Don’t Follow the Song

The light from the laptop strained her eyes more than the late hour itself.

Ioana scrolled absently through articles, forums, and videos sent by people convinced they had captured the impossible. A photograph of an “apparition” in a mirror, a man claiming he heard footsteps in the attic, and a family who believed their television turned on by itself because of a spirit.

Ioana sighed softly and opened the next file. “Humanoid shadows observed in Hoia Baciu Forest.”

She raised an eyebrow.

The clip began shakily. Ragged breathing, branches, darkness. At the end, a pale silhouette appeared between the trees.

Ioana dragged the video bar back and froze the frame. “Bad video compression… overexposure… and probably someone wrapped in a bedsheet.”

She closed the page.

Another case came from Bistrița. A woman claimed her daughter spoke in her sleep in an unknown language. “Parasomnia,” Ioana murmured before closing that page as well.

The next clip showed several trembling lights in the sky. “Drones,” she muttered before moving on.

A “cursed” house where people felt they were being watched.

“Toxic mold, carbon monoxide, collective suggestion.”

Closed. The laptop let out a sharp notification sound. Another email. Another “authentic case.”

Ioana did not even open it. She pushed her chair back slightly and ran a hand over her face, frustrated. “Nothing…” she murmured. “Absolutely nothing serious.”

The room remained quiet around her. Only the rain tapped softly against the window in a slow, steady rhythm.

Her grandmother’s house smelled of linden tea and old wood warmed by the stove. The walls creaked sometimes beneath the wind, while in the corner of the room, the clock ticked slowly and heavily.

Ioana shut the laptop with more force than she had intended. “People want to believe in something so badly that they turn everything into the paranormal.”

From the kitchen doorway came her grandmother’s calm voice. “Maybe because some things exist even when you cannot see them.”

Ioana looked up.

Her grandmother stood lightly against the doorframe, a steaming mug held between her palms. The yellow glow of the bulb deepened the fine wrinkles on her face and caught the completely white strands of hair loosely braided down her back.

Ioana gave a faint smile. “Please don’t start too...”

The woman stepped closer and placed the mug on the table beside her. “You search for ghosts through computers and cameras,” she said quietly. “But the worst things never needed to hide inside walls.”

Ioana crossed her arms. “Then where do they hide?”

Her grandmother watched her for a few seconds without answering.

Outside, the wind struck the windows hard enough to make the wood groan softly.

“In forests.”

Ioana rolled her eyes almost instinctively. “Sure.”

But her grandmother did not smile. “Have you ever heard of the Iele?”

Her grandmother slowly pulled the chair across from her and sat down. “Beyond our forest,” she said, “past the old stone road… there is a gazebo.”

Ioana raised an eyebrow slightly. “A gazebo.”

“It’s almost swallowed by the woods now. The wood is rotting, and half the roof collapsed years ago. But before… people used to go there in summer. They danced. They sang.” The old woman’s voice lowered. “Until they began to appear.”

Ioana rested her cheek against her palm, already prepared for another local legend.

Her grandmother continued without looking directly at her. “People call them the Iele because that is what they have always called them. No one truly knows what they are.”

The fire in the stove cracked softly.

“They appear only at night, when the moon is high and the forest begins to grow too quiet. Some say you hear their song first. Others say you smell flowers before they appear.”

Ioana hid a tired smile. “And then?”

“Then you see them.” For the first time, her grandmother lifted her gaze directly toward her. “Women too beautiful to seem real. With long hair and white clothes moving with the wind. They dance in circles there, beside the gazebo.”

A few seconds of silence settled over the room.

“And if you look at them for too long,” the woman continued softly, “you begin to forget that you should be afraid.”

Ioana rolled her eyes discreetly. “Grandma…”

But the old woman did not seem to notice. “Those who hear their song draw closer without realizing it, as though something in the forest is calling them nearer.”

The wind whistled briefly around the house.

“Some were found wandering through the forest the next morning without knowing who they were. Others never spoke again. And a few…” She paused slightly. “A few were never found at all.”

Ioana exhaled slowly through her nose. “And for hundreds of years, no one has gone there at night, I assume.” She closed her eyes for a moment and let her head fall back. “Again with spirits and curses.”

She stood from the table before her grandmother could say anything else. “Tomorrow I’ll probably find out the Iele have Facebook accounts too.”

Her grandmother did not laugh. “Be careful how you speak about the Iele.”

Ioana grabbed her jacket from the hanger. “Sure.”

The village was small, damp, and almost asleep beneath the gray afternoon sky. The smell of smoke rose from chimneys, while mud from the roads clung to her boots with every step.

Ioana stopped first at the old shop near the church.

“The gazebo in the forest?” the shopkeeper repeated as soon as Ioana mentioned it. “Don’t go there at night.”

Then an old man sitting on a bench crossed himself when he heard the name of the place. “I heard them singing when I was a child.”

Another woman refused to speak about it and shut the gate. And with every identical answer, Ioana grew more irritated because they seemed genuinely convinced.

The sun had already begun to sink when she reached the last house at the edge of the village. A thin man, well into his fifties, sat on the steps smoking quietly.

Ioana quickly explained what she was looking for.

The man did not answer immediately. The cigarette trembled slightly between his fingers. “I saw them,” he finally said.

Ioana almost smiled. “Sure.”

He slowly lifted his gaze toward her. “I saw them.” His tone was so serious that her smile gradually faded. “I was twenty-two when I went into the forest with three other boys.”

The man swallowed hard. “And I heard singing.”

The wind passed through the trees behind the house.

