Every Halloween, the haunted house in the haunted wood emerges from the shadows of horror novels and films to fill us with gleeful terror. What is it about the deep, dark woods that sparks elemental terror in our hearts? Why are we so quick to imagine ghosts flitting between the trees at night? In most culture’s mythology, stories of haunted forests abound, and with good reason. Tales of these woods and their supernatural occupants have fascinated me since I was a child, who rather enjoyed the shivers of fright that accompanied ghost stories swapped by classmates in the dark. Let me share some of the most mysterious and recurring hauntings in these haunted forests, where repeated cases of disappearances and even death were frequently reported.

Hoia-Baciu, Romania

Deep in northern Romania, in the region of Transylvania, the Hoia-Baciu forest is the site of multiple disappearances. Perhaps the strangest of them all is the case of a shepherd who lived at the edge of the forest. The man was known to bring his flock of more than 200 sheep into the forest to graze. One day, the shepherd and every last one of his sheep entered Hoia-Baciu as usual and simply disappeared. Not even a single sheep ever reappeared. Search parties were unable to find tracks or other evidence that the sheep had ever passed through the woods.

Source : https://www.romaniajournal.ro/travel/hoia-baciu-forest-one-of-worlds-most-frightening-places/

The forest itself is large, over 700 acres, but not so enormous that it can’t be reasonably searched. Nor it was so big enough to explain the missing mutton. In fact, the occurrence was so bizarre, that the forest was renamed after the missing shepherd, whose name was Hoia-Baciu (Andreescu, 2014).

The Hoia-Baciu forest eats more than sheep, however. In the 1950s, a five-year-old girl named Sophie entered the forest to picnic with her family. While they were eating, she wandered the woods nearby, playing. When the family began packing up to leave, however, Sophie had vanished. Panicked, the family immediately called in the police and a massive search began. Weeks later, after scouring every inch of the woods, the search was finally called off. No one has ever discovered what happened to the shepherd and his flock and all hope of ever finding Sophie was abandoned. Then, on a spring day five years later, Sophie simply walked back out of the woods. Her parents were, understandably, shocked. She was wearing the same clothes, in the same condition. Oddest of all, she did not appear to have aged a single day and still behaved as the five-year-old who had disappeared. When questioned, Sophie could not recall anything from the five missing years. It was as though the forest had simply taken her out of time.

What happened to Sophie? Could she be trapped by some mysterious monster inside the forest? Or perhaps she had turned into a monster herself, just as spooky as the forest? Or did she become the wicked fairy princess that had taken over the forest, every inch of grass and every tree now fell under her rule? Even that, she would be all by herself, lonely and forgotten. How she would yearn for a companion, a prince who would love her with all his heart, so they could stay in their lovely castle forever, immortal...these were the ponderings that inspired me to write the second story, The Trap, in my book, The Horror Wedding Series, Book One.

To this day, visitors report feeling anxiety after spending time in Hoia-Baciu forest, as well as the sensation of “being constantly watched.” This phenomenon is so pervasive, that the forest’s website warns visitors about what they might experience and advising staying in groups. Locals from the nearby city of Cluj-Napoca no longer enter the woods at all, fearing that if they enter, they may never find their way out again. Visitors have also emerged with physical symptoms as a result of their time in Hoia-Baciu, including high fevers, headaches, nausea, fatigue, rashes, and mild burns. Electrical devices also frequently fail or malfunction within Hoia-Baciu. These cases are so disturbing that the forest has been tested for radioactivity, but no physical findings have been able to explain these symptoms or electrical interference.

Source: https://hoiabaciunight.run/about/

The growth of the trees of Hoia-Baciu are themselves the source of some mystery. Natural scientists are at a loss to explain why the forest grows as it does, with a large, circular area deep within the forest where no plants ever grow. This area is known as The Clearing (Andreescu, 2014). Similarly, some trees that appear only a few decades old have been determined to be, in fact, more than 200 years old. Many of the trees also grow in bizarre, twisted formations. In Hoia-Baciu, it seems, appearances can be deceiving.

The forest’s many mysterious occurrences have earned it the label of “The Bermuda Triangle of Romania.” (Andreescu, 2014) It’s been said to be home to a devil by some, and by others the home of the ghosts of slaughtered medieval peasants. Still others pursue theories of paranormal activity. In 1968, a military technician photographed what he believed to be a UFO in the sky over the forest, losing him his job when he refused to redact his story. Also in the 1960s, a biologist named Alexander Swift collected photographs of supernatural light phenomenon above The Clearing.

Since it’s renaming, Hoia-Baciu forest has been the location of over 1,000 recorded disappearances, leading to a pervasive belief that the wood is host to a hidden, multidimensional portal.

Amazon, Peru

It isn’t only folklore in which people become suddenly, mysteriously lost in the woods. There is something about this environment that warps the human mind, or perhaps in the woods the spirits feel freer to interfere with our consciousness. Psychologist Hugo Spiers found himself experiencing this phenomenon, during a scientific expedition into the Amazon rainforest for research on an entirely different subject.

Though his guides warned Hugo not to wander far into the jungle, it took only minutes for Hugo to become disorientated. Given his pace, he could not have traveled more than fifty yards. However, Hugo’s mind refused to acknowledge this. Logically, he knew he could have simply sat until the research team tracked him down. Still, he kept moving without being able to stop himself. Even when he realized he was traveling in circles, based on the tracks left by his machete, his mind continued to race. He began to feel certain something was chasing him, hunting him. After sending out a dog to find Hugo, his team took two hours to find him. Even within this short period, Hugo felt something overtaking him, something more than panic. Which makes me wonder, what could have happened to those lost for days, or longer?

With their rich history of ghost hauntings and mysterious phenomenon, I could hardly avoid absorbing the supernatural resonance of the “haunted wood” in crafting an eerie backdrop for The Horror Wedding Series, which owes a lot to these particular forests. Of course, these forests and their associated folklore (and even recorded facts) are just the proverbial tip of the haunted trees. Nearly every country in the world that is home to a sizeable forest can trace some folklore or ghost tale through its winding, leaf-strewn paths. Internationally, just a few of the better known and often visited haunted woods include:

·       Leonard Wood, Philippines

·       Tao Dan Park, Vietnam

·       Dow Hill Forest, India

·       United States: Griffith Park, Elfin Forest, Pine Barrens, Cameron Park, Freetown-Fall River State Park, Devil’s Tramping Ground

·       United Kingdom: Highgate Cemetery, Wychwood Forest, Epping Forest, Dering Woods

·       Germany: Black Forest

·       Mexico: Island of the Dolls

D   And many more....I bet there must be one in every country.


    References

    Andreescu, A.(2014, Dec). Hoia-Baciu Forest, One Of World's Most Frightening Places. Romania Journal. https://www.romaniajournal.ro/travel/hoia-baciu-forest-one-of-worlds-most-frightening-places/

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