The Loveland Frog: Officer Ray Shockey's sighting on Riverside Drive, Loveland, Ohio

Loveland's strange reputation did not begin in 1972. In 1955, by the most common telling, a businessman saw three upright figures, some versions say near Branch Hill. They were three to four feet tall, with leathery skin, webbed hands and feet, and frog-like faces. One raised a wand that threw sparks. He watched for about three minutes.

3 March 1972. About 1:00 a.m. Officer Ray Shockey of the Loveland police was heading into town on Riverside Drive, near the Totes boot factory and the river. The roads were icy. He was driving carefully.

Something lay in the road. At first it looked like a dog. Then, fully lit by the headlights, it crouched like a frog and stood erect. Its eyes reflected the light as it stared at him. It was three or four feet tall, perhaps 50 to 75 pounds, with leathery skin "like a lizard or frog." It turned away, went over the guardrail, down the embankment, and into the Little Miami River. Shockey's sister later drew a sketch of what he described.

Around St Patrick's Day, Officer Mark Mathews saw an animal crouched on an icy road. He took it for injured or dead and got out to move it. It rose up. He fired. It went over the guardrail. At first he said he had missed. Skeptoid notes his description matched Shockey's, with the addition of a tail.

The officers went back. They reported scrape marks on the guardrail, leading down the hill into the river. No photograph of them is known.

No police report or department statement has surfaced. In 1976 the Fortean investigators Ron Schaffner and Richard Mackey interviewed both officers, under the false names "Williams" and "Johnson". Schaffner later told Weird U.S. that "both officers told us that it resembled the sketch in 1976."

In 2016 Mathews told WCPO a different story. The animal was a large iguana, about 3 to 3.5 feet long and missing its tail. Probably a pet, escaped or released, surviving the cold near warm water pipes from the boot factory. It "crawled under the guardrail," he said, on all fours. He put the carcass in his trunk, and Shockey confirmed it was what he had seen. "It's a big hoax," Mathews said. "There's a logical explanation for everything."

Schaffner was not convinced. "Why, after all these years is Mathews debunking the story?" Skeptoid's Ryan Haupt pointed out that no iguanas are native there and local lizards are far too small. He favoured a mangy coyote, its skin looking leathery at night, while admitting there is no direct evidence. The tensions remain. A tail, or none. Over the guardrail, or under. Upright, or on all fours. And Shockey's confirmation comes only through Mathews.

The legend kept growing. In 2016 Sam Jacobs reported a four-foot frog-like creature near Lake Isabella while playing Pokémon Go. That report prompted Mathews to call WCPO. The frog has inspired a 2014 Fringe musical, the found-footage film Frogman and the documentary Finding Frogman. In 2023 Loveland made it the city mascot as a "frog prince". In April 2026 Ohio HB 821 proposed it as the official state cryptid, "a frog-like, bipedal creature standing approximately four feet tall."

Mathews compared it to Bigfoot. "I don't believe in Bigfoot either." Loveland, it seems, still does.