their shoes; it's clear that it's not maintained, and looks that this bizarre meadow is wild, not the work of landscaping.

The Blurred Line

This part of Romania is a place which fuels fantasy, where the division is unclear between truth and myth. In traditional settlements superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – supernatural, shapeshifting bloodsuckers, who return from burial sites to frighten nearby villages.

Bram Stoker's well-known fictional vampire is always connected with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – an ancient structure situated on a rocky outcrop in the Carpathian Mountains – is keenly marketed as "the vampire's home".

But even legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the place beyond the forest" – seems solid and predictable in contrast to the haunted grove, which seem to be, for causes related to radiation, environmental or purely mythical, a center for human imaginative power.

"Inside these woods," the guide states, "the boundary between reality and imagination is remarkably blurred."