Those familiar with the first entry of the Phenomenal Files will recall the tale of the Loveland castle, which was built by WWI veteran Harry Andrews. The castle, Château Laroche, was allegedly haunted. As amazing as Harry’s life was and the stories surrounding the castle, this was not the only or even most unusual tale from the city along the Little Miami River. Having lived in Ohio most of my life and living about an hour away from Loveland, I heard of a lesser known cryptid called the Loveland frog man. Once I began researching the topic, I was amazed by the legend. I was even more amazed once I successfully unraveled it in a way few others had.
The Shawnahooc
According to stories, the Shawnee had a legend of a water demon. The Shawnee who once inhabited the area where Loveland would be today believed in a creature called the Shawnahooc. It was a demon that lurked around the Little Miami River. It preyed upon unexpected victims to quench its insatiable thirst for the blood of men. It was frog-like in appearance but walked upright upon its webbed-like feet. It was powerful almost to a supernatural point in strength, but the mighty warriors of the tribe were able to battle the creature, keeping it at bay. Over hundreds of years though and European colonialism, the natives of our country were killed and pushed away from their homelands.
The Loveland Bridge Case
The first chronicled case of the Frog men were in 1955. An unnamed businessman while traveling around Branch Hill on an unspecified road saw through the gleam of his headlights something unusual. He saw three frog-like beings of three feet in height. They had green leathery skin, webbed hands and feet and the head and face of a frog. He stopped his car to observe. When they noticed him, one pulled out a wand and out of it flew a flurry of fiery sparks. Out of understandable pure unadulterated terror, he fled the scene as fast as he could for his life. Supposedly the frog people had left behind a smell of something like alfalfa and almonds.
1972 Shockey and Matthews Sightings
On March 3rd, 1972, Officer Roy Shockey would be the next to encounter a frog person. While driving carefully due to icy roads at about 1 am on Kemper Road near the old Totes boot factory, Shockey saw something shocking ahead of him. The creature was crouched like a frog. Shockey reported the creature weighed somewhere between fifty to seventy pounds and it stood upright like a human and climbed over a guard rail toward the river. Shockey noticed it left scratch marks upon the rail. The creature fit all the details of the 1955 sighting: it was about 3 feet tall, stood up with webbed hands and feet and the same frog face.
After the incident, Shockey called fellow officer Mark Matthews and told him about what he had seen. Matthews didn’t believe him even though he believed his friend was noticeably distressed over whatever it was that he had seen. A mere two weeks later Matthews, while on patrol late at night near the same area of the old Totes factory and close to the river, encountered the frog person as well. It had the same features that Shockey had seen. The creature was crouched along the road. So Matthews did the most American thing he could’ve done. He shot it. He grabbed the body and put it into his trunk. He showed it to Officer Shockey and he confirmed it was indeed the same creature.
The Sam Jacobs Sighting
The next Frog person sighting took place almost forty years later. In mid-August 2016, a young man named Sam Jacobs claimed to have come in contact with the creature while playing Pokémon Go, which at the time was very popular. In a report by WLWT of Cincinnati, Ohio, Jacobs came across the creature while crossing the train tracks to the shore of Lake Isabella by Loveland Madeira Road and Beth Adams synagogue.
“We saw a huge frog near the water. Not in the game, this was an actual giant frog.”
He claimed the creature then stood up upon its legs and looked back at Jacobs and his girlfriend.
“I realize this sounds crazy but I swear on my grandmother’s grave that this is the truth.” “Not sure if it was a frog man or just a frog. Either way I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Jacobs also took photos and video of the alleged sighting. While the video is not of great quality, the photos seem to indeed show a nonhuman bipedal creature with glowing eyes in the water. The creature according to Jacobs was about four feet tall, having the same frog-like qualities correlating to the previous sightings, perhaps adding validity to it.
The Truth about Shockey and Jacobs Sighting
When researching this topic it reminded me of a game often played by school children called telephone. When children play telephone, they sit in a circle and one child will whisper into the next person’s ear, going into a circle until it goes back to the first child. Often the last statement, going back to the first person, will mutate into something totally different. Like in our case, a frog man fantasy.
