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"People refer to this spot the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," remarks a tour guide, the air from his lungs creating puffs of condensation in the crisp night air. "Numerous visitors have disappeared here, many believe there's a gateway to a parallel world." This expert is escorting a traveler on a nocturnal tour through frequently labeled as the planet's most ghostly grove: Hoia-Baciu, an area covering one square mile of old-growth local woods on the edges of the metropolis of Cluj-Napoca.

A Long History of the Unexplained

Reports of unusual events here date back centuries – the grove is called after a local shepherd who is said to have vanished in the long ago, together with 200 of his sheep. But Hoia-Baciu achieved international attention in 1968, when an army specialist known as Emil Barnea took a picture of what he claimed was a unidentified flying object floating above a oval meadow in the centre of the forest.

Many came in here and failed to return. But don't worry," he adds, facing the visitor with a smirk. "Our excursions have a flawless completion rate."

In the years that followed, Hoia-Baciu has attracted meditation experts, traditional medicine people, extraterrestrial investigators and supernatural researchers from across the world, curious to experience the unusual forces said to echo through the forest.

Contemporary Dangers

Although it is one of the world's premier destinations for lovers of the paranormal, this woodland is under threat. The outlying areas of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of a population exceeding 400,000, known as the Silicon Valley of eastern Europe – are expanding, and construction companies are advocating for approval to clear the trees to erect housing complexes.

Barring a few hectares home to regionally uncommon oak varieties, the forest is not officially protected, but Marius hopes that the company he was instrumental in creating – the Hoia-Baciu Project – will help to change that, motivating the authorities to appreciate the forest's importance as a travel hotspot.

Chilling Events

As twigs and seasonal debris snap and crunch beneath their footwear, Marius tells various folk tales and alleged paranormal happenings here.

• A popular tale tells of a young child vanishing during a family picnic, then to reappear five years later with no memory of what had happened, showing no signs of aging a moment, her attire shy of the tiniest bit of dirt.
• Regular stories describe cellphones and camera equipment mysteriously turning off on entering the woods.
• Emotional responses include absolute fear to moments of euphoria.
• Some people claim noticing bizarre skin irritations on their arms, perceiving ghostly voices through the woodland, or feel palms pushing them, although convinced they're by themselves.

Scientific Investigations

While many of the accounts may be impossible to confirm, numerous elements before my eyes that is certainly unusual. Everywhere you look are trees whose trunks are bent and twisted into bizarre configurations.

Different theories have been given to account for the deformed trees: that hurricane winds could have bent the saplings, or naturally high radioactivity in the ground account for their strange formation.

But formal examinations have found inconclusive results.

The Famous Clearing

The guide's excursions permit visitors to engage in a small-scale research of their own. Upon reaching the meadow in the forest where Barnea captured his famous UFO pictures, he passes the visitor an electromagnetic field detector which detects EMF readings.

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

The vegetation abruptly end as they step into a flawless round. The only greenery is the trimmed turf beneath the ground; it's clear that it's naturally occurring, and looks that this bizarre meadow is natural, not the creation of human hands.

The Blurred Line

This part of Romania is a area which stirs the imagination, where the border is indistinct between truth and myth. In rural Romanian communities faith continues in strigoi ("screamers") – undead, appearance-altering vampires, who return from burial sites to frighten nearby villages.

The novelist's well-known vampire Count Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and Bran Castle – a medieval building perched on a rocky outcrop in the Carpathian Mountains – is keenly marketed as "Dracula's Castle".

But even folklore-rich Transylvania – truly, "the territory after the grove" – feels tangible and comprehensible versus these eerie woods, which appear to be, for reasons related to radiation, environmental or entirely legendary, a nexus for human imaginative power.

"In Hoia-Baciu," the guide states, "the line between truth and fantasy is remarkably blurred."