Venturing into this World's Most Haunted Forest: Contorted Trees, UFOs and Spooky Stories in Romania's Legendary Region.

"Locals dub this location an enigmatic zone of Transylvania," explains an experienced guide, his breath producing wisps of condensation in the cold evening air. "Numerous individuals have vanished here, many believe there's a gateway to another dimension." The guide is leading a guest on a nocturnal tour through commonly known as the globe's spookiest forest: Hoia-Baciu, a square mile of old-growth indigenous forest on the edges of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

Centuries of Mystery

Stories of strange happenings here go back a long time – this woodland is called after a area shepherd who is believed to have disappeared in the distant past, together with 200 of his sheep. But Hoia-Baciu came to global recognition in 1968, when a defense worker called Emil Barnea photographed what he claimed was a UFO suspended above a circular clearing in the heart of the forest.

Many came in here and vanished without trace. But rest assured," he adds, addressing the traveler with a smirk. "Our excursions have a 100% return rate."

In the decades since, Hoia-Baciu has brought in yoga practitioners, shamans, extraterrestrial investigators and paranormal investigators from across the world, eager to feel the strange energies reported to reverberate through the forest.

Modern Threats

It may be one of the world's premier pilgrimage sites for supernatural fans, the forest is at risk. The western suburbs of Cluj-Napoca – a contemporary technology center of more than 400,000 people, called the innovation center of Eastern Europe – are advancing, and developers are pushing for approval to cut down the woods to build apartment blocks.

Except for a few hectares housing regionally uncommon oak varieties, the forest is without conservation status, but the guide believes that the initiative he helped establish – a local conservation effort – will help to change that, motivating the government officials to appreciate the forest's significance as a tourist attraction.

Eerie Encounters

As twigs and fall foliage split and rustle beneath their boots, Marius tells various traditional stories and claimed ghostly incidents here.

• A popular tale tells of a young child disappearing during a group gathering, later to rematerialise half a decade later with complete amnesia of her experience, showing no signs of aging a moment, her attire lacking the slightest speck of soil.
• Frequent accounts describe mobile phones and camera equipment inexplicably shutting down on stepping into the forest.
• Reactions vary from complete terror to states of ecstasy.
• Some people claim seeing unusual marks on their bodies, hearing ghostly voices through the forest, or sense palms pushing them, although convinced they're by themselves.

Research Efforts

Although numerous of the tales may be unverifiable, there is much before my eyes that is undeniably strange. All around are plants whose bases are curved and contorted into unusual forms.

Various suggestions have been proposed to explain the misshapen plants: powerful storms could have shaped the young trees, or naturally high radioactivity in the ground explain their crooked growth.

But scientific investigations have found no satisfactory evidence.

The Famous Clearing

The guide's excursions permit participants to engage in a little scientific inquiry of their own. Upon reaching the meadow in the trees where Barnea captured his well-known UFO images, he passes the visitor an ghost-hunting device which measures electromagnetic fields.

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

The trees abruptly end as we emerge into a flawless round. The only greenery is the short grass beneath their shoes; it's obvious that it's not maintained, and looks that this bizarre meadow is organic, not the creation of people.

Between Reality and Imagination

The broader region is a place which stirs the imagination, where the border is unclear between fact and folklore. In rural Romanian communities superstition remains in strigoi ("screamers") – otherworldly, appearance-altering bloodsuckers, who emerge from tombs to terrorise local communities.

The novelist's famous character Dracula is permanently linked with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – an ancient structure located on a stone formation in the mountain range – is keenly marketed as "the vampire's home".

But even legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the place beyond the forest" – seems tangible and comprehensible in contrast to the haunted grove, which appear to be, for causes related to radiation, climatic or simply folkloric, a center for fantasy projection.

"Within this forest," the guide says, "the line between reality and imagination is very thin."