In 2016 following the Jacobs sighting, in an interview with Channel 9 WCPO, a now retired Officer Mark Matthews dispelled the idea he or Shockey encountered a frog person. When recounting his reactions to the Shockey sighting he said:
“Naturally, I didn’t believe him but I could somehow tell from his demeanor he did see something.”
A mere two weeks later Matthews as well would encounter the same creature. Upon seeing it he shot it adding:
“I knew nobody would believe me so I shot it.”
What he captured according to him was a three to four feet long Iguana.
“That thing was half dead when I shot it anyway.”
After shooting it, he put it in his trunk. Later after being shown, Shockey agreed it was the creature he had seen. Matthews speculated it was a pet somebody had let go of or somehow gotten loose. The reptile being cold-blooded would hardly fare well in the cold conditions of an early March morning. Also, it’s worth noting that Iguanas can easily be 3 to 4 feet in length. They can lose tails and some can even walk upon their hind legs. It’s possible that perhaps this was the case for Shockey. Shockey having lived in the area probably heard of the 1950’s tale and due to not knowing what he had seen connected it with the legend.
Matthews thought that the Iguana was looking to use water from the factory pipes, that was used to cool the oven, to stay warm.
“It’s a big hoax. There’s a logical explanation for everything.”
Also saying:
“It’s like big foot and all that other stuff. I don’t believe in big foot either.”
Matthews came out to set the record straight after an author of urban legends used his story for a book but omitted the fact that it was just an iguana. Also due to the Jacobs sighting. This to me casts doubt on the frog sighting of Jacobs. What about the 1955 sighting you may ask? Well let’s go back to that game of telephone. Over time legends are exaggerated and to get the full and most accurate story, any good reporter will tell you to go to the original source.
Leonard Stringfield and Ted Bloecher
After wading through a sea of information on varying blogs to get as much information as I could, I wondered where the first story really came from? While I would never lie, I did indeed lay out the legends as normally told before attempting to tell the story based on what the evidence seems to show, when the story is tracked to the sources. Like I just did with the Shockey and Jacobs sighting. Upon my research I learned that the 1955 story was not as vague and ambiguous as most retellings are. In fact it was more rich in detail and far stranger than any others. You may even consider it out of this world.
Leonard Stringfield was a Ufologist who directed Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects, also known as CIRFO. Through CIRFO he published a newsletter called ORBIT. In the September 2nd, 1955 edition of said magazine the legend was born.
“We should like to cite a case, a case involving a prominent businessman, living in Loveland. Occurring several weeks ago, this person, who is a nondrinker and church goer…saw four “strange little men about 3 feet tall” under a certain bridge. He reported the strange affair to the police and we understand that an armed guard was placed there. A similar event supposedly had taken place near Batavia east of Cincinnati.”
Stringfield had received word of the incident through a friend of his, Herb Clark who was a member of the GOC (Ground Observer Corps) of Loveland Ohio. He also had a lead through a local school board member. They said the bridge incident was investigated by the FBI. Stringfield investigated this case with a friend and colleague, Ted Bloecher. Bloecher was a CSI (Civilian Saucer Intelligence) member. In August of 1956, a meeting was set up with the two men and Frank Whitecotton. Whitecotton was the Chief Coordinator of the Loveland Civil Defense and head of the GOC.
Emily Magone
Whitecotton was invited to Stringfield’s house for an interview. He mentioned UFO sightings that the GOC had seen. When asked about the Loveland bridge case he was “neither enthusiastic or informative.” He did correct an error however. It was not a prominent businessman that witnessed the little men. It was in fact a 19 year old volunteer policeman working for the Loveland civil defense. He claimed to know the story but was “privy to no details.” Despite this however he said after the incident, policemen were placed around the bridge. He suggested that they contact Loveland Police Chief John Fritz, who was the young man’s direct supervisor. Whitecotton however told the story of Emily Magone.
Emily Magone lived in Loveland Heights. On a summer’s night in 1955, she awoke to the sound of her dog barking. She and her husband got out of bed and looked out their window. They suspected that maybe there were “prowlers” nearby but didn’t see anything. However there was an overpowering swamp-like odor permeating through the house. It was so intense that she shut the window, despite it having been left open to cool off the house from the heat of July’s night. Mrs. Magone and her husband went back to bed despite their dog’s continued barking.
