The Hoia Baciu Forest - Romania's Bermuda Triangle

This week The Paranoid Style Podcast is making do with what we've got, because one of us who shall remain nameless, Christine, procrastinated on her research about something else. So welcome to our first ever mini-episode!  We're visiting the Hoia Baciu forest in Transylvania which is sometimes called Romania's Bermuda Triangle and the World's most haunted forest!

What this episode lacks in content it makes up for in sound effects! Half as long, twice as dumb! Enjoy, but beware the bioplasma!!

On the brightside, we're having a CONTEST:
The Paranoid Style Podcast is having a Fresno Nightcrawlers Giveaway!! If you would like to be the proud owner of these two-of-a-kind crocheted Cryptids you must be following @theparanoidstylepod and like this post: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca1-bhnLBie ! If you also comment to let us know your favorite Cryptid, you’ll get an additional entry. Share the post and you get another entry… and another chance to win! Winner will be chosen using a random number generator and will be announced and contacted the week of 3/14/2022.

If you have any topic suggestions for the show or any tales to share, please email us at theparanoidstylepod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @theparanoidstylepod or on twitter @style_paranoid.  

Music used in this episode is from: Purple Planet Royalty Free Music
Delicious Sound Effect is from the "Candy Crush" Game: Candy Crush Saga Online - Play the game at King.com
Sploosh Sound Effect from the "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker" Mini Game: https://www.nintendo.com/store/games/zelda-games
Kardashian Clip is from E!Entertainment - "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" - https://youtu.be/BdY_yh-1AMw
Dracula clip is from 1931 "Dracula" Trailer
Stuart Summers story: (Barely) Surviving The Hoia-Baciu Forest (thebeehive.com)

Opening theme music provided by Tony Molina. You can hear more of his music at https://tonymolina650.bandcamp.com/

Transcript

Hoia Baciu

CCK: [00:00:00] Hey sister, 

ARK: Hey sister. And Hey listener. Welcome to the paranoid style podcast. We're two sisters who delight in exploring weird conspiracy theories, bizarre mysteries And high strangeness and bringing you along with them. 

CCK: I'm Christine and I have a problem with procrastination. It's like serious, but more on that later, 

ARK: which is the ultimate

procrastination I'll get to that.

later.[00:00:30] 

CCK: let's change the subject. How about you, sister? What are you all about? 

ARK: Well, I'm Amanda and I like doing what I like doing, and I hate doing what I don't like doing. which causes problems for me because there's all these things that I'm like, this should be a higher priority on my list.

but I don't want it. Cause it doesn't, it doesn't spark joy. 

CCK: So are you a situational procrastinator or would you say you're not a procrastinator? 

ARK: [00:01:00] I am a procrastinator. Well, I guess I'm a situational. 

CCK: Yeah. So things you want to do, you get done and yes. See, I can't get anything but more on that later. 

ARK: Speaking of things, getting done, if you listen to episode 30, one of the paranoid style podcast, you might remember us talking about the Fresno night. If you didn't remember, I would be very concerned, [00:01:30] but if you would like to win a crocheted Nightcrawler and a mini Nightcrawler, go to our Instagram at the paranoid style pod and. We are having a giveaway. So When you go to our Instagram at the paranoid style pod, our most recent posts has a short little movie featuring the crocheted And 

CCK: and they are so far again adorable. I've [00:02:00] seen them in person. Amanda is a crochet hair. 

ARK: But we're, we're giving them away. So if you're interested in owning, a pair of totally unique, one of a kind crocheted nightcrawlers, enter the contest, the rules are super duper rule. Number one, you have to be following us on Instagram at the paranoid style pod. 

CCK: You're already on Instagram. Just go ahead and follow us.

ARK: We don't, we don't post that much quite frankly.

So we're not going to be from partying you with [00:02:30] anything. 

Rule. Number two, just like the post about the Fresno 

CCK: and why wouldn't 

ARK: that little heart button 

CCK: adorable. 

ARK: And there's a couple of bonuses. Uh, rules. If you would like to increase your chances of winning. Said nightcrawlers. So the, so the way you can increase your chances 

on that same post, leave a comment.

If you leave a comment, letting us know your favorite, crypted, your favorite crypted story. If you've ever [00:03:00] had a encounter with a cryptid, um, actually really leave us a comment. Anything you'd like, Just leave a comment. That's going to get you an additional entry into this contest. And if you want yet, one more shot at winning those Fresno Nightcrawler. share the post with a friend or family member who you think might enjoy it, 

CCK: or want to enter 

ARK: or would want to enter themselves.

If you share that post, you're going to get yet another. chance to win that [00:03:30] Fresno Nightcrawler 

CCK: and at the end of the week, we're just going to tally up all those totals and use a random number generator.

ARK: not a quantum random number generator.

unfortunately just a regular old, random number generator. 

CCK: And we're going to pick a winner, which we'll announce next 

ARK: week, 

Yeah. And then at that point, We'll reach out to you. 

so we can get your information. 

