Venturing into this Planet's Most Ghostly Forest: Gnarled Trees, Flying Saucers and Eerie Tales in Transylvania.

"Locals dub this spot an enigmatic zone of Transylvania," remarks an experienced guide, the air from his lungs creating wisps of vapor in the crisp evening air. "So many visitors have vanished here, many believe it's a portal to a different realm." This expert is guiding a visitor on a night walk through frequently labeled as the world's most haunted forest: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of primeval indigenous forest on the outskirts of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

A Long History of the Unexplained

Reports of bizarre occurrences here date back hundreds of years – the grove is named after a local shepherd who is said to have vanished in the distant past, along with his entire flock. But Hoia-Baciu came to worldwide fame in 1968, when an army specialist known as Emil Barnea took a picture of what he reported as a unidentified flying object floating above a round opening in the heart of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and failed to return. But don't worry," he continues, addressing his guest with a grin. "Our tours have a perfect safety record."

In the time after, Hoia-Baciu has attracted meditation experts, traditional medicine people, extraterrestrial investigators and paranormal investigators from across the world, curious to experience the strange energies believed to resonate through the forest.

Current Risks

Although it is one of the world's premier hotspots for lovers of the paranormal, the grove is under threat. The outlying areas of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of more than 400,000 people, known as the tech capital of Eastern Europe – are advancing, and developers are pushing for authorization to remove the forest to build apartment blocks.

Aside from a small area home to regionally uncommon oak varieties, the forest is lacking legal protection, but Marius believes that the initiative he was instrumental in creating – a local conservation effort – will assist in altering this, motivating the authorities to acknowledge the forest's significance as a tourist attraction.

Spooky Experiences

While branches and fall foliage snap and crunch beneath their boots, Marius describes various traditional stories and reported ghostly incidents here.

• A well-known account tells of a five-year-old girl going missing during a family picnic, then to return half a decade later with no recollection of the events, having not aged a single day, her attire lacking the slightest speck of soil.
• Regular stories describe smartphones and photography gear inexplicably shutting down on stepping into the forest.
• Reactions range from complete terror to feelings of joy.
• Some people state seeing unusual marks on their arms, hearing ghostly voices through the forest, or experience fingers clutching them, even when convinced they're by themselves.

Scientific Investigations

While many of the accounts may be unverifiable, numerous elements before my eyes that is certainly unusual. Everywhere you look are vegetation whose stems are warped and gnarled into unusual forms.

Various suggestions have been suggested to clarify the misshapen plants: powerful storms could have altered the growth, or naturally high radiation levels in the earth cause their unusual development.

But research studies have turned up inconclusive results.

The Famous Clearing

The guide's tours enable guests to participate in a little scientific inquiry of their own. When nearing the opening in the trees where Barnea captured his well-known UFO photographs, he hands his guest an ghost-hunting device which registers EMF readings.

"We're entering the most active part of the forest," he comments. "Discover what's here."

The vegetation suddenly stop dead as we emerge into a flawless round. The single plant life is the low vegetation beneath the ground; it's apparent that it's naturally occurring, and seems that this bizarre meadow is organic, not the creation of landscaping.

Fact Versus Fiction

The broader region is a location which stirs the imagination, where the line is unclear between fact and folklore. In rural Romanian communities belief persists in strigoi ("screamers") – supernatural, shapeshifting bloodsuckers, who return from burial sites to terrorise regional populations.

The novelist's well-known vampire Count Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and the historic stronghold – a medieval building located on a cliff edge in the Transylvanian Alps – is keenly marketed as "Dracula's Castle".

But despite legend-filled Transylvania – literally, "the place beyond the forest" – feels solid and predictable versus these eerie woods, which seem to be, for causes radioactive, environmental or purely mythical, a center for fantasy projection.

"Inside these woods," the guide comments, "the boundary between truth and fantasy is very thin."