🔗 Share this article

"People refer to this location the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," remarks a local guide, his breath creating clouds of vapor in the crisp night air. "Numerous visitors have disappeared here, many believe it's an entrance to another dimension." The guide is leading a guest on a evening stroll through what is often described as the globe's spookiest grove: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of old-growth native woodland on the edges of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Hundreds of Years of Enigma

Reports of unusual events here date back a long time – the grove is titled for a area shepherd who is believed to have disappeared in the distant past, accompanied by two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu achieved worldwide fame in 1968, when a defense worker known as Emil Barnea captured on film what he described as a flying saucer suspended above a round opening in the centre of the forest.

Numerous entered this place and never came out. But don't worry," he adds, turning to the traveler with a smile. "Our excursions have a flawless completion rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has brought in meditation experts, traditional medicine people, ufologists and supernatural researchers from across the world, eager to feel the strange energies believed to resonate through the forest.

Modern Threats

Despite being a top global pilgrimage sites for supernatural fans, this woodland is under threat. The western districts of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of over 400,000 residents, known as the innovation center of eastern Europe – are expanding, and construction companies are advocating for authorization to clear the trees to construct residential buildings.

Aside from a limited section containing regionally uncommon Mediterranean oak trees, this woodland is lacking legal protection, but the guide believes that the company he was instrumental in creating – a local conservation effort – will contribute to improving the situation, persuading the authorities to appreciate the forest's importance as a travel hotspot.

Chilling Events

While branches and seasonal debris split and rustle beneath their boots, the guide describes various local legends and claimed paranormal happenings here.

• A well-known account describes a little girl disappearing during a group gathering, then to reappear after five years with complete amnesia of her experience, without aging a moment, her clothes lacking the slightest speck of dirt.
• Regular stories describe mobile phones and camera equipment unexpectedly failing on entering the woods.
• Emotional responses range from complete terror to states of ecstasy.
• Various visitors claim observing bizarre skin irritations on their bodies, detecting unseen murmurs through the forest, or sense hands grabbing them, although certain nobody is nearby.

Research Efforts

Although numerous of the stories may be impossible to confirm, there is much visibly present that is undeniably strange. Throughout the area are trees whose bases are warped and gnarled into bizarre configurations.

Various suggestions have been suggested to clarify the abnormal growth: powerful storms could have altered the growth, or inherently elevated radioactivity in the earth explain their strange formation.

But formal examinations have discovered no satisfactory evidence.

The Legendary Opening

The guide's tours allow guests to participate in a small-scale research of their own. Upon reaching the opening in the forest where Barnea took his well-known UFO images, he passes his guest an EMF meter which detects energy patterns.

"We're stepping into the most powerful part of the forest," he states. "Try to detect something."

The plants suddenly stop dead as we emerge into a flawless round. The single plant life is the short grass beneath our feet; it's clear that it's naturally occurring, and looks that this strange clearing is organic, not the work of landscaping.

The Blurred Line

This part of Romania is a location which fuels fantasy, where the line is unclear between reality and legend. In rural Romanian communities belief persists in strigoi ("screamers") – undead, appearance-altering vampires, who rise from their graves to frighten regional populations.

Bram Stoker's well-known character Dracula is permanently linked with Transylvania, and the historic stronghold – a Saxon monolith perched on a stone formation in the Transylvanian Alps – is keenly marketed as "the count's residence".

But even myth-shrouded Transylvania – actually, "the territory after the grove" – appears tangible and comprehensible compared to these eerie woods, which seem to be, for reasons nuclear, environmental or simply folkloric, a nexus for fantasy projection.

"In Hoia-Baciu," Marius states, "the division between truth and fantasy is extremely fine."