Recently on the Gralien Report I discussed briefly my interest in unconventional cryptozoology, that is, the study of strange beasties that fall outside the typical ranks of our Bigfoot, Yetis, and Loch Ness Monsters. Many may consider creatures like Chupacabras to be less conventional cousins to the classic cryptids, seeing as how they, along with Keel’s Mothman, border more on the realm of interdimensional “alien oddities” than biological organisms as we know them. However, setting aside all these well-known creatures for a moment, I’d like to shift my focus to an all time favorite of mine in the annals of Fortean mysteries which, if what existing evidence suggests is accurate, points to a monstrosity somewhere beneath our oceans that might rival J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield monster. Sadly, whatever this thing may be, it couldn’t be afforded an awesome name like Project Cloverfield, Kraken, Godzilla, or even Cthulhu (which, for reasons we’ll soon explore, this creature may resemble most). Instead, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) researchers that first recorded its haunting cries affectionately dubbed it “Bloop”.
The story is a strange one, which involves left over deep-sea Cold War technology from the 1960s, later used by NOAA again during the late 1990s. On several occasions during the summer of 1997, an array of hydrophones moored at a depth referred to as the “deep-sound channel” below the Pacific Ocean were able to record a variety of ultra-low frequency noises which, to this day, have yet to be identified. One particular audio sample became an article of interest among researchers who heard it due to its whale-like characteristics, though in order to be made audible, the recording was sped up 16 times, causing it to take on a short, rounded bubbling sound. Hence the name “Bloop” was given to the strange sample, which you can listen to by clicking here.
ABOVE: A Spectrographic image of the “Bloop” audio, courtesy of NOAA.
NOAA researchers described that the sound “rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km.” Studies done by acoustic experts and marine life specialists claim that its peculiar sonic hallmark matches “the audio profile of a living creature,” although no known animal could have produced the sound based on the range and volume indicated by the number of sensors that were able to detect it. According to Wikipedia, “if it is an animal, it would have to be, reportedly, much larger than even a Blue Whale, the largest known animal on the earth.” What kind of monster—larger than a Blue Whale, mind you—could exist beneath our oceans, unbeknownst to modern science? Many have speculated that the noise could possibly have been a giant squid, although Cephalopods lack the vocal fortitude to be capable of such sounds. As told to CNN News around the time the recording was released, Boston University marine biologist Phil Lobel said, “Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise. Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it.” Nonetheless, Lobel has expressed belief that there is a biological source behind the noise, with all indications pointing to some sort of mammal. Still, this raises many questions, and again we must ask, could some giant mammal, or any other creature of such magnitude, remain unnoticed for so long?
Strangely, there is existing work in the realm of fiction which touches a bit too close to home in the way it parallels the “Bloop” mystery. Though recently, in promotional “viral ads” for the film Cloverfield the term “Bloop” appeared in many instances, nearly a century ago in his fiction masterpiece The Call of Cthulhu, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft described how a terrifying octopoid-creature was awakened by innocent sailors in the Southern Pacific ocean. In Lovecraft’s story, the monstrous creature Cthulhu is an ancient anthropoid deity with a writhing squid-like head exiled to Earth eons ago, which now sleeps in a tomb inside the sunken corpse-city of R’lyeh. Interestingly, the exact location of this “corpse city” is given in the description of the encounter with the Cthulhu monster, as related by the Character Gustaf Johansen near the end of the story:
Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47°9′, W. Longitude 123°43′, come upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration.
R’leyh, said to lie beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean near 47° 9′ S, 126° 43′ W, is eerily close to “Bloop’s” estimated point of origin, which NOAA cites as being “near 50° S; 100° W” (see image above).
There are a few other strange aspects of Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos” worthy of discussion here. Though Cthulhu is referred to as being dead, according to available literature its remains apparently don’t decompose over time. This is suggested by a particular verse repeated throughout Lovecraft’s story which reads:
That is not dead which can eternal lie, after strange aeons even death may die.
The website Summer of Lovecraft describes that “Shreds of mighty Cthulhu’s consciousness still cling to its corpse and influence the dreams of lesser beings such as mankind,” referencing the creature’s apparent telepathic abilities, as well as a
degree of control it is able to exert over humanity. “Its nightmares have been known to drive the dreamer to madness. It is said that when the stars are right, Cthulhu’s soul will be returned to its body, R’lyeh will surface from beneath the waves, and the Great Old One will rise again to devour the souls of all life on Earth.”
