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| Dorel Bizeu and journalist Elena Lasconi |
In Romania, as everywhere, strange events that took place down the centuries, entered into folklore and from them were born legends and myths. But, what is more interesting, it seems that such occurrences are also happening today at certain locations where unseen forces haunt people and, even more surprisingly, there is some evidence that now labels these incidents as being connected to UFO sightings.
In northern Romania, in the historical land of Maramureş, many people still believe in the existence of a fairie kind of being, which here is sometimes called “Fata Pădurii” (“Maid” or “Maiden of the Woods” or “Girl of the Forest”). She haunts the woods causing a great deal of harm to people, both physically and mentally, but especially to men. Sometimes she appears as a woman, with long hair down to the ground, incredibly beautiful and sometimes as a grotesque and ugly woman.
I uncovered a case that combines, strangely and unexpectedly, this popular belief with a “nuts and bolts” UFO abduction. The case is based on the information I been receiving from 2005 until today, by mail and telephone conversations with Ioan-Dorel Bizeu (D.B.), as well as an on site investigation done in 2014 by Elena Lasconi, who made a documentary about it for a commercial TV company from Bucharest (Pro TV).
D.B. was born in 1968 and raised in Crăciuneşti village, located about nine kilometres east of the city of Sighetul Marmaţiei, near the river Tisa, which here forms the Ukrainian border. As D.B. recounted, when he was little, he often went for water to a spring located on the hill above the family property. The path he used passed near the house of a lonely old man who knew many strange things like stories about a “magic tree” that grew near his fence and was producing small pears that did not ripen until a very special day and not every year. Each such special day, “Fata Pădurii”, with her children came to eat them. But people from around here were saying that she also steals or kills the children that she meets.
In the summer of 1974 the old man died. D.B. was almost six years of age at the time. One day, he wanted to try to see if the miraculous fruits were ripe. While climbing the path, he heard voices singing, but did not see anyone. When he reached the “magic tree”, he saw standing around it a girl and six boys, all looking nearly his age. They had bright blue eyes and long blond hair, looking as if all were twins; yet each had well defined features.
When he was at about five meters from them, the girl began to move and take up a hostile stance. But one of the boys came up to D.B. and gave him a pear from the ‘magic tree’. He also hummed a mixed up tune but D.B. understood that he should eat the pear quickly. The fruit melted in his hand and “became water”, so he sipped it from his palm. The taste was more like that of an orange, with lots of mint. As he recounted, immediately after drinking this fluid a tingling sensation went through his body. Then he felt a cold hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw a woman, more than 2.5 meters tall, with white blonde hair, a particularly beautiful face and a body like that of the fairies. She looked at him and D.B. had the impression that her face acquired a blue shade and her eyes became red with anger. She was the “Fata Pădurii”.
While the tall woman watched him eating the fruit, her face changed back to normal. Now she had the look of an angel and her eyes became clear and bright green and then she sat down. D.B. even had the impression that she smiled. The benevolent boy conveyed to D.B. something like this: you did well that you eat that fruit, if you had not eaten it, the woman, who is my mother, “would have assimilated you”. D.B. speculated that perhaps he might have been kidnapped and taken to their world.
The children sang a strange song about light and the forest, but somehow D.B could make sense of it. They spoke in a ‘different but perfect language’, which D.B. understood so asked them where they had come from. Their reply was: “our village is above and soon you will forget everything but when you reach your middle ages you will remember us”.
The encounter at the miraculous tree profoundly effected D.B. Even today he is sorry because they did not take him with them. While he was among them, he felt a harmony, a communion and “a fullness of paradisiacal life, where everything is completely different”. And they were full of a power that he had never before encountered, anywhere. For a long time he felt that he could not speak to anyone about this encounter. For ten years, D.B. wandered the hills, forests and neighbouring villages, hoping to meet them again, to discover where they lived and to find “their village”. His mother said “he is infatuated by the fata pădurii”. The hardest thing for him was when he realised that actually “they are not of humans”.
D.B. said he heard, several times, singing, the fata pădurii; He ran through the woods, but never got close to her, though he did see her in the distance. Once she was dressed differently, in a metallic green outfit, “perhaps to hide easier in the landscape”. He saw her on another occasion by the river. This time he got very close and ran after her. But the apparition departed at such a speed that no man would have been able to catch her.
