The mystery took on a life of its own due to a geographic coincidence that captured early internet forums. When oceanographers calculated the triangulation coordinates of the signal, they placed the epicenter in the general vicinity of the South Pacific oceanic pole of inaccessibility, often called Point Nemo. Point Nemo represents the single most remote oceanic location on Earth, situated over 1,600 miles away from any speck of dry land.
Online communities quickly noticed something strange. The calculated coordinates sat roughly 1,000 miles from the fictional sunken city of R'lyeh, dreamed up by horror author H.P. Lovecraft in his 1928 story *The Call of Cthulhu*. Lovecraft had placed his fictional nightmare at 47°9′ S, 126°43′ W. The overlap between 20th-century speculative fiction and late-1990s oceanographic sensor data proved irresistible to message boards, birthing an enduring urban legend about an awakened leviathan resting miles below the surface.
Human psychology often embraces mythical monsters over geophysical realities. But oceanographers were already zeroing in on a cold, physical explanation situated further south.
