'Mystery Ping' From Arctic Seafloor Spooks Wildlife. Is Cthulhu Waking Up?

A mysterious “ping” or “hum” that seems to be coming from the Arctic seafloor has spooked wildlife in a remote part of northern Canada.

The sound has been heard in the Fury and Hecla Strait, located in the Qikiqtaaluk Region about 75 miles from the Inuit community of Igloolik.

“Our constituents as well as hunters and boaters have reported that the area in question is almost devoid of sea mammals and that hunting has been poor in the area for quite some time,” lawmaker Paul Quassa told the Nunavut Legislative Assembly last month, according to the Nunatsiaq News.

The noise prompted an investigation by the Canadian military, including a 90-minute survey of the area last week with a CP-140 Aurora aircraft equipped with multiple sensors. The pilots spotted some whales and walruses, but didn’t detect any hums or pings.

“The cause of the pings remains mired in mystery,” a military spokesperson told the BBC.

However, locals insist the sound is still there.

The ping or hum was detected over the summer by a sailboat with onboard sonar, Nunatsiaq News reported. Callers to local radio stations said they’ve heard the noise. According to the CBC, the sound could even be heard through the hull of ship.

Some locals blamed Greenpeace, claiming the organization was scaring sea mammals away so they couldn’t be hunted. But Greenpeace denied it.

“Not only would we not do anything to harm marine life, but we very much respect the right of Inuit to hunt and would definitely not want to impact that in any way,” spokesperson Farrah Khan said.

Other theories included mining operations and military operations, but both organizations said they were not operating in the area.

While the military has not been able to explain the sound, the leading theory on Twitter involved Cthulhu waking up just in time to wipe out mankind, and saving us all from the 2016 U.S. election:

For the record, the location of H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional city of R’lyeh ― where Cthulhu waits dreaming ― is said to be in the South Pacific, not the Arctic.