The next morning Mrs. Magone’s neighbor mentioned that she awoke to the dogs barking as well. She too had smelt the same swamp odor. Not only did she smell it, she also had seen the source of it. She saw from her porch a strange looking little man about 15 feet away. The creature stood still not making a single move. She went back inside to turn her porch light on to get a better look. After having done so the creature disappeared. She repeated the process of turning the light on and off. When the light was on the creature vanished but after the light would be turned off it would always come back to the exact spot. They noted it was about 3 feet high and covered with “twigs or foliage.” No direct interview was ever conducted with Mrs. Magone or her neighbor. No further information could be relayed by Whitecotton to the inquisitive researchers.
Meeting with Chief Fritz
Ted Bloecher went to the Loveland police department to speak with Chief Fritz. Whitecotton had asked his name not be mentioned. Upon meeting Fritz, Bloecher referred to him as “cordial, cooperative and business like.” When Bloecher mentioned the Bridge case Fritz contradicted Whitecotton, claiming he wasn’t directly involved. Not only that but said he only knew of the story ironically because Whitecotton had told it to him. He seemed unwilling to speak of it. When the idea of FBI involvement was brought up, he seemed out of character to the extent of his unease. He began “fiddling with his keys and coins on the desk and shuffling papers.” Unsurprisingly he denied FBI involvement.
Fritz brought up another case that we will further discuss, of Robert Hunnicutt’s encounter with strange men. According to Bloecher it was done in a way to not talk about the bridge case. Bloecher began to tell Fritz more about his work and involvement with CSI and the Kelly-Hopkinsville alien encounter, which involved an alleged alien attack on a Kentucky family farm. Fritz was curious and seemed more open to discuss what he knew about the cases.
Carlos Flannigan
Fritz disclosed the name of the witness. It was Carlos Flannigan, a then 19 year old volunteer policeman. The event took place in July or maybe June of 1955. While driving a police truck in Loveland near a bridge, he then saw strange little men. They were underneath the bridge by the riverbank. The creatures reportedly, like the Magone sightings, had a horrendous odor that lingered in the air. After the encounter Flannigan drove back to the police station to report the incident where he was promptly laughed off and the case wasn’t taken seriously. Fritz noted at the time he was not at the station. Fritz denied any guards being placed by the bridge afterward.
Fritz offered to personally drive him to Flannigan’s home. He was warned that the young man would most likely not be willing to talk about what he had seen. Flannigan lived in a farmhouse with his wife’s family on Ridge Road. When Fritz and Bloecher arrived the family were sat down for dinner, comprising Flannigan, his in-laws, brother-in-law and a baby. The meeting was at most 10 minutes long and it was evident that Carlos was unwilling to discuss anything that had transpired the year prior.
Bloecher made attempts to comfort and reassure Carlos that he wasn’t there to make fun of him or to ridicule him in any way. He told him about his work as a CSI and showed him pictures of the alleged creatures of the Kelly-Hopkinsville incident. While still resistant he began to speak on the topic a little. He said he felt like the incident and the ridicule it brought cost him his job. A claim that Bloecher said Fritz later denied, adding he wasn’t ready for added responsibility.
Flannigan said what he had seen were not like the Kelly sightings. He said that they were:
“four more or less human looking about 3 feet high”
and they were:
“moving about oddly under the bridge.”
These creatures had a putrid smell as detailed in Magone’s story. The sighting wasn’t very long, only about 10 seconds in length. Following it he drove back to the police station where his account was not taken very kindly to, leaving the young man feeling embarrassed, ridiculed, embittered and ashamed. He told Bloecher to read the newspaper, suggested the story would be in it. Bloecher recounted regret in not asking for the name or date of the paper. I tried sorting through archives to find it as well, to no avail, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist as it can’t be expected that every newspaper has been digitized. This is as much information that exists about the Flannigan encounter.
Robert Hunnicutt
Fritz at the station had also told Bloecher of another encounter involving strange little men. This incident supposedly happened months before any of the previous 1955 encounters including Hopkinsville. It is by magnitudes more extraordinary than another alleged account thus far told and the most important one. The story involves a sighting of humanoid creatures off the side of a road in Loveland. The man that had seen the creatures was one Robert Hunnicutt.
Fritz recounted that at about 4am, he heard a pounding