In his stories, Lovecraft used a “strictly amoral continuity”, that is, there wasn’t a sense of universal struggle between good and evil in his stories. Instead, the terrible monstrosities he described were often more or less complacent toward humanity, which might be likened to modern reported close encounters with alien “grays”. For instance, in many abduction scenarios and various other encounters, aliens are described as appearing to have an agenda that involves humankind, though their overall attitude toward us is almost apathetic. While we’re discussing alien life forms, it’s worthwhile to also point out that Cthulhu was probably an alien of some sort just as well. Though Cthulhu himself is most often referred to as a god or deity, in many of Lovecraft’s works that followed The Call of Cthulhu there are references to “the old ones”, a race of beings similar to Cthulhu, being extraterrestrials or having travelled here “from the stars”. If we were to think for a moment along the lines of one of Clark’s laws, specifically that which states that any significantly advanced technology perceived by a lesser advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, we might surmise that the same could be expected of our perception of giant alien monstrosities lying dormant in sunken cities beneath the Pacific. In other words Cthulhu was likely intended by Lovecraft to be an alien life form, perhaps having been exiled to Earth, left to “sleep” in a near-death state of suspended animation.
During the second section of The Call of Cthulhu, some of the ramblings of “Old Castro”, an elderly occultist captured during a raid on a cult ceremony in New Orleans, hint at Cthulu’s extraterrestrial origins. “They (the Old Ones) were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape…but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.” Again, in the Castro character’s ramblings we see interesting references to suspended animation, alien life forms which could maintain physicality (“shape” as Castro describes) without “flesh and blood”, and the mysterious capabilities of interstellar space-travel which could only occur “when the stars were right”.
Of course, reminding ourselves that this is all merely fiction, we might even go so far as to assume that Lovecraft himself had little real understanding of what exactly he was writing about. Lovecraft seemed to love to try and capture the essence of the unexplainable with scant, contradictory descriptions of extremities; but few would argue that he did so artfully and with an unprecedented degree of skill. The description given of Cthulhu himself at the story’s climax is no exception:
The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
So altogether, regardless of his description, I think it’s safe to assume that the fictional Cthulu’s origins are clearly extraterrestrial. But in what ways could Lovecraft’s interstellar imaginings parallel the reality of the matter at hand? Could there be some sort of alien connection to the phenomenon behind “Bloop” as well?
Indeed, reports dating back further than the nineteenth century describe USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects) emerging from and entering the waters off of coastal Japan, with a majority of reports, having occurred more recently, being linked to UFO activity below Earth’s oceans. Though many of these reports specifically have to do with an area off of the Japanese mainland referred to as “The Dragon’s Triangle,” a sort of Eastern version of the famous Bermuda Triangle, there have been well publicized incidents of this sort from all parts of the world, leading many to believe that some alien intelligence may utilize the cover provided by the deepest recesses of our oceans to keep their operations from view. Fortean researcher Ivan Sanderson favored this notion of USOs also, discussing them at length in his book Invisible Residents: The Reality of Underwater UFOs, where he postulated that “the ultimate docking stations for some of the UFOs seen constantly around the world” might lay beneath the ocean’s depths, even guessing that extraterrestrials may have built such “docking stations” as far back as prior to the existence of humankind.
As one begins to look at the scenario more and more, it becomes evident that the parallels between Lovecraft’s fiction and the proposed theories of many Ufologists regarding alleged “USOs” begin to mirror one another. Did Lovecraft’s fiction works somehow “cross-pollinate” with later conspiracy theories that would arise, lending themselves to an amalgamation of weirdness too-strange to accept wholly, yet too-hard to disclose completely when taking into consideration the vastness of the deep oceans? I’ll admit, it’s a little hard to swallow… but the gist of the idea here is that perhaps some of these strange hums, cries, calls, and other bizarre noises recorded deep below the Pacific (and elsewhere) could have something to do with deep-sea bases and the like. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, aside from multitudes of reports that document UFOs diving into or emerging from the ocean. You could just as easily say that, aside from that provided by the cute and bubbly-sounding “Bloop”, that there’s as little evidence of some ginormous whale-thing flopping around out there in the oceans, as well.
So what then do we make of this “Bloop”? It’s hard to say… but I find the enigmatic mystery that surrounds the story nothing short of captivating, in spite of all the wild speculation that has stemmed from the related fiction and fringe studies. If anything, probing for meaning behind Lovecraft’s darkest work, as well as considering UFO/USO related phenomenon, for me only deepens the intrigue of an already fascinating case. Perhaps we’ll never know what “Bloop” really was (or is, if it’s still out there). Or, on the other hand, just as in horror movies like Cloverfield and Jaws we may come to find out that this thing, whatever it is, has crept up on us somehow, which could lead to quite the rude awakening one day…
November 20th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
[...] And here’s the rest of Micah’s post. [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 10:59 am
Hiya Micah,
Great post! Well thought-out and presented!
You’ve hit upon many interconnections between Lovecraft’s work and fortean phenomena, Bloop, grays and the oceans of the world, etc. that I also examine in depth in the last section of my book “Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures….”
Scary that we think so much alike!
Keep up the good work,
-MIke