The next important encounter took place one day at end of June 1977 and was witnessed also by the mother of D.B. In 2014, when she was interviewed, she was 83 years old. She had eight children, of whom four were still alive.
Then, in 1977, D.B. was nine. D.B., his mother, sister M and brother V (three years older), arrived from Camara, a suburb of Sighetu Marmaţiei, located about 3 km from the city centre and walked up a gentle coastal footpath passing near an orchard.
D.B. recounts that suddenly he saw, hovering over the city, a pearly blue coloured disc-shaped object that blended almost perfectly with the colour of the sky. He shouted to attract the attention of others, while thinking how good it would be if the object would come closer. In seconds, the UFO came toward them, stopping about ten meters in front of them and about five meters above the ground. The object was round, about 10 meters wide and 5 meters tall, had the form of an inverted cone and above it was a dome, but when looking more closely, you could see that it was a sphere, that went up and down, from the cone, at a distance of about two meters, at about every 5 seconds. The sphere had a greenish-yellow colour, distinct from the pearly blue one of the disc. D.B. said that the sphere was transparent and he has made out an individual on the upper level and two or more at the base. The object emitted heat, as if blowing hot air. In the air was that smell “like when you have a short circuit of electrical power”.
D.B. went under the “disc” to see how it looked underneath. He said it was round, but divided into triangles, each with the top in the centre and the base on the circumference, “like slices of pizza”. The triangles were illuminated in sequence. When the boy was under the plate, the light went from one triangle to the next, with a click, about every five seconds. But when the object departed, it was just made a fine crackle sound, about ten snaps in a second. D.B. remembered that when the object was near him, “my family members were frozen; they could no longer move; only my mother shouted: don't go, they'll take you with them.”
The same scene was described, somewhat differently, by D.B.'s mother. She said: “I saw something in the sky that came from Sighet and I ran for the children and I got two of them. The boy [D.B.] had stayed there and some women screamed: take care of the children; don't let the saucer take them! And I ran and got two of the children but he stayed behind and looked up. I shouted: come to me, don't go there, they will take you! But he was still looking up at the object”. Then she saw a kind of ladder or something, on which walked down a woman all dressed in black. She did not walk but descended smoothly with two lanterns in her hands. She was tall, over two meters, with a white face and she was very beautiful. She called the children to come to her but I didn’t let them; I asked her: why do you need my children? Then the woman got back into that flying saucer and was not able to take the children. That object went towards Sighet and soon it was gone disappearing over the forest”.
D.B. said he saw something descending from the disc, but he was not looking in that direction. Instead he had the impression that, near that object, time was going slower than in the surrounding area. He added: “I seem to remember I was taken inside. I have a clear picture of one fact: in front of me appeared a number of people dressed in white. There were men and women and children; all of whom stood around me. Several elderly people came out in front of them and each told me something. I do not remember what they told me but I know that everyone told me something. Whenever I try to remember what they told me, I get just an image in my mind and that is what I remember, a semicircle with a light like lightning and around the edge of the circle was some smoke and through the smoke I could see buildings looking like the skyscrapers in New York and other cities and there were smaller settlements all around. This image, that's all I remember. It looks like they sent me a sign about the final destruction of civilisation”. Maybe – he said – people need to know only that.
Instead, he believes, he retained in detail almost everything what the children told him. They have told him many things and he also knows something about their songs, but can not reproduce anything in words. Then he said, “they left me; they no longer needed me”. He went on to add that for a year after this encounter, he had in his mouth a taste “like mercury”. The mother of D.B. described the same episode saying that she had the impression that, at some point, the boy disappeared and reappeared “as in a blink of an eye”.
The strange encounter was the talk of the village. The mother of D.B. said that she also saw, quite by chance, about once every year, always in late June, when is the rainy weather, before haymaking, a very tall woman who appeared from nowhere on the same footpath. She never saw her face. She was wearing shiny black clothes and a hood and had two lanterns in her hands and had long golden hair.
