 r'lyeh is a fictional lost city that first appeared in the h. p. lovecraft short story "the call of cthulhu", first published in weird tales in 1928. according to lovecraft's short story, r'lyeh is a sunken city in the south pacific and the prison of the entity called cthulhu.  r'lyeh is characterized by bizarre architecture likened to non-euclidean geometry. norwegian sailor gustaf johansen, the narrator of one of the tales in the short story, describes the accidental discovery of the city: "a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terrorâthe nightmare corpse-city of r'lyeh...loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours".h. p. lovecraft, "the call of cthulhu" (1928) the short story also asserts the premise that while currently trapped in r'lyeh, cthulhu will eventually return, with worshipers often repeating the phrase ph'nglui mglw'nafh cthulhu r'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn: "in his house at r'lyeh, dead cthulhu waits dreaming". lovecraft claims r'lyeh is located at  in the southern pacific ocean. writer august derleth, a contemporary correspondent of lovecraft and co-creator of the cthulhu mythos, placed r'lyeh at .derleth, a. the black island (1952) the latter coordinates place the city approximately  from the actual island of pohnpei (ponape), the location of the fictional "ponape scripture". both locations are close to the pacific pole of inaccessibility (), a point in the ocean farthest from any land mass. in brian lumley's primal land short story "the house of cthulhu",
Cthulhu_Mythos_locations Fictional_islands Fictional_populated_places Fictional_prisons Fictional_sunken_cities