“After a few minutes… I could no longer remember why I had gone there.” His eyes seemed lost somewhere far beyond her. “And for a while…” he whispered, “I didn’t even want to leave.”

*****

Night slowly settled over the village, covering the houses in damp, heavy silence. Ioana pulled her hoodie tighter around herself and checked the flashlight battery one more time. In her backpack she had: the recorder, the camera, bear spray, a notebook, and the noise-canceling headphones she sometimes used during investigations.

Her grandmother watched her from the doorway without speaking for several seconds. “You’re still going.”

Ioana slung the backpack over her shoulder. “Grandma, these are just local stories that grew too much inside people’s imaginations. That’s all.”

“Not everything that frightens people is imagination.”

Ioana sighed tiredly. “And if I come back and tell you I found nothing?”

Her grandmother lowered her gaze. “Then I’ll be happy.”

The wind stirred the branches in the yard softly.

“But if you hear singing…” the old woman continued quietly, “don’t follow it.”

Ioana suppressed an ironic smile. “I promise no fairy is going to kidnap me.”

But her grandmother did not smile at all.

The road toward the forest grew darker with every step. The flashlight illuminated only patches of mud, roots, and wet trunks. Beyond that, the forest seemed completely swallowed by darkness.

Ioana checked the map on her phone. The gazebo had to be close.

Then she heard a faint sound and stopped immediately. At first, it sounded like nothing more than wind through the trees.

But it was rhythmic, melodic, like a song carried from very far away. Ioana froze for several seconds and raised her flashlight. Between the trees, dozens of meters ahead, white silhouettes moved slowly.

Women. Or at least that was what they seemed to be, thin shadows dancing around the ruined gazebo.

The song became slightly clearer. It had no words, only voices.

Ioana felt a strange chill crawl up the back of her neck.

One step forward came almost instinctively.

And then she stopped abruptly. “No.”

She immediately pulled the noise-canceling headphones from her backpack and placed them over her ears.

The sound was almost completely cut off.

Her breathing became clear again inside her own ears.

She looked once more toward the gazebo.

The silhouettes were still moving.

But now, without the song, something about them seemed… wrong.

Too blurred and unstable. Like shadows made from light and mist.

Ioana slowly took one step back. Then another. And another.

A few minutes later, she was already heading back toward the village with quick steps, more irritated than frightened.

For a few seconds, she had almost stepped into the story’s game.

Almost.

*****

The next morning, she returned. Sunlight filtered through the trees, and the forest looked completely normal, almost harmless in the morning light. No trace of women, no song.

The gazebo was exactly as her grandmother had described it: rotting, leaning, and nearly swallowed by vegetation.

Ioana began carefully examining the area, and then she noticed the mushrooms: entire clusters growing in wide circles through the damp grass. She immediately crouched beside them.

Thin caps, pearly white, with faint bluish reflections around the edges.

Ioana pulled out her phone and took several pictures.

A few minutes later, her eyes widened slightly. “Impossible…”

The mushrooms looked almost identical to a rare species of bioluminescent hallucinogenic fungi she had once read about in an old study: a type of mycete capable of releasing psychoactive spores under certain conditions of humidity and temperature, especially at night.

Ioana slowly stood and looked around. Everything was beginning to make sense.

Spores inhaled in high concentrations could alter auditory perception, induce euphoria, cause disorientation, and create collective hallucinations.

And the smell… She gently broke off a piece of one mushroom and brought it closer to her nose. Floral, sweet, almost perfumed. Exactly the kind of scent the brain could unconsciously associate with a feminine presence.

Ioana looked again at the circles of mushrooms. “The circles of the Iele…” A satisfied smile slowly appeared on her face.

Ioana remained crouched beside the mushroom circles for several moments, turning one between her fingers.

People did not only see what existed. They saw what they expected to exist.

If you entered a forest you had been told your entire life belonged to the Iele, your mind would inevitably begin transforming every shadow and every sound into confirmation of the story. Fear did the rest.

Ioana pulled out her phone and took another photograph of the pearly fungal circles. “That’s all this is…” she murmured quietly.

In daylight, the gazebo looked like nothing more than an abandoned ruin. Just a legend that had survived long enough for people to begin believing in it.

Ioana slipped her phone back into her pocket and turned to leave.

Then she saw among the trees a white silhouette stood motionless between the trunks, long hair falling over its shoulders. The pale dress was far too clearly outlined to be only a trick of light among the trees. Ioana froze.

The silhouette disappeared immediately behind a tree.

“Hey!” Ioana instinctively moved toward the spot.

She reached the tree and quickly looked around. The forest was empty. No footprints. No movement. Nothing.

Her breathing became slightly faster. Then her gaze dropped toward the ground. Beside the root of the tree grew another mushroom.

Alone, larger than the others.

Its pearly-white cap reflected the light in an almost unnatural way.

Ioana slowly knelt beside it, and then noticed something that tightened her stomach. The mushroom had been freshly broken. As though someone had stepped beside it only seconds earlier.

Ioana slowly lifted her gaze toward the forest. Only wind through the branches.

Her mind was already trying to construct the logical explanation: an animal, a local, a residual hallucination, pattern recognition, psychological suggestion.

Before everything made sense. Almost too much sense, but now...

She looked again at the mushroom. Then toward the direction where the silhouette had vanished.

And for the first time since arriving in the village, Ioana felt something she could not immediately analyze. Doubt.

If everything had been only a hallucination, then why could she not shake the feeling that, for a few seconds, something had looked back at her from the forest?

****

Romanian mythology has always hidden things people stopped trying to explain.

The Iele are one of them.