Thread:LucidPigeons/@comment-24469175-20160518184507/@comment-26205772-20160611192958

Yes... I'll repeat Misery's last point because I think that's something I missed. Cosmic Horror pronounces fear of the unknown and the incomprehensible over gore and blood. The true monsters aren't vampires or zombies, they're formless, visceral creatures often capable of driving a man to insanity (another theme of Lovecraft is psychological horror and the effects of such things on a man's sanity) if they try and learn too much about them. Indeed, a common theme in cosmic horror is that some things shouldn't be delved into too deeply, as mankind was never meant to know, and the pursuit of such information is what draws destruction to Lovecraftian protagonists (in the Mythos proper, the protagonists of At The Mountains of Madness fit such a description among many others; Abdul Alhazred, author of the Necronomicon, was also hinted to have been driven to such a fate).

Nothing Is Scarier and These Were Things Mankind Was Not Meant to know are excellent tropes to employ here. It's not enough to simply have an eldritch monster. One has to speak volumes about their presence as well, for that presence will often be enough to destroy mankind as incidentally as one might step on an anthill.