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"People refer to this place the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," remarks a local guide, the air from his lungs producing wisps of mist in the crisp night air. "Numerous people have gone missing here, many believe it's an entrance to another dimension." Marius is leading a guest on a nocturnal tour through commonly known as the globe's spookiest woodland: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of primeval native woodland on the fringes of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Hundreds of Years of Enigma

Accounts of bizarre occurrences here go back a long time – this woodland is called after a area shepherd who is said to have vanished in the distant past, together with 200 of his sheep. But Hoia-Baciu achieved global recognition in 1968, when an army specialist called Emil Barnea took a picture of what he claimed was a unidentified flying object floating above a oval meadow in the centre of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and vanished without trace. But no need to fear," he states, facing his guest with a smile. "Our guided walks have a flawless completion rate."

In the decades since, Hoia-Baciu has drawn yoga practitioners, traditional medicine people, extraterrestrial investigators and supernatural researchers from across the world, eager to feel the unusual forces believed to resonate through the forest.

Current Risks

Although it is a top global destinations for supernatural fans, this woodland is facing danger. The western districts of Cluj-Napoca – a contemporary technology center of a population exceeding 400,000, described as the Silicon Valley of eastern Europe – are advancing, and construction companies are campaigning for authorization to clear the trees to construct residential buildings.

Barring a small area home to locally rare oak varieties, the forest is without conservation status, but Marius hopes that the organization he helped establish – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will help to change that, motivating the local administrators to acknowledge the forest's importance as a tourist attraction.

Spooky Experiences

While branches and seasonal debris snap and crunch beneath their footwear, Marius describes various traditional stories and alleged supernatural events here.

• One famous story recounts a five-year-old girl disappearing during a family outing, only to rematerialise five years later with complete amnesia of the events, showing no signs of aging a single day, her attire without the slightest speck of soil.
• Frequent accounts explain smartphones and camera equipment unexpectedly failing on venturing inside.
• Feelings vary from full-blown dread to moments of euphoria.
• Certain individuals state seeing strange rashes on their arms, hearing unseen murmurs through the trees, or experience fingers clutching them, even when sure they are alone.

Scientific Investigations

Despite several of the tales may be unverifiable, numerous elements visibly present that is certainly unusual. All around are trees whose bases are curved and contorted into fantastical shapes.

Multiple explanations have been proposed to explain the deformed trees: powerful storms could have shaped the young trees, or typically increased radioactivity in the soil account for their unusual development.

But research studies have discovered insufficient proof.

The Notorious Meadow

The guide's excursions enable visitors to engage in a small-scale research of their own. As we approach the opening in the woods where Barnea captured his renowned UFO photographs, he gives the visitor an EMF meter which detects energy patterns.

"We're stepping into the most powerful area of the forest," he states. "Discover what's here."

The trees abruptly end as we emerge into a flawless round. The single plant life is the trimmed turf beneath their shoes; it's apparent that it's naturally occurring, and looks that this unusual opening is wild, not the work of human hands.

The Blurred Line

This part of Romania is a area which stirs the imagination, where the line is blurred between reality and legend. In traditional settlements faith continues in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, form-changing creatures, who return from burial sites to frighten local communities.

The novelist's famous character Dracula is forever associated with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – a Saxon monolith located on a stone formation in the Transylvanian Alps – is heavily promoted as "Dracula's Castle".

But even myth-shrouded Transylvania – truly, "the land past the woods" – seems tangible and comprehensible versus the haunted grove, which give the impression of being, for causes related to radiation, atmospheric or simply folkloric, a nexus for fantasy projection.

"Within this forest," the guide says, "the boundary between truth and fantasy is very thin."