The Elder Things are mythic creatures, created by H. P. Lovecraft, and they play an important role in the Cthulhu Mythos. In Lovecraft's story, Dreams in the Witch-House, the following description is found:
"They represented some ridged barrel-shaped object with thin horizontal arms radiating spoke-like from a central ring and with vertical knobs or bulbs projecting from the head and base of the barrel. Each of these knobs was the hub of a system of five long, flat, triangularly tapering arms arranged around it like the arms of a starfish."
A very detailed description of them, as well as their
terrestrial history, can be found in Lovecraft's story
At the Mountains of Madness.