Hoia Baciu forest is largely considered as the most haunted forest in the world! It is situated near Cluj Napoca which was our last stop on our journey through Romania and was a 7-8 hour train ride from Brasov, its pretty much the reason for coming to Cluj Napoca, we thought how could we come so close and not experience this on our way through! There are many reasons/perceptions as to why this forest is considered to be so haunted, a lot of tourists that pass through the forest mention of unexplained rashes appearing on them, the constant feel of being watched through its dense forests. Images on cameras and camera phones of people that visit the forest have show ghost like figures standing behind people, faces in the bushes and other kinds of strange phenomenal things.
There has also been UFO sightings stretching back from the 1960’s where a man Alexandru Sift made public several pictures of an apparent flying disc, this in the coming years led to an influx of pictures of the same thing through the next few decades, none of the pictures explained to date.
If you walk deep into the forest there is a large patch of land where no trees grow, the shape of a perfect circle some hundreds of feet wide, soil samples have been taken and they show there is no reason why the growth of trees stop on the edge of this circle. Also as you can see from the above picture and more closely on the picture to the right, a large number of trees all grow in this mysterious strange shape, bending as they arc and raise out the ground and the struggling to get back to their preferred straight shape. So many unexplained circumstances in this forest, you can see why it is so largely regarded as the most haunted forest in the world.
The best stories for me though have got to be the ones that come from the locals, I think because they are stories that are apparently true that give reasons to the unexplained phenomena that has been recorded over the recent decades, not to explain the UFO sightings but explaining the ghostly figures appearing in pictures and the constant feeling of eyes on you. The first is a story of a shepherd and some 200 sheep that went wandering in to the forest looking for a place to graze that were never to seen of again, the forest if actually named after that shephard. The second is a true story that peasents used to be executed in the forest and that their souls are now trapped their, acting vengeance on whoever should dare to enter. On top of this electronic devices are known to malfunction, so if you do get scared dont rely on calling someone for help!
Im happy to say there is a much lighter side to our story of visiting Hoia Baciu forest, I think we had filled ourselves with fear even before we was approaching the forest after hearing soo many of these stories. We was actually greeted at the forest edge by what we believed was a stray dog, only a puppy really, couldnt of been more than a year or two. He was exteremely happy to meet us and instantly followed us in, he seemed gentle enough and we wasn’t going to complain, safety in numbers after all! Heres our little friend, we named him Badger.
As we walked through the forest we came across the strange shaped trees, there was strange noises to be heard around us even during day time, we did notice there was homeless people living in tents inside the forest so I recommend that you dont venture in alone. People who live on the edge of the forest give their dogs open reign of the forest as we found out when three big dogs ran out of a back garden to chase Badger, he got away quickly though and ran to us for safety, we was all looking after each other. The fear of the forest had left us and now we was really enjoying ourselves, we came across a woodpecker making its home, I’ve never seen or heard one before so decided to document it in our travels.
We carried in deeper into the forest and came across a large sheep rearing farm, quite ironic there’s a man rearing sheep in a forest which was named after a shepherd who went missing inside it I thought. We was not expecting what would happen next, four dogs came running to the farm fence and squeezed through a small opening aiming straight for badger, this was worrying as three dogs had just chased him not thirty minutes ago. Luckily they all seemed to know each other and this was possibly the farm where Badger belonged, 2 of the dogs came along with us and badger trickling down to one other and Badger after ten minutes, this had really become a surreal experience to say the least.
We walked in deeper for a while taking in the lovely forest and eventually came across a clearing where we sat down for a picnic, both dogs seemed to be keeping watch over us and would run barking at anyone else that came near, which was a bit embaressing as we didnt know their actual names to tell them to stop and they really didn’t listen to us at all. It was a really lovely few hours in the forest. We turned and walked back the way we came, the other dog went home when we got back to the farm but Badger walked us all the way back to the edge of the forest where we had found him to start, like he had been waiting for us to arrive all along. He then turned around and went back into the forest, I assume to go back and join his friends.
