Cryptidcore

The Loveland Frog from Ohio.

As history tells it, one night in May of 1955, a traveling salesman drove through Loveland, Ohio, part of the Greater Cincinnati region. He was alone on the road. When he crossed a poorly-lit bridge over the Little Miami River, three humanoid yet frog-like creatures loomed in the shadows at the side of the road.

The salesman watched as the three frog-people talked amongst themselves, each oblivious to their observer. The salesman noted they all seemed to be about three and a half feet tall, with leathery skin and webbed hands and feet. They had bulging eyes, wide mouths, and deep grooves on their heads instead of hair.

Suddenly, one of the figures noticed the salesman. They pulled out a wand and waved it, sending a spray of sparks flying in the air. The man sped away, the first witness to the Loveland Frog, with the peculiar smell of alfalfa and almonds trailing behind his car.

In 1972, the Loveland frog legend gained renewed attention when a Loveland police officer reported to a colleague that he had seen an animal consistent with descriptions of the frogman. He reported spotting the animal “crouched like a frog” before it momentarily stood erect to climb over the guardrail and back down.

Two weeks after the incident, a second Loveland police officer, Mark Matthews, reported seeing an unidentified animal crouched along the road in the same vicinity as Shockey’s sighting. Matthews shot the animal, recovered the body, and put it in his trunk to show officer Shockey. According to Matthews, it was “a large iguana about 3 or 3.5 feet [0.9 or 1.1 m] long”, and he didn’t immediately recognize it because it was missing its tail. Mathews speculated the iguana had been someone’s pet that “either got loose or was released when it grew too large”. According to Mathews, Shockey was shown the dead iguana and confirmed it was the animal he had seen two weeks previously.

With the discovery of the ‘iguana,’ the whole mystery seemed to be solved. Except Matthews’ story only explained the 1972 sightings. What about the three frogmen spotted in 1955?

“Smoke and you will destroy yourself.”