Supplemental Document A-17

Attached to Case File #0513 — Hoia Baciu Forest

Clearance Level: Restricted

Author: [REDACTED]

Affiliation: [CLASSIFIED]

I have reviewed the civilian reports attached to this file, and I am formally recommending that the area remain under observation despite pressure to reduce funding and classify the incidents as environmental hysteria.

Respectfully, whoever wrote that recommendation has never stepped into the forest after dark.

The first thing you notice is not fear.

It is silence.

Not ordinary silence — not the absence of traffic or birdsong. This is something heavier. The kind of silence that feels imposed. Manufactured. As if the forest itself is holding sound down beneath the soil.

Our team entered through the southern access path at approximately 21:14 local time. Weather conditions were stable. No wind. Temperature mild. Equipment checks normal.

Within eleven minutes, we experienced our first anomaly.

Agent Petrov reported hearing movement pacing us parallel to the trail approximately twenty meters into the treeline. Thermal imaging detected nothing. No wildlife signatures. No heat displacement whatsoever.

The footsteps continued for nearly four minutes.

Perfectly synchronized with our pace.

When we stopped walking, they stopped too.

That was the moment I realized none of us were joking anymore.

At 21:31, we reached the clearing.

I had seen photographs beforehand. They did not prepare me for the physical sensation of standing there.

The air pressure changes first.

Your ears begin to ring slightly, though instruments detect no audible frequency spike. Then comes the nausea — subtle at first. One investigator compared it to standing too quickly after blood loss.

Agent Moreau vomited approximately thirty seconds after entering the clearing perimeter.

He insisted he was fine afterward.

Three hours later he claimed not to remember entering the forest at all.

I want that sentence preserved exactly as written.

He remembered the drive there. He remembered our hotel. He remembered breakfast that morning. But from the moment we crossed the treeline onward, his memory became fragmented and unreliable.

He repeatedly asked why his boots were muddy.

At approximately 21:47, our audio equipment recorded what appears to be whispered speech.

Linguistic analysis remains inconclusive.

Romanian phonetics are present in portions of the recording, but layered beneath them are fragments from at least three additional languages. One analyst insists he can hear Russian. Another claims French. A third submitted a formal complaint after becoming convinced the recording contains his own voice.

I have listened to it seven times.

The whispering does not remain consistent between playbacks.

I understand how that sounds.

At 22:03, Agent Petrov disappeared.

There is no softer way to phrase this.

One moment he was behind me. The next, he was gone.

No scream. No footfalls. No visible departure.

Just absence.

Our formation lights illuminated the entire clearing perimeter. Visibility was unobstructed. There was nowhere nearby he could have concealed himself in under two seconds.

We searched for forty-one minutes.

At 22:44, Petrov emerged from the treeline north of the clearing.

Barefoot.

Bleeding from superficial cuts across both arms.

Crying.

Not panicked. Not hysterical.

Just quietly crying in the way exhausted people do when something inside them has broken beyond repair.

When questioned, he initially refused to speak.

Then he asked me something I have not included in the official report.

He asked:

“Why did it know my mother’s voice?”

I need to make something very clear here.

I have worked conflict zones.

I have seen mass casualty sites.

I have interviewed people immediately after events that should have shattered the human mind permanently.

I have never seen fear like the expression on Petrov’s face in that moment.

Not fear of death.

Recognition.

As though something in the forest had known him personally.

The next morning, command instructed us to attribute the incident to stress exposure and environmental disorientation.

Standard containment language.

Standard paperwork.

Standard lies.

I complied because that is what people in my position are expected to do.

But I am adding this supplemental document because eventually someone else will enter that forest believing they are conducting another manageable investigation.

They are not.

I do not know what exists in Hoia Baciu.

I no longer believe it is merely psychological.

And I no longer believe the phenomenon is confined to the forest itself.

Petrov began sleep-talking three nights after extraction.

Romanian.

Fluent Romanian.

He does not speak Romanian.

Yesterday he vanished from medical observation at 02:13 local time.

Security footage shows him walking calmly down the corridor before stopping beside the exit door.

He turns toward the camera.

Smiles.

And says something the audio fails to capture.

Then every camera on the floor cuts to static simultaneously for seventeen seconds.

When the feed returns, he is gone.

No door alarm triggered.

No exit recorded.

Nothing.

I have requested reassignment.

It was denied within nineteen minutes.

Which means one of two things:

Either they think I’m paranoid.

Or they already know exactly what is happening in that forest.