Exploring the Planet's Most Ghostly Grove: Gnarled Trees, Flying Saucers and Eerie Tales in Transylvania.

"People refer to this location a mysterious vortex of Transylvania," explains a tour guide, his exhalation forming wisps of vapor in the chilly dusk atmosphere. "Numerous visitors have vanished here, some say there's a gateway to a different realm." The guide is leading a visitor on a night walk through frequently labeled as the globe's spookiest grove: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of ancient local woods on the fringes of the metropolis of Cluj-Napoca.

Hundreds of Years of Enigma

Stories of unusual events here go back hundreds of years – the grove is called after a area shepherd who is believed to have disappeared in the long ago, accompanied by two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu came to global recognition in 1968, when an army specialist called Emil Barnea took a picture of what he claimed was a unidentified flying object hovering above a circular clearing in the centre of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and vanished without trace. But no need to fear," he states, turning to the traveler with a smirk. "Our tours have a flawless completion rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has drawn meditation experts, shamans, UFO researchers and paranormal investigators from across the world, interested in encountering the mysterious powers said to echo through the forest.

Current Risks

Although it is one of the world's premier destinations for paranormal enthusiasts, the forest is facing danger. The outlying areas of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of a population exceeding 400,000, called the innovation center of eastern Europe – are expanding, and developers are pushing for authorization to clear the trees to build apartment blocks.

Barring a few hectares home to locally rare oak varieties, this woodland is not officially protected, but the guide is confident that the company he was instrumental in creating – a local conservation effort – will assist in altering this, motivating the local administrators to acknowledge the forest's value as a travel hotspot.

Chilling Events

When small sticks and autumn leaves break and crackle beneath their footwear, Marius tells some of the traditional stories and claimed ghostly incidents here.

• A popular tale recounts a little girl vanishing during a group gathering, then to return after five years with no recollection of the events, without aging a single day, her garments without the tiniest bit of soil.
• Frequent accounts describe cellphones and imaging devices inexplicably shutting down on entering the woods.
• Emotional responses range from full-blown dread to feelings of joy.
• Various visitors state seeing strange rashes on their bodies, detecting ghostly voices through the woodland, or sense fingers clutching them, even when certain nobody is nearby.

Scientific Investigations

Despite several of the accounts may be hard to prove, numerous elements visibly present that is undeniably strange. Everywhere you look are vegetation whose bases are bent and twisted into fantastical shapes.

Various suggestions have been suggested to account for the abnormal growth: strong gales could have bent the saplings, or inherently elevated radiation levels in the earth account for their crooked growth.

But formal examinations have discovered no satisfactory evidence.

The Legendary Opening

Marius's excursions allow participants to take part in a modest investigation of their own. Upon reaching the meadow in the woods where Barnea captured his renowned UFO images, he gives the visitor an EMF meter which registers energy patterns.

"We're entering the most active part of the forest," he comments. "See what you can find."

The vegetation immediately cease as we emerge into a perfect circle. The only greenery is the low vegetation beneath their shoes; it's obvious that it's naturally occurring, and looks that this strange clearing is wild, not the result of people.

The Blurred Line

The broader region is a place which stirs the imagination, where the line is blurred between reality and legend. In countryside villages superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, appearance-altering bloodsuckers, who return from burial sites to frighten local communities.

The famous author's renowned vampire Count Dracula is forever associated with Transylvania, and Bran Castle – an ancient structure perched on a cliff edge in the Transylvanian Alps – is heavily promoted as "Dracula's Castle".

But despite folklore-rich Transylvania – actually, "the land past the woods" – appears tangible and comprehensible in contrast to this spooky forest, which appear to be, for reasons related to radiation, atmospheric or simply folkloric, a nexus for fantasy projection.

"Within this forest," Marius says, "the division between reality and imagination is extremely fine."