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"People refer to this place a mysterious vortex of Transylvania," explains a tour guide, the air from his lungs creating puffs of mist in the crisp evening air. "Countless visitors have vanished here, it's thought it's a portal to a different realm." Marius is guiding a visitor on a night walk through commonly known as the planet's most ghostly woodland: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of old-growth native woodland on the edges of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

A Long History of the Unexplained

Stories of bizarre occurrences here go back hundreds of years – the grove is titled for a area shepherd who is reportedly went missing in the distant past, together with two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu came to worldwide fame in 1968, when an army specialist called Emil Barnea captured on film what he described as a flying saucer floating above a circular clearing in the heart of the forest.

Many came in here and never came out. But don't worry," he adds, facing his guest with a grin. "Our guided walks have a flawless completion rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has attracted yogis, shamans, ufologists and paranormal investigators from worldwide, eager to feel the strange energies said to echo through the forest.

Current Risks

It may be among the planet's leading destinations for supernatural fans, the grove is under threat. The outlying areas of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of over 400,000 residents, known as the tech capital of eastern Europe – are encroaching, and construction companies are campaigning for permission to cut down the woods to erect housing complexes.

Except for a few hectares containing locally rare specific tree species, this woodland is lacking legal protection, but Marius believes that the organization he helped establish – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will help to change that, motivating the government officials to recognise the forest's value as a tourist attraction.

Chilling Events

While branches and fall foliage break and crackle beneath their boots, the guide recounts some of the folk tales and reported ghostly incidents here.

• One famous story describes a five-year-old girl going missing during a family outing, later to return five years later with no recollection of her experience, having not aged a single day, her attire without the slightest speck of soil.
• Regular stories explain mobile phones and camera equipment unexpectedly failing on stepping into the forest.
• Emotional responses range from full-blown dread to moments of euphoria.
• Some people claim noticing bizarre skin irritations on their arms, hearing ghostly voices through the woodland, or feel fingers clutching them, although convinced they're by themselves.

Study Attempts

Despite several of the accounts may be hard to prove, there is much clearly observable that is certainly unusual. Throughout the area are vegetation whose stems are bent and twisted into fantastical shapes.

Multiple explanations have been given to account for the deformed trees: that hurricane winds could have altered the growth, or typically increased electromagnetic fields in the earth account for their crooked growth.

But research studies have discovered inconclusive results.

The Famous Clearing

Marius's walks allow participants to engage in a modest investigation of their own. When nearing the opening in the woods where Barnea took his famous UFO pictures, he gives the visitor an EMF meter which registers EMF readings.

"We're stepping into the most active part of the forest," he states. "See what you can find."

The trees immediately cease as we emerge into a flawless round. The only greenery is the low vegetation beneath our feet; it's apparent that it hasn't been mown, and seems that this strange clearing is wild, not the work of human hands.

Fact Versus Fiction

This part of Romania is a place which fuels fantasy, where the division is unclear between reality and legend. In countryside villages superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – undead, form-changing bloodsuckers, who rise from their graves to terrorise nearby villages.

The novelist's famous character Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – a Saxon monolith perched on a cliff edge in the Transylvanian Alps – is heavily promoted as "the vampire's home".

But despite folklore-rich Transylvania – literally, "the territory after the grove" – appears solid and predictable compared to this spooky forest, which seem to be, for factors nuclear, climatic or entirely legendary, a center for fantasy projection.

"Inside these woods," Marius states, "the boundary between truth and fantasy is very thin."