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"People refer to this location an enigmatic zone of Transylvania," explains a tour guide, the air from his lungs producing wisps of mist in the chilly dusk atmosphere. "So many people have gone missing here, it's thought it's a portal to a parallel world." The guide is escorting a traveler on a nocturnal tour through commonly known as the planet's most ghostly woodland: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of old-growth indigenous forest on the fringes of the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Centuries of Mystery

Accounts of bizarre occurrences here go back hundreds of years – the forest is titled for a area shepherd who is reportedly went missing in the distant past, together with two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu gained worldwide fame in 1968, when an army specialist named Emil Barnea photographed what he claimed was a UFO suspended above a round opening in the heart of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and vanished without trace. But rest assured," he adds, addressing the traveler with a grin. "Our tours have a perfect safety record."

In the decades since, Hoia-Baciu has attracted yoga practitioners, traditional medicine people, extraterrestrial investigators and paranormal investigators from across the world, interested in encountering the unusual forces said to echo through the forest.

Contemporary Dangers

Despite being among the planet's leading destinations for lovers of the paranormal, this woodland is facing danger. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – an innovative digital cluster of a population exceeding 400,000, known as the innovation center of eastern Europe – are expanding, and real estate firms are pushing for approval to remove the forest to build apartment blocks.

Except for a small area home to area-specific Mediterranean oak trees, this woodland is without conservation status, but Marius believes that the company he helped establish – a dedicated preservation group – will assist in altering this, motivating the local administrators to appreciate the forest's importance as a tourist attraction.

Spooky Experiences

While branches and fall foliage break and crackle beneath their footwear, the guide describes numerous folk tales and reported ghostly incidents here.

• A popular tale recounts a five-year-old girl disappearing during a family outing, later to return half a decade later with no recollection of her experience, having not aged a single day, her garments shy of the slightest speck of soil.
• More common reports describe mobile phones and photography gear inexplicably shutting down on entering the woods.
• Feelings range from absolute fear to moments of euphoria.
• Various visitors claim seeing strange rashes on their skin, perceiving disembodied whispers through the woodland, or feel fingers clutching them, even when convinced they're by themselves.

Study Attempts

Although numerous of the stories may be unverifiable, numerous elements before my eyes that is undeniably strange. Everywhere you look are trees whose stems are warped and gnarled into fantastical shapes.

Multiple explanations have been given to explain the deformed trees: powerful storms could have bent the saplings, or inherently elevated electromagnetic fields in the earth account for their strange formation.

But scientific investigations have turned up inconclusive results.

The Famous Clearing

Marius's walks enable guests to engage in a little scientific inquiry of their own. Upon reaching the clearing in the trees where Barnea took his famous UFO photographs, he gives his guest an ghost-hunting device which detects electromagnetic fields.

"We're venturing into the most powerful section of the forest," he comments. "See what you can find."

The trees abruptly end as they step into a complete ring. The single plant life is the low vegetation beneath our feet; it's obvious that it's naturally occurring, and looks that this bizarre meadow is organic, not the result of people.

Fact Versus Fiction

Transylvania generally is a area which stirs the imagination, where the border is blurred between truth and myth. In rural Romanian communities faith continues in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, shapeshifting creatures, who return from burial sites to haunt local communities.

Bram Stoker's famous vampire Count Dracula is permanently linked with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – a Saxon monolith located on a rocky outcrop in the mountain range – is heavily promoted as "Dracula's Castle".

But even folklore-rich Transylvania – actually, "the territory after the grove" – appears real and understandable compared to the haunted grove, which seem to be, for causes radioactive, climatic or simply folkloric, a nexus for human imaginative power.

"Inside these woods," Marius comments, "the division between reality and imagination is remarkably blurred."