Loveland Frog Sightings

Sam Jacobs told WCPO that he and his girlfriend were playing Pokemon Go between Loveland Madeira Road and Lake Isabella on a Wednesday night when they saw 'a huge frog near the water' that 'stood up and walked on its hind legs' and was about 4 feet tall. He took grainy photos and a short video, and said he wasn't sure whether it was the Frogman or just a giant frog. The story was published around August 4-5, 2016, so the date shown is the likely Wednesday, August 3, 2016, and is not confirmed. The location is approximate, at the Lake Isabella park shoreline beside Loveland Madeira Road. Skeptics, including Skeptoid's Ryan Haupt on MonsterTalk, suggested the footage may show a person, and the report prompted retired officer Mark Matthews to come forward with his iguana account.

Source: WCPO, 'Did Pokemon Go players encounter the legendary Loveland Frogman?' (Aug. 2016); https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/loveland-community/did-pokemon-go-players-encounter-the-legendary-loveland-frogman

About two weeks after the Shockey report, Loveland officer Mark Matthews (sometimes spelled Mathews) saw a crouched animal on the road and shot it. In early versions of the legend the creature limped to the guardrail and escaped over it. In a 2016 WCPO interview, Matthews said it crossed Kemper Road near the boot factory and crawled under the guardrail, and that he shot it and put the body in his trunk to show Shockey, who agreed it was the animal he had seen. Matthews identified it as a large iguana about 3 to 3.5 feet long, missing its tail, which he believed was an escaped or released pet. He called the frogman story 'a big hoax.' Skeptoid gives the date as March 17, 1972, and the location is approximate, placed on East Kemper Road beside the river.

Source: WCPO, 'Officer who shot Loveland Frogman in 1972 says story is a hoax' (Jim Legatte, Aug. 2016); https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/loveland-community/officer-who-shot-loveland-frogman-in-1972-says-story-is-a-hoax

Loveland police officer Ray Shockey reported that, around 1:00 a.m. while driving into Loveland on icy roads, he saw a creature 3 to 4 feet long, weighing roughly 50 to 75 pounds, with leathery skin. He said it crouched like a frog, stood and looked at him, then climbed over the guardrail toward the Little Miami River. Fellow officers reportedly found scratch marks on the guardrail, but no photographs are known. Contemporary accounts place the sighting near the Totes boot factory on Riverside Drive / Kemper Road. The pin is an approximate point where Kemper Road meets the riverside road in Loveland, because no exact spot is recorded. Most sources give March 3, 1972, though some retellings differ on the month.

Source: Wikipedia 'Loveland frog' citing WCPO (Aug. 5, 2016); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveland_frog

An unnamed local businessman, or traveling salesman in some versions, reported seeing three upright, frog-faced figures 3 to 4 feet tall, with leathery skin and webbed hands and feet, beside a road near Branch Hill late at night. Some versions put them on or under a poorly lit bridge over the Little Miami River. He said he watched for about three minutes before one raised a wand-like rod that threw sparks, and then he drove off. The account reached print through UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield's CRIFO newsletter in 1955, which kept the witness anonymous, and a 1957 Stringfield article identifies him only as 'R. H.' Later retellings name him as Robert Hunnicutt or Hunicut, but that name is not confirmed in the early sources. The exact day is unknown and the date shown is a placeholder for the 1st of May: most retellings say May 1955 at about 3:30 a.m., while Stringfield's 1957 article reportedly says March 1955. The location is approximate, placed at the Loveland-Madeira Road / Branch Hill-Loveland Road bridge, and Skeptoid notes that one version names Hopewell Road instead.

Source: Skeptoid #473, 'The Loveland Frog' (Ryan Haupt, 2015); https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4473