A Sound That Shouldn’t Exist
In 1997, an underwater microphone deep in the South Pacific picked up a sound that no one could explain. It was loud; louder than any known sea creature, even louder than the Blue Whale. The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) dubbed it “The Bloop.”
At first it was passed off as ice shifting. But over time, scientists grew uneasy. The sound didn’t quite match anything natural. It seemed to pulse. It had an organic signature. The coordinates of the sound’s origin is near the exact fictional location of H.P. Lovecraft’s sunken city R’lyeh, where the cosmic god Cthulhu is said to sleep.
Was it coincidence, or did Lovecraft tap into something else?
The Bloop: Fact, Fiction or Something Else?
The Bloop was detected at approximately 50°S 100°W, deep in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from land. It was captured by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean Institute’s autonomous hydrophone array and lasted for over a minute. The sound traveled more than 3,000 miles underwater.
Some theories emerged, icequakes, subsea volcanoes and unidentified marine megafauna. But none fit perfectly. A NOAA oceanographer, Dr. Christopher Fox famously admitted: “It is not man-made and it’s not consistent with any known geological or biological process.”
When analyzed spectrally, The Bloop resembled a living vocalization. But if that were true. The source would have to be several times larger than the Blue Whale – the biggest living creature on the planet. The creature would be hundreds of meters long and it would still be out there.
The Lovecraft Connection, A Fiction Too Close To Reality
When H.P. Lovecraft penned The Call Of Cthulhu in 1926, he described a sunken city beneath the sea where a great, slumbering God lies dreaming. Just waiting for the stars to align so it may rise and reclaim the Earth.
The city’s name is R’lyeh. Lovecraft even provided coordinates, 47°9S126°43W.
A meaningless flourish? Perhaps. Until you realize those fictional coordinates were eerily close, within 800 nautical miles (nautical miles are a little longer than land miles) to where the NOAA later discovered in 1997.
That’s just not creepy. That’s cosmic.
Lovecraft, in his time, had no access to hydroacoustic research, no sonar mapping of the ocean floor and no digital models of tectonic plates. Yet the coordinates he chose, almost align with one of the most unexplainable, underwater acoustic events ever recorded.
It begs the question: Did Lovecraft know something we didn’t?
He Dreamed It Before It Was Written
Lovecraft often said that his stories came from his dreams. They were visions he didn’t completely understand. He once wrote, “I have seen the dark universe yawning…where the black planets roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.”
He described sensations of drowning, of seeing shapes in the water too large to comprehend. In some letters, he even talks about recurring dreams of cities beneath the waves and beings that watched from the deep.
Cthulhu is just not a monster but a symbol of exterior horror. It’s a being so ancient and powerful that thinks humanity is nothing more than a flicker. That’s how scientists have described whatever could have created The Bloop. It’s massive, unfathomable and totally indifferent to us.
Marine Biology, Myth and Madness
Lovecraft’s aquatic nightmares weren’t created in a vacuum. They emerged from a place of primal fear. The sea is a realm that has not just been unexplored but also unknowable. While he was writing in the early twentieth century, long before deep-sea research, many of the things that he described have since been found, confirmed and cataloged by marine biologists.
In Lovecraft’s The Temple, a German U-boat sinks and the surviving crew members discover the ruins of a submerged city. One with geometrics that defy logic and architecture beyond human comprehension. It was a fever dream of impossible architecture, yet…
In 2001, researchers off the coast of Cuba discovered what appears to be large symmetrical stone structures more than 2,000 feet below sea level. The formations resembled massive urban layouts, grid patterns, pyramids and roads. The sonar images captured stunned the marine science world.
Were they naturally occurring? Possibly. But many experts are hesitant to comment at all. Some even dismiss the findings outright without any proper research.
Sounds That Shouldn’t Be Heard
Lovecraft’s universe was full of murmurs from the deep in languages not meant for human ears. In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, townsfolk chant in guttural tones to summon creatures that live beneath the sea. The horror isn’t in just what they are calling but that something actually answers.
Now consider this: The Bloop and other unexplained auditory phenomena such as Julia Sound, Upsweep and Slow Down, are all from something unknown. They were picked up by hydrophones stationed thousands of miles apart. The weren’t brief blips but prolonged, low-frequency that spanned for minutes, sometimes hours and no origin has never been conclusively identified.
Final Thoughts: When Fiction Echoes Fact
There’s something deeply unsettling about how closely Lovecraft’s fiction aligns with modern marine discoveries. His stories were never meant to predict the future, and yet, each new deep-sea anomaly feels like a page torn from his universe.
The ocean is largely unexplored. It’s a place where science meets mystery, where known biology brushes against the unknown. The creatures that we are discovering and uncovering are eerily alien. Translucent, light producing and ancient creatures that are beyond imagination. The sounds that scientists have recorded from The Bloop to the Julia sound remain unexplained. In the deepest parts of the sea, structures and shapes blur the line between natural formation and forgotten architecture.
Lovecraft imagined titanic beings living under the sea, dreaming in silence, influencing the minds of men from afar. Today, some scientists and writers alike wonder: if these sounds are real, if these shapes are real…what else could be lurking beneath the waves?
Fiction doesn’t always predict reality, but sometimes, it runs uncomfortably parallel. When scientists of the world begin to look, and discover nightmares like from H.P. Lovecraft, it hard not to wonder what’s down there. Just beyond reach or just beyond reason.