‘Very polite and small tornado?: Woman wakes up to find her barn has moved overnight, and science can’t explain it

As human beings, we have a tendency to quantify events based on scope, and throw all other significance out the window. But really, it’s the smaller events that offer up the most real estate for our curiosity.

For example, if you lived on a farm, and woke up one morning to find that your barn was nowhere to be seen, you’re likely to chalk that up to a hurricane or a fire, depending on the evidence that remains. You’ll be anywhere from miffed to devastated, to be sure, but at least you have an idea of what went down.

TikTok‘s @ellebelle_999 was not so lucky. Sure, she still has her barn, but the mystery of its movement is henceforth going to take up a lot of her mental time, probably.

Now, unless Elle is pulling our leg here (which is a possibility, but one we’ll reject for the sake of entertainment), the barn outside of her house apparently moved several yards overnight, with Elle very clearly indicating the before and after of the building’s inexplicable movement, even showing us the patch of minerals where the barn was previously calling home. To make matters even more mind-boggling, there’s not even an indent in the grass between the two spots.

Elle’s theory is that she’s being haunted by a goblin, but the more likely scenario is that Baba Yaga has set up shop in the barn, and the barn has grown a pair of chicken legs as a result. The barn-to-chicken metamorphosis, however, probably left the barn quite exhausted, which would explain why it didn’t make it terribly far.

Other, less cheeky theories include a freak storm that only ever managed to pick the barn up and drop it nearby without fully taking it away from the premises, or—the most popular one amongst the comments section—a routine prank by barn-moving Amish people. I am not online enough to be in on this meme, and I intend to keep it that way.

Now, when it comes to tornado threats on farms, concern should not be placed on the livestock and infrastructure, but on yourself; according to the Government of Canada’s Hazards and Emergencies information cache, you should open the gate for your livestock in the event of a tornado so that they can escape, but only if you’re not in immediate danger yourself. Animals can sense tornadoes ahead of time, and can handle themselves. This information is brought to you by a lack of actionable advice on goblins, Baba Yaga, and Amish mischief.