CCK: I'll also put this on Twitter at style underscore paranoid and link to the Instagram [00:04:00] posts so that we can encompass everyone who might want these nightcrawlers. And let me tell you they're Berry Berry cute.

These there they're creepy, but cute. They're more cute than creepy.

CCK: Sister, do you remember earlier in the podcast

 ARK: You mean like two minutes ago

 CCK: Exactly! When I was talking about having a problem with procrastination? 

 ARK: Yes, because that was two minutes ago and also, having known you for a while, I am fully aware that you would be the spokesperson for procrastination if you weren't running 15 minutes late for the press conference.

 CCK: Well, you know that topic I was going to research extensively and have completed on time for once this week?

 ARK: Uh huh…

 CCK: I didn't finish it.  I wanted to, for you, for our dear listeners, but after spending several hours preparing healthy snacks and taking a little walk to clear my mind, cleaning my office area, optimizing my screen resolution, getting the ambient temperature of the house to the right levels and crafting the perfect playlist, I didn't actually get around to finishing my epic deep dive into the thing I had been researching.

 ARK: Okay…so…are we just going to queue up the outro music and call it a day?

 CCK: No!  Because I was able to, thanks to copious amounts of coffee and the fear of being disowned, throw together the first Paranoid Style Podcast mini-episode! It's short, on research, sweet, like you, don't hurt me, and short like me.  

 ARK: You said short twice.

 CCK: Did I mention it doesn't last very long. Half as long, twice as dumb!  Sister, tell me what you know about the Hoia Baciu forest!

 ARK: The Hoia Baciu Forest, also called the Hoia Forest is located in the Cluj county of Transylvania.

 CCK: Ah Ah!

 ARK: In Romania. It’s a thirty minute drive from the city of Cluj-Napoca and covers an area of three square kilometers, or about 1 square mile. The forest has a biking path and is used for other recreational activities, such as archery, by the inhabitants of Cluj-Nopaca who number around 340,000, making it Romania's second most populous city after Bucharest. Also, the forest is sometimes called Romania's Bermuda Triangle and the World's most haunted forest. 

 CCK: That's a Bingo!

 ARK: You just say Bingo.

 CCK: Bingo, how fun!

 ARK: For such a tiny forest it is known for a huge number of mysterious occurrences: UFO sightings, creatures and figures that appear only in photographs and not to the naked eye, strange shadow people, chilling sounds and voices which come from no discernable source and the forest is allegedly named after a shepherd who disappeared in the area along with his flock of two hundred sheep.

CCK: As far as the forest itself goes, the trees are primarily beech, hornbeam, ash, and elm which are common for the area.  But in pictures of the forest you will see that some of the trees are curved fairly dramatically at the base of the tree, so the trunks of the trees look like s".

ARK: Disconcerting, but not exclusive to Hoia Baciu, and in fact many pictures I found online that were labeled as Hoia seemed to be of the Crooked Forest in Poland instead, which has some of the most dramatic examples of bent and curved tree trunks.  

 CCK: The explanation for these intense curves vary from downslope soil creep, intermittent pressure from snow and ice and possible human intervention to create curved timbers for furniture or ship building.  In the Crooked Forest in Poland it is not known what caused the extreme 90 degree bends at the base of 400 pine trees in that forest, only that it occurred in 1930 when they were around 7-10 years old. 

 ARK:  Heading back to Hoia forest, it is located at the north of Valla Lunga, the long valley, near a location called the Gura Batchuli, The Shepherd's Mouth.  The Gura Batchuli is the oldest Neolithic site in Romania, dating back to 6500 BC and was home to some of the earliest known farmers in Europe. 

 CCK: Imagine trying to keep giant cave gophers away from your tomatoes!

 ARK: The close proximity to this neolithic site, may be in part what lends the forest an air of mystery and rumors of hauntedness, and it is only about a four-hour drive from one of Transylvania’s most spoopy sites, Bran Castle, the location that inspired Bram Stoker’s fictional castle in his novel “Dracula.” The real Bran Castle was not the home of Vlad Dracul, AKA Vlad the Impaler, AKA Bad Vlad, it was possibly used as a prison for him when he was captured by the Hungarians in 1462, but most likely, he was imprisoned in the Buda Castle Labyrinth in Budapest Hungary.

 CCK: Whether because of some natural or unnatural phenomenon or possibly the copious online accounts describing similar experiences, people who have visited the forest report a sense of being watched, extreme migraines, dizziness, nausea

 ARK: could be too many cabbage rolls…

 CCK: burns, scratches, anxiety, fatigue and strange rashes. Also malfunctions of electronic equipment are frequently described, though not getting a gps signal inside a dense forest isn’t exactly the 

 ARK: The forest has a large clear roundish area called the Poiana Rotunda which has been described as a perfect circle with no vegetation.  However, seen from above on google maps it’s not quite as perfectly circular as described and it does have grass and wildflowers at some times of year, so in scientific terms it’s basically a meadow. 

 CCK: An evil meadow?

 ARK: Well, if you have a chance to look at the satellite view of the forest on Google maps, it does look pretty evil from above, and the poiana rotunda is a distinct area of no trees in an otherwise extremely dense looking landscape.

