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"People refer to this location the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania," states a local guide, his breath creating wisps of mist in the chilly night air. "Numerous visitors have vanished here, it's thought it's an entrance to another dimension." Marius is guiding a traveler on a night walk through commonly known as the world's most haunted grove: Hoia-Baciu, a section spanning 640 acres of ancient local woods on the edges of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

A Long History of the Unexplained

Stories of strange happenings here extend back a long time – the grove is titled for a area shepherd who is reportedly went missing in the far-off times, accompanied by two hundred animals. But Hoia-Baciu achieved global recognition in 1968, when a military technician named Emil Barnea took a picture of what he reported as a UFO hovering above a round opening in the heart of the forest.

Countless ventured inside and never came out. But don't worry," he continues, addressing his guest with a grin. "Our excursions have a 100% return rate."

In the decades since, Hoia-Baciu has brought in yoga practitioners, traditional medicine people, ufologists and ghost hunters from around the globe, eager to feel the unusual forces said to echo through the forest.

Current Risks

Although it is a top global destinations for supernatural fans, this woodland is facing danger. The western districts of Cluj-Napoca – a modern tech hub of more than 400,000 people, known as the tech capital of Eastern Europe – are advancing, and real estate firms are campaigning for approval to clear the trees to construct residential buildings.

Barring a few hectares home to area-specific oak varieties, the grove is without conservation status, but the guide hopes that the initiative he helped establish – a dedicated preservation group – will help to change that, encouraging the local administrators to acknowledge the forest's significance as a travel hotspot.

Chilling Events

While branches and seasonal debris split and rustle beneath their boots, Marius describes various traditional stories and reported supernatural events here.

• A popular tale recounts a five-year-old girl going missing during a family outing, only to reappear five years later with no recollection of what had happened, showing no signs of aging a single day, her clothes lacking the tiniest bit of soil.
• Regular stories detail smartphones and imaging devices unexpectedly failing on venturing inside.
• Emotional responses include absolute fear to feelings of joy.
• Various visitors claim noticing strange rashes on their bodies, perceiving unseen murmurs through the forest, or sense palms pushing them, although convinced they're by themselves.

Study Attempts

Although numerous of the tales may be impossible to confirm, numerous elements before my eyes that is undeniably strange. All around are vegetation whose bases are warped and gnarled into bizarre configurations.

Various suggestions have been given to explain the deformed trees: powerful storms could have bent the saplings, or inherently elevated electromagnetic fields in the soil explain their crooked growth.

But research studies have turned up no satisfactory evidence.

The Famous Clearing

The guide's excursions allow guests to engage in a small-scale research of their own. As we approach the meadow in the woods where Barnea captured his renowned UFO photographs, he passes the visitor an ghost-hunting device which detects electromagnetic fields.

"We're entering the most energetic area of the forest," he says. "Try to detect something."

The trees abruptly end as they step into a flawless round. The only greenery is the low vegetation beneath the ground; it's clear that it's not maintained, and seems that this unusual opening is natural, not the creation of people.

Between Reality and Imagination

The broader region is a location which fuels fantasy, where the line is indistinct between fact and folklore. In countryside villages belief persists in strigoi ("screamers") – supernatural, shapeshifting bloodsuckers, who return from burial sites to terrorise nearby villages.

Bram Stoker's famous character Dracula is always connected with Transylvania, and the legendary fortress – a Saxon monolith perched on a rocky outcrop in the Transylvanian Alps – is actively advertised as "the vampire's home".

But despite legend-filled Transylvania – truly, "the land past the woods" – seems real and understandable in contrast to the haunted grove, which seem to be, for factors related to radiation, climatic or simply folkloric, a nexus for human imaginative power.

"Inside these woods," Marius says, "the division between fact and fiction is remarkably blurred."