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Haunted places · Forests, islands and abandoned places

Hoia-Baciu Forest – the “Romanian Bermuda Triangle”

When
since August 1968 date reconstructed from later accounts
Where
Hoia-Baciu Forest, western edge of Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, Romania
Verdict
Legend

A forest outside Cluj is famous for a round clearing where nothing grows, tales of disappearances and 1968 photographs of a “flying saucer.”

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46.77°, 23.52° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

Hoia-Baciu is a forest of about three square kilometres on the western edge of Cluj-Napoca, popular with cyclists and walkers. But it has another face. Local legends tell of a shepherd who entered the forest with two hundred sheep and vanished without trace, and of a girl who disappeared and came back five years later in the same clothes, remembering nothing. In parts of the forest the trees have strangely twisted trunks. In the 1950s the biologist Alexandru Sift claimed to have photographed “misty shapes” here, but he never published the pictures. The forest became world-famous through photographs taken by military technician Emil Barnea, who in August 1968 photographed a disc-shaped object over the so-called Round Clearing – Poiana Rotundă, where trees supposedly refuse to grow. Since then visitors have reported unexplained lights, voices, scratches on their skin, sudden anxiety and drained batteries. The forest has appeared on “Ghost Adventures” and “Destination Truth.”

Witnesses

Alexandru Sift, Emil Barnea, Adrian Pătruț (author of publications on the forest), Cluj residents and TV crews.

Explanations and hypotheses

There is no evidence for any of the disappearance legends or for geomagnetic anomalies. Barnea's photographs have never been independently verified, and the work of Pătruț, who wrote of “projections of psychic energy,” is considered pseudoscientific. The round clearing may have ordinary causes, such as soil conditions or past land use. Twisted tree trunks are often the result of wind and soil. Researchers and sceptics stress that none of the myths about the forest has any confirmation.

Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.

Sources

  1. Marius Oprea, The Niche Tourism Development of One of the Most Mysterious Forests in Romania: The Hoia-Baciu Forest (Territorial Identity and Development, 2016)
  2. Viorel Mionel, 'Definitely gets the Adrenaline Pumping!' Fright and Dark Tourism in a Haunted Forest (Tourism Planning & Development, 2025)

More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)