Another important encounter took place in 1998. D.B. was then 30 years old, was married and had a child of his own who was now 3 years of age. One morning, he felt as if he was compelled to go to the forest to collect wild mushrooms. Up on the ridge, he saw, coming from the Ukraine, a strange cloud. In a miraculously short time, the cloud settled above the forest trough which he would walk and it began to pour with rain.
As D.B. recounted, he was sheltering under an oak tree, when he saw, suddenly, in a clearing located at about 200 meters away, a group of teenagers. All were boys, from 1.80 to 2 meters tall and all looked identical. Accompanying the boys was a woman about 30-35 years old and about 2.5 meters tall. They were all dressed in white robes. Two of them had on their shoulder some golden “musical” instruments, which D.B. described in the smallest of detail. Their laughter was not like that of humans but it was more of a giggle and they sang exactly as the children he had met back in his childhood. D.B. then realised that they could be indeed the same beautiful children. The woman turned around, saw him, laughed and left.
D.B. said that he wanted to go with them, but he was “numb” and did not recover for several minutes. He then ran after them, continuing until he came to a clearing where it felt as warm as a furnace. He ran on, until he was out of the forest but did not see the woman or anyone else.
At home, he found that his hair, eyelashes and moustache were singed, probably in that meadow with the extreme heat. Subsequently D.B. assumed that in that forest an unearthly ship had landed. He believes that, by 2008 or 2009, the same clearing was visited again. D.B. claims that the vegetation and trees in that location had been affected by the UFO. At the beginning of 2014, when the TV documentary was made, certain signs in the forest suggested that the “ship” may have visited there once again in the not too distant past. When investigating this case, several people in the region told of other strange happenings involving the “fata pădurii”. D.B. also had other strange encounters.
Is the story of D.B. one of modern day ufology or one of folklore, or perhaps they are both the same?
About the author:
Dan D. Farcaş, born in 1940, graduate in mathematics and physics at Timisoara, 1960. PhD in mathematics, computer sciences, at the State University of Bucharest in 1979. Computer specialist at Polytechnic University of Timisoara (1962-67), where he made the first computer simulations of neural networks in Romania. He has led and performed at „CEPECA” Management Training Centre Bucharest (1967-1982) large computerization projects and has taught computer courses. From 1991 to 2010 (when retired) he was director, deputy director or senior expert of the Computing and Health Statistics Centre of Ministry of Health Romania, temporary advisor to the World Health Organisation (1997-2001) and expert in Health for Romania to the European Commission (2007-2010).
He was elected in 1993 full member of the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences and was vice-president of the Romanian Society of Medical Informatics (1991-2010). Since 2013 he is member of the Committee for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the Romanian Academy. Since 1998, he was Vice-president and from 2011 is President of the Romanian Association for Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (ASFAN). Founding member in 2006 of the Centre for Studies of Border Sciences, at the Committee of UNESCO Romania.
He has published over 25 books, all in Romanian, in the fields of computer science, mathematics, essays, ufology, and memoirs. He has published over 1000 articles, mostly popular and has participated in many radio and TV shows, most of them related to UFOs.
His new book UFOs OVER ROMANIA is out now on Amazon.
* All the photos come from the author's archive
The next important encounter took place one day at end of June 1977 and was witnessed also by the mother of D.B. In 2014, when she was interviewed, she was 83 years old. She had eight children, of whom four were still alive.
Then, in 1977, D.B. was nine. D.B., his mother, sister M and brother V (three years older), arrived from Camara, a suburb of Sighetu Marmaţiei, located about 3 km from the city centre and walked up a gentle coastal footpath passing near an orchard.
D.B. recounts that suddenly he saw, hovering over the city, a pearly blue coloured disc-shaped object that blended almost perfectly with the colour of the sky. He shouted to attract the attention of others, while thinking how good it would be if the object would come closer. In seconds, the UFO came toward them, stopping about ten meters in front of them and about five meters above the ground. The object was round, about 10 meters wide and 5 meters tall, had the form of an inverted cone and above it was a dome, but when looking more closely, you could see that it was a sphere, that went up and down, from the cone, at a distance of about two meters, at about every 5 seconds. The sphere had a greenish-yellow colour, distinct from the pearly blue one of the disc. D.B. said that the sphere was transparent and he has made out an individual on the upper level and two or more at the base. The object emitted heat, as if blowing hot air. In the air was that smell “like when you have a short circuit of electrical power”.
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| UFO seen by Bizeus (image by Daniel del Torro) |
The same scene was described, somewhat differently, by D.B.'s mother. She said: “I saw something in the sky that came from Sighet and I ran for the children and I got two of them. The boy [D.B.] had stayed there and some women screamed: take care of the children; don't let the saucer take them! And I ran and got two of the children but he stayed behind and looked up. I shouted: come to me, don't go there, they will take you! But he was still looking up at the object”. Then she saw a kind of ladder or something, on which walked down a woman all dressed in black. She did not walk but descended smoothly with two lanterns in her hands. She was tall, over two meters, with a white face and she was very beautiful. She called the children to come to her but I didn’t let them; I asked her: why do you need my children? Then the woman got back into that flying saucer and was not able to take the children. That object went towards Sighet and soon it was gone disappearing over the forest”.
D.B. said he saw something descending from the disc, but he was not looking in that direction. Instead he had the impression that, near that object, time was going slower than in the surrounding area. He added: “I seem to remember I was taken inside. I have a clear picture of one fact: in front of me appeared a number of people dressed in white. There were men and women and children; all of whom stood around me. Several elderly people came out in front of them and each told me something. I do not remember what they told me but I know that everyone told me something. Whenever I try to remember what they told me, I get just an image in my mind and that is what I remember, a semicircle with a light like lightning and around the edge of the circle was some smoke and through the smoke I could see buildings looking like the skyscrapers in New York and other cities and there were smaller settlements all around. This image, that's all I remember. It looks like they sent me a sign about the final destruction of civilisation”. Maybe – he said – people need to know only that.
Instead, he believes, he retained in detail almost everything what the children told him. They have told him many things and he also knows something about their songs, but can not reproduce anything in words. Then he said, “they left me; they no longer needed me”. He went on to add that for a year after this encounter, he had in his mouth a taste “like mercury”. The mother of D.B. described the same episode saying that she had the impression that, at some point, the boy disappeared and reappeared “as in a blink of an eye”.
The strange encounter was the talk of the village. The mother of D.B. said that she also saw, quite by chance, about once every year, always in late June, when is the rainy weather, before haymaking, a very tall woman who appeared from nowhere on the same footpath. She never saw her face. She was wearing shiny black clothes and a hood and had two lanterns in her hands and had long golden hair.
Another important encounter took place in 1998. D.B. was then 30 years old, was married and had a child of his own who was now 3 years of age. One morning, he felt as if he was compelled to go to the forest to collect wild mushrooms. Up on the ridge, he saw, coming from the Ukraine, a strange cloud. In a miraculously short time, the cloud settled above the forest trough which he would walk and it began to pour with rain.
As D.B. recounted, he was sheltering under an oak tree, when he saw, suddenly, in a clearing located at about 200 meters away, a group of teenagers. All were boys, from 1.80 to 2 meters tall and all looked identical. Accompanying the boys was a woman about 30-35 years old and about 2.5 meters tall. They were all dressed in white robes. Two of them had on their shoulder some golden “musical” instruments, which D.B. described in the smallest of detail. Their laughter was not like that of humans but it was more of a giggle and they sang exactly as the children he had met back in his childhood. D.B. then realised that they could be indeed the same beautiful children. The woman turned around, saw him, laughed and left.
D.B. said that he wanted to go with them, but he was “numb” and did not recover for several minutes. He then ran after them, continuing until he came to a clearing where it felt as warm as a furnace. He ran on, until he was out of the forest but did not see the woman or anyone else.
At home, he found that his hair, eyelashes and moustache were singed, probably in that meadow with the extreme heat. Subsequently D.B. assumed that in that forest an unearthly ship had landed. He believes that, by 2008 or 2009, the same clearing was visited again. D.B. claims that the vegetation and trees in that location had been affected by the UFO. At the beginning of 2014, when the TV documentary was made, certain signs in the forest suggested that the “ship” may have visited there once again in the not too distant past. When investigating this case, several people in the region told of other strange happenings involving the “fata pădurii”. D.B. also had other strange encounters.
Is the story of D.B. one of modern day ufology or one of folklore, or perhaps they are both the same?
About the author:
* All the photos come from the author's archive