 CCK: Forest alopecia.

 ARK: I mean you did say this was going to be twice as dumb so I guess I have to give you truth in advertising. 

 CCK: Thank you.

 ARK: International notoriety for the Hoia Baciu began in the late 1960’s when a biologist named, Alexandru Sift captured several photos of an unidentified arial phenomenon over the forest. Sift was interested in the forest because of tales of strange lights and noises at night as well as unexplained scorch marks on trees in Hoia. His photos were unfortunately lost after his death in 1993. But on August 18, 1968, a 45 year old former army officer named Emil Barnea captured four photographs of a distinctly disk shaped object above the forest. Described in a casebook by ufologie.patrickgross.org as follows:

 CCK: The weather was splendid, 36°C without any wind while Emil Barnea and his girlfriend Miss Matea walked in the forest with a couple of friends. His friend shouted that she sees "something," and when he joined her he also saw a large round object, of metallic appearance and shining in the sun in the sky above the top of the trees. Amazed, Barnea remembered all the same that he had his camera and while the UFO advanced slowly changing direction and increasing its luminosity, then suddenly accelerating until it disappeared at the horizon. He had time to shoot four photographs.

 ARK: Commonly described UFO related phenomenon definitely jibes with many of the strange stories from Hoia, red, orange and green lights among the trees, the cleared area of the poiana rotunda and the idea of lost time. One of the most famous tales from the Hoia forest is about the disappearance of a five year old girl who according to legend, emerged from the forest five years later, in the same clothes she had disappeared in, not a day older and with no memory of what had occurred in the time she was missing. 

 CCK: Sounds like a bleeping alien abduction to me! Though inspite of the multiple claims of disappearances, including that of our five year old friend, no information about her after her reappearance is available, and Skeptoid.com states that a thorough search of Romanian newspapers does not reveal stories about hundreds of disappearances.  

 ARK: Well if you prefer multi-dimensional theories

 CCK: I don’t.

 ARK: Adrian Patrut, a professor of chemistry who is also an officer at the Romanian Society of Parasychology, wrote a book about his theory that the forest is a portal to another dimension and is filled with something called bioplasma. The following is a very rough google translation of an experience Patrut described as having had in the forest:

 Patrut: "Something very special happened to me in 2000, around Easter. I had then gone to the forest with a researcher originally from Cluj, who lives in Germany. Suddenly, I noticed that something was flowing from the tops of thousands and thousands of trees. It was a sap, a liquid... It was as if it was a spring that flowed from the trees, from 10-15-20 meters and gathered at their roots. I was stuck. The Hoia Baciu forest is known for its very, very dry vegetation, so it was unusual that we had seen there. The next day, when we returned, there was no trace of that abundant sap flowing from the thousands of trees. The dry soil had absorbed it altogether.

 ARK: No comment. If you don’t like UFO’s or bioplasma

 CCK: I very much do not like bioplasma

ARK: How about some ghosteses sitting on some posteses eating buttered toasteses?

CCK: I mean, I am a fan of butter, tell me more. 

ARK: Hoia Baciu is also referred to as the worlds most haunted forest because of reports of strange, dark shadows seen among the trees that disappear when you try to look at them directly. People have described being pushed  or scratched by invisible beings and of hearing sudden sounds of laughter and giggling…

CCK: <giggle>

ARK: “Destination Truth” a reality tv show described on IMDB as: A globe-trekking reality show that follows Josh Gates around the world as he explores different sites of supernatural import visited Hoia Baciu in 2009. One of the Destination Truth team is shown sitting in the poiana rotunda clearing and says he was hearing female voices around him in the trees. Suddenly a green flash of light appears to hit him the chest and send him flying. It is a bit difficult to tell what’s going on. Since they were using night vision equipment, everything is bathed in greenish light. The rest of the team rush to his aid and he appears to be okay except for some scratches on his arm, beneath his shirt sleeve which is not ripped.   

CCK: One of the best ghost stories I found about the forest comes from a travel blogger named, Stuart Summers whose story is posted on thebeehive.com and is called (Barely) Surviving the Hoia-Baciu Forest. The story is very funny and well written, I encourage reading the whole thing if you are interested in the ooky spooky.  The following is taken from when he gets into the forest.

ARK: “ I was not alone. I was definitely not alone.

It was a GHOST.

I can only describe this ghostly presence as a glowing mist hovering a few inches off the ground. I quickly strained my eyes in the darkness to get a better look. The figure was about six feet tall and faceless, except for two brightly illuminated eyes. And the eyes were staring right at me. An overwhelming feeling of malice struck me when I locked eyes with the ghost.

As long as I live I will never forget the sight of this ghost levitating between the trees like a white bed sheet caught in the branches. Every hair on my body was standing straight up. A jolt of energy and fear surged through my body.

ARK: We’ll leave you to decide what darkness lies in the forest, but remember this Romanian proverb: Even a thread of hair has its shadow.

CCK: What does that mean…

ARK: I suspect it means you didn’t know how to end this?

CCK: OH YEAH!  You really get me sister!