COLOURS OUT OF SPACE

The colours out of space are an alien lifeform that sucks life out of all living things. Their exact nature and form is unknown. The only documented appearance of the species happened when a meteor  fell in a rural area west of the  town of Arkham, Massachusetts, landing next to a well, on farmland belonging to one Nahum Gardner in 1927. The meteorite possessed odd properties:

• It wastes away when exposed to natural air.
• It continuously produces significant amounts of heat.
• It is unusually soft for something resembling rock.
• No noticeable gases released when heated over charcoal.
• No reaction to the borax bead test.
• No apparent reaction to any producible temperature, including that of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe.
• Highly malleable.
• Luminous. Especially noticeable in dark surroundings.
• Spectroscopic analysis during heating resulted in shining bands unknown previously in the visible spectrum.
• Mostly immune from reaction to all laboratory-standard agents. Small and faint traces of Widmansättten pattern appear on it in response to acid agents.
• Generally accepted to be a metal of some sort.
• Possesses the qualities expected of a magnetic material.
• Affinity for electricity, to the point where it could divert lightning strikes to itself.
• Damaging to silicon compounds.

The colours inhabit small colored, fragile globules within such meteors, exhibiting the odd band of colors described above. A simple hammer tap is sufficient to break one open, resulting in no noticeable release of anything at all.

The colours possess mutagenic properties. In its presence, the plant life started turning brittle, growing smaller than normal, growing increasingly more hideous-looking, gray, and in the case of the crops, bitter and sour or a the best, tasteless. The insects followed suit, dropping dead rapidly. Animals in the area are also affected, their bodies, behavior and activity showing hints of alteration, such as leaping distances well above their normal capability and malformed body proportions and appearances. Cows grazing on grass near the site produce milk of worthless quality. Horses can be driven violently mad by it. The rest of the farm animals also fell to the same fate. The poultry turned gray, rapidly died and their meat found useless as food, being dry and of disgusting taste. Hogs grew massively fat, developed isolated mutations on their bodies here and there, and then soon after turned gray and collapsed like the rest of them, their meat found unedible for the same reasons as the poultry. Cows were next, portions of their bodies, or even the entire thing, shrank incredibly. The result was the same. They turned gray and died. The vegetation thereafter began crumbling like dust into grayish powder, and it was soon discovered afterwards that the well water was of undrinkable quality. 

Source: Lovecraft [1927] (1984). “The Colour Out of Space”, 
S. T. Joshi (ed.): The Dunwich Horror and Others, 9th corrected printing, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-037-8. Definitive version.
Wikipedia Entry.

FLYNG POLYPS / ELDER BEINGS / POLYOPOUS PEOPLE

Picture by Tom Sullivan, taken from S.Petersen's Field Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos.

[The flying polyps were a] horrible elder race of half polypous, utterly alien entities... They were only partly material and had the power of aerial motion, despite the absence of wings... [They exhibited] a monstrous plasticity and ... temporary lapses of visibility... [S]ingular whistling noises and colossal footprints made up of five circular toe marks seemed also to be associated with them.

—H.P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

The flying polyps came to Earth out of space as conquerors about seven hundred and fifty million years ago. They also inhabited three other planets in the solar system, including possibly Yaksh (Neptune) and Tond (though Tond itself may lie outside the solar system). S. T. Joshi suggests that one of the mysterious solar planets inhabited by the polyps might have been Yuggoth (Pluto) because its windowless buildings "would be admirably suited to these sightless denizens!" (Joshi, "Lovecraft's Other Planets", p. 36, Selected Papers on Lovecraft.) On Earth, they built basalt cities with high windowless towers in what is now Australia. When they attempted to colonize the oceans, the polyps were driven back by the Elder Things. Thereafter, they restricted their habitats to the surface world.

Their senses did not include sight, but what senses they had could penetrate all material obstructions. They were only partially matter, but still solid enough to affect and be stopped by normal materials; this additionally gave them resistance, if not outright invulnerability, to normal means of damage, though they could be destroyed by certain forms of electrical energy. They are able to levitate and fly despite lacking any visible means of doing so, and leave telltale massive footprints when on the ground. Their amorphous bodies can turn invisible at will, though this ability appears somewhat negated by whistling noises associated with them in general. In battle, their ability to control and direct powerful winds is put to use as a weapon.

When the Great Race of Yith came to Earth, they warred with the polyps and soon drove them underground with their advanced technology. The Great Race then sealed the entryways to the polyps' subterranean abode with trapdoors, which afterwards were diligently guarded. The polyps' cities were left abandoned, perhaps as a reminder of the horrors that dwelt below.

Eventually, the polyps rose up and exterminated the Great Race, afterwards returning to their subterranean haunts. Having no conception of light, the polyps seem content to remain there, annihilating the few intruders that chance upon them. The entrances to their dwellings are mostly deep within ancient ruins where there are great wells sealed over with stone. Inside these wells still dwell the polyps.

Source: H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow out of Time". [1936], (1982), The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, 1st ed., Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-35080-4., Harms, Daniel (1998). “Flying Polyps”, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, 2nd ed., Oakland, CA: Chaosium, p. 109. ISBN 1-56882-119-0, Joshi, S. T. (1989). “Lovecraft's Other Planets”, Selected Papers on Lovecraft, 1st printing, West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press. ISBN 0-940884-23-2.