Authors Note: Just a quick note to apologize if the Romanian translations are off in this chapter. Blame it on Google Translate. :)
Chapter 68: Hoia-Baciu Forest
Roughly three hours later…
Zak, Andrei and I had been driving for the past two and a half hours after leaving Sighisoara, and we were finally coming up near the Hoia-Baicu Forest.
The Hoia-Baciu Forest, known as one of the world's most haunted forests, covers an area of 250 hectares, and is situated near Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
The forest got its name after a shepherd, and his flock of 200 sheep, disappeared and were never seen again.
There's also another story of a little girl having wandered off into the forest one day and having disappeared.
Her family looked for her for years, but never found a sign of her. Then, one day, five years later, the girl walked out of the forest, wearing the same, untarnished clothes that she had been wearing on the day she disappeared, with no memory of what had happened during the five year period.
There's also a strange section in the middle of the forest, known as "the dead zone". It is nearly a perfect circle, and no vegetation will grow within it. Soil samples have been taken and analyzed, but the results show that there is nothing in the soil that should prevent the growth of plant life.
The locals believe that it is a hub for this paranormal activity, or that there are portals or vortexes to other dimensions located within the circle.
I was starting to get a little nervous about investigating the forest, not only because of my drawings from earlier, but also because of all the different types of activity reported there.
For decades, there's been reports of UFO's, light anomalies, ghosts, elementals, and many other unexplained events. These events have generated so much fear, most Romanians refuse to enter the forest at night.
This was, most likely, going to be a very crazy night.
I had my camera on and was filming, from the backseat of the car, for the past ten minutes or so, filming the scenery as we drove, but now focused the camera on Zak, who was sitting in the passengers seat in the front of the car.
We also had a very small camera attached to the inside of the windshield, just above the dashboard, to get a straight on view of Zak.
"Oh wow, look it, right up here. Right up here, this is one of the world's most haunted, mysterious forests, and it's known as the 'Bermuda Triangle' of Transylvania. And right now, it is an awesome moment to be actually seeing the edge of this Hoia Baciu Forest," Zak said, glancing back at my camera now and then.
As Andrei turned onto a new road, we saw a small group of what looked to be teenagers, walking down along the side of the road.
"Should we talk to them? Should we ask them?" Zak asked, looking at Andrei.
"Sure," Andrei replied.
"Okay," Zak said, as Andrei slowed to a stop and put the car in park beside the group of teenagers.
Three boys and three girls.
I turned in my seat a bit, so I could film Zak and the teenagers outside the car.
"Hello," Andrei said, leaning toward Zak, as the teenagers reached the car.
"Hello," Zak said as well.
Andrei first asked the group, in Romanian, if we could talk to them about the forest, and if they minded be on camera.
They answered, again in Romanian, that it was no problem.
Zak never liked to film anyone without asking permission first.
He often reprimanded Aaron if he started filming people who happened to be nearby, without asking first.
I knew part of it was because of Zak's social anxiety, thinking of how he'd feel if people just suddenly started filming him.
But I knew most of it was just professionalism.
"Este acest Baicu Pădurea...cel din fata aici?" (Is this the Baciu Forest…the one in front here?) Andrei asked in Romanian.
One of the boys stepped slightly forward to speak to us.
"Da! Da! Și aceasta este sus drumul spre ea," (Yes! Yes! And this is the road up to it.) the boy replied.
"Cak you ask them if they've ever been in the forest?" Zak asked.
Andrei started to asked the boy in Romanian, but the boy replied to Zak in English.
"Yes, we've just come from the forest right now," he said.
"I just heard a lot of weird, supernatural stuff going on. Is that what's going on here?" Zak asked.
"Yes. There has actually been news feeds about UFO's and stuff like that. But they say there are only plasmatic manifestations here," the boy replied.
Plas-what?
"Plasmatic manifestations?" Zak questioned.
"Yes…that you can only catch with a camera," the boy responded.
"With a camera," Zak said.
"Yes," the boy replied.
"Okay," Zak said.
"With a proper camera," the boy added, using his hand to slightly motion to me in the backseat.
I saw the boy next to him looking at me and smiling.
Not wanting to be rude, I smiled back at him, which caused him to become embarrassed and he looked away.
I managed not to laugh.
"What are the manifestations of, do you know? Are they spirits? Ghosts? Or…" Zak asked.
"They say there are certain diseases, and if you catch them – if you let them into your aura – then you actually catch those diseases. Or they can be positive too," the boy answered.
Diseases?!
I prayed the kid had just badly translated what word he wanted to you.
"So you can catch diseases from the manifestations here?" Zak asked.
"Some of them say that, yes," the boy replied.
Oh wonderful, I thought.
"Well, thank you guys, okay" Zak said.
"Have a nice time," The boy responded, before he and his friends started walking again.
"Okay, thank you," Zak replied.
I heard a few of the others say "bye" as they walked away.
Zak leaned out the window to watch them briefly, before sitting back in his seat normally, and looked at the camera attached to the windshield.
"And you can see, as it's getting dark, another a few hours of light, they are heading the opposite direction of the forest," Zak said, with a slight chuckle.
Andrei put the car back into drive, and started heading down along the road again toward the forest.
"I think one of the boys liked you," Andrei said, glancing back at me briefly before looking back at the road.
Before I could respond, Zak spoke up.
"What? Why?" Zak asked.
Andrei chuckled.
"One of them was smiling at her, and when she noticed, he turned away," Andrei replied.
Zak laughed quietly, but I could sense a bit of jealousy radiating off him.
Oh silly, silly, Zak, I thought, with a smile on my face.
After a few moments of silence, Zak turned a bit in his seat to talk to my camera.
"This is a place you don't play around with. This isn't like a haunted building, where you open the door, you walk in – this is a place you can walk in, and never come back," Zak said.
His statement should of terrified the living day lights out of me, but somehow, I knew we would be okay.
As long as we had each other, things would find a way to work themselves out.
As we continued driving, we came across a few people who were actually living on the edge of the forest.
After asking if we could talk to them, we stopped for a while to interview them about the forest.
An older gentleman told us of an experience he went through, where he was starting a fire one night, and a there was suddenly a big, red spot over them.
The man insisted he's not the type to get scared, but this had spooked him.
His wife also told us a story, where one day she walked toward the "dead zone" in the middle of the forest, but before she got to close, she started experiencing anxiety.
She also backed up her husbands claim of him never getting scared of anything, but that his experience with the red light still haunts him.
What were we getting ourselves into?
As the sun was setting, we met up with a man named Adrian Patrut, a Professor of Inorganic and Radiochemistry at Babes-Bolyai University.
He had agreed to meet with us prior to our investigation, to speak to us about the forest.
We were standing on the side of the road, Zak next to Adrian, while I stood a few feet in front of them, filming the interview.
"Dr. Patrut, thank you very much for coming down here, talking with us," Zak said.
"Thank you," Adrian said.
"What can you tell us about the Hoia-Baciu Forest?" Zak asked.
"There is an area of around one kilometre in the Hoia-Baciu Forest which is…well known for its phenomena," Adrian replied.
"Anomalies and what not?" Zak asked.
"Anomalies," Adrian agreed.
"Do you know why the one circle does not grow trees or vegetation? And when a tree grows there, it'll avoid it?" Zak asked, using his hands to gesture a tree growing at an angle.
"It's a mystery. The circle…which is…at least 200 years old. The circle…it's difficult to say…yes," Adrian started. "We can see today, there are several types of manifestations. The most important manifestations are un…nocturnal lights…white or coloured, moving or stationary," Adrian added.
I shifted slightly on my feet, thinking of the drawing I had done of some sort of "orb" amongst the trees.
"So, are these supernatural? Or are they simply explained by geomagnetic uh-" Zak started, but Adrian interrupted him.
"They are not sufficient for explaining the nature of the phenomena. Some believe that they are extraterrestrial, intraterrestrial. That they are apparitions, that they are materializations, that they are entities, spirits from beyond. Today we consider we don't know what these phenomena are. But, we have enough data to say what they are not," Adrian stated.
"What they are not?" Zak repeated.
"And we can state that they are nothing of what we could imagine," Adrian answered.
I silently took a deep breath.
I was becoming more and more uneasy about this location as time went on.
Authors Note: I apologize again for the short update, but I didn't want you guys to think I had abadonned the story. I have NO intentions of that. :)
If anyone can think, or knows of an easier way to keep you up o date on the progress of the story, etc. please feel free to comment or send me a PM.
Hope you enjoyed the update. :)