[Cthulhu Mythos] Can we really say the Eldritch can do much besides hype themselves?

I'm aware of what that mad Arab wrote in his book thirteen hundred years ago, I'm aware of what the peoples of the swamps of Louisiana and the dark jungles of Africa say, and i am aware of what the occasional living survivor with such beings has said. But I do not believe we can trust these accounts, as these people are clearly quite mad.

We can say, certainly, that the Eldritch can manipulate the minds of men to some extant, but can we say much else?

Thomas thurston seems to have killed one with a yacht. yes, I know he's convinced that it survived, but he was already under its influence before he said that, and when he came back to civilization he was quite mad. I have no doubt the Eldritch can convince men that they will always live, but it would seem Cthulhu is fairly dead after that yacht hit him.

You may say "The Eldritch are incomprehensible" but that's poppycock, 1930's Dyer expedition found plenty of their artifacts, and with those alone the men managed to piece together an entire history of the Elder things on Earth, finding that they did need to eat, did domesticate "animals", and did go to war with one another (and, it would seem, these beings had defeated the "Cthulhu" Thurston killed with his yacht)

Not to mention "Old Man" Henderson, who, not to long ago, managed to kill an Elder God with a building rigged with explosives (at least, local cultists and some observation of the unearthly material left in the wake of the bombing seem to suggest that), and the being seems truly "dead" in that its cults no longer seem to exist.

I hate to go into mythohistory here, but one must acknowledge the nemedian chronicles do line up with both fossil records and some of the stranger archaeologies, even describing an ancient Valusia that lines up quite well with what we saw in the records of the Elder Things; and the chronicles do describe many of the same Gods we now associate with the "eldritch".

The hero Conan, who may be described as being more then any man could do in any lifetime, but the events like his (or possibly his predecessor, Kull's) summoning by Bran Mak Morn's shaman in a battle with Rome do suggest he did exist in some capacity, so I would say we must at least observe his tales, has had recorded confrontations with such beings. He is recorded as saying “A devil from the Outer Dark, Oh, they’re nothing uncommon. They lurk as thick as fleas outside the belt of light which surrounds this world. I’ve heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them. Some find their way to Earth, but when they do they have to take on some earthly form and flesh of some sort. A man like myself, with a sword, is a match for any amount of fangs and talons, infernal or terrestrial...” and he is recorded as having killed several, including Xuthal and the infamous "Devil in Iron"

Lastly, I focus upon the strange way men write of these things in their private journals. The heroine addict (Whose family decided not to have his name released) who wrote famously of "dagon" before dying in what has been ruled a suicide (although the problems with the police version of the story are legion) last wrote "The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!" which does not seem like something a man would write. speak, mayhap, but write? in a state of such immense fear

I submit to you the "Eldritch" feed off our fear (metaphorically, most likely.) and construct insane stories surrounding themselves in an attempt to hide their vulnerability. They have done no real recordable damage to humanity as a whole, despite their apparent coexistence with humanity from the beginning an allegedly immense power. They have been on the sidelines, worshipped by the wretches of humanity, encountered by madmen, and, on occasiona, apparently slain by the more strong-willed of us.

WHy, tuly do we beleive they have such power? DO we think these madmen are reliable, do we fear these cults speak the truth? I'm sorry, but to assign such power as many do to the Elder things is the same sort of paranoia that drives men to agoraphobia, race hatred, and immense susperstition.