Have you heard of the Loveland Frogman?
On March 3, 1972, a Loveland police officer claimed to have seen a 4-foot-tall frog walking upright on two legs. Two weeks later, another cop reported a similar sighting. Further research discovered that a businessman had seen and reported a creature matching the description way back in 1955.
Shortly after, the “Frogman” became an urban legend and a ‘cryptid,’ or an animal whose existence is unsubstantiated by scientific facts. The city of Loveland has embraced the Frogman as its official mascot, with appearances from the bipedal amphibian at all major public events. But the real celebration is at the fourth annual Frogman Festival this weekend.
Handmade crafts, art, clothing, books and collectibles dedicated to the Frogman line the halls of the Oasis Event Center in Loveland during the festival, with several guest speakers, live animal exhibitions and movie screenings lined up. There’s even a parade.
It’s the culmination of years of effort for local cartographer and festival organizer Jeff Craig, who has had an obsession with cryptids for over two decades now.
As a child, he always had an interest in the unknown, thanks to movies like The Legend of Boggy Creek and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Aliens, paranormal activity, spontaneous human combustion—things of that nature were constant fixations for Craig. But when his friend showed him The Mothman Prophecies, a 2002 film starring Richard Gere revolving around a moth-like cryptid, that really kicked it into high gear.
“I was fascinated that a tale like this could be based on a true story,” Craig said. “Note that when I say ‘true story,’ I mean based on things people actually think they saw. I was just surprised I hadn’t heard the story before, and it only happened about two and a half hours away.”
Within a week, Craig and his friend ventured down to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to check out the supposed site of the Mothman sighting, which has its own giant statue in the town. The bizarre nature of the story piqued Craig’s interest: Could there be other, similar stories he didn’t know about?
In 2004, Craig got to work on a map of every cryptid or haunted spot around Ohio. (Keep in mind this was while the Internet was in its infancy, and information was not as easily accessible as it is today.) While there was no true reason for its creation—”I got to poking around because I’m a cartographer, y’know? I just need to put stuff on a map,”—he ended up with over 300 haunted spots in Ohio, not counting places that were accessible by trespassing.
He decided to publish the map as Hidden Ohio Map & Guide and sell it at paranormally-inclined festivals and fairs across the country, where his work eventually got popular enough to produce Map in Black, a double-sided map of unexplainable sightings that covers the entire United States. While at these festivals, he kept hearing about how much people all over the country liked the idea of the Frogman.
“[Festival attendees] would say ‘Yeah, that’s one of my favorite cryptids,’ but nobody here in Cincinnati knew about it. In fact, one time I was at a Loveland Schools sports booster craft show with my map, and I’d say ‘you know about the Frogman?’ and they’d say no,” he said. “I found it an interesting dichotomy that I could go hundreds of miles out of state and hear about it, but right here in our town nobody knew anything about it.”
The lack of awareness about the urban legend, combined with the need to “just do something fun to bring people outside again” after the COVID-19 pandemic, led Craig to start the first annual Frogman Festival in 2023. Since then, it’s gotten bigger every year and taken on a life of its own—including, as mentioned, the city of Loveland adapting the Frogman as its official mascot.
While the festival is filled with guest speakers who are paleontologists or authors who love talking about cryptids, I don’t think the entire festival revolves around mythical creatures. Erin Shaw, park ranger at Caesar Creek State Park, is on hand to educate guests about the very real animals in the Little Miami River Valley. Guests at the festival can interact with snakes, turtles and more.
“We’re not really out to prove the story is real or to debunk it. What we’re here to do is celebrate the idea that two, three dubious sightings of a creature have morphed into a legend that inspires people to create something,” Craig said. “They’ll write a book, they’ll sing a song, they’ll even do a puppet show about it. Believe the story or not, we don’t care. It’s all very quirky, and innocent, and fun.”
The Frogman Festival is this weekend in Loveland. More info can be found by clicking here.
