Venturing into this World's Most Haunted Grove: Contorted Trees, UFOs and Chilling Accounts in Romania's Legendary Region.

"Locals dub this spot an enigmatic zone of Transylvania," states an experienced guide, his breath producing puffs of mist in the cold evening air. "Numerous individuals have vanished here, many believe it's an entrance to a parallel world." Marius is leading a traveler on a nocturnal tour through what is often described as the globe's spookiest grove: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of primeval indigenous forest on the outskirts of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Centuries of Mystery

Accounts of strange happenings here go back hundreds of years – this woodland is called after a area shepherd who is said to have vanished in the long ago, accompanied by two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu achieved global recognition in 1968, when a defense worker called Emil Barnea took a picture of what he described as a flying saucer hovering above a oval meadow in the heart of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and failed to return. But no need to fear," he adds, addressing the traveler with a grin. "Our excursions have a flawless completion rate."

In the time after, Hoia-Baciu has drawn meditation experts, traditional medicine people, ufologists and paranormal investigators from worldwide, interested in encountering the unusual forces said to echo through the forest.

Contemporary Dangers

Although it is a top global destinations for supernatural fans, the forest is at risk. The outlying areas of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of over 400,000 residents, known as the tech capital of Eastern Europe – are advancing, and developers are campaigning for approval to cut down the woods to build apartment blocks.

Aside from a few hectares containing area-specific specific tree species, this woodland is lacking legal protection, but Marius believes that the organization he co-founded – a dedicated preservation group – will help to change that, persuading the authorities to appreciate the forest's significance as a tourist attraction.

Eerie Encounters

As twigs and fall foliage break and crackle beneath their shoes, Marius describes some of the folk tales and alleged supernatural events here.

• A popular tale recounts a five-year-old girl going missing during a family picnic, later to reappear five years later with no recollection of her experience, having not aged a single day, her garments lacking the slightest speck of dirt.
• Frequent accounts detail smartphones and camera equipment mysteriously turning off on stepping into the forest.
• Emotional responses include absolute fear to moments of euphoria.
• Various visitors report seeing bizarre skin irritations on their bodies, hearing unseen murmurs through the trees, or feel fingers clutching them, even when sure they are alone.

Study Attempts

Despite several of the accounts may be hard to prove, there are many things before my eyes that is certainly unusual. All around are vegetation whose bases are warped and gnarled into fantastical shapes.

Various suggestions have been given to clarify the abnormal growth: powerful storms could have altered the growth, or typically increased radiation levels in the soil explain their crooked growth.

But formal examinations have turned up inconclusive results.

The Legendary Opening

Marius's tours permit guests to engage in a modest investigation of their own. Upon reaching the opening in the forest where Barnea captured his well-known UFO pictures, he gives the visitor an electromagnetic field detector which detects EMF readings.

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

The vegetation abruptly end as we emerge into a complete ring. The only greenery is the trimmed turf beneath our feet; it's clear that it's not maintained, and looks that this bizarre meadow is organic, not the result of human hands.

The Blurred Line

The broader region is a location which stirs the imagination, where the division is indistinct between fact and folklore. In countryside villages superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, shapeshifting vampires, who return from burial sites to frighten regional populations.

The novelist's well-known vampire Count Dracula is forever associated with Transylvania, and the historic stronghold – a Saxon monolith perched on a stone formation in the Carpathian Mountains – is heavily promoted as "Dracula's Castle".

But even legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the place beyond the forest" – feels solid and predictable in contrast to these eerie woods, which seem to be, for reasons nuclear, atmospheric or simply folkloric, a nexus for creative energy.

"Within this forest," Marius states, "the division between fact and fiction is remarkably blurred."