It’s a mix of truth and tall tales, really. The deep sea does hide giant cephalopods—squid up to 10 meters that could look like a monster if you saw one in the dark—but there’s no evidence of anything that can drag a whole ship down in a single night. Most of the kraken stories grew from sailors’ fears of the unknown and the occasional sighting of a giant squid. So, while the ocean holds some amazing creatures, the leviathan that pulls ships into the abyss is more myth than science, though it’s a beautiful reminder of how much we still don’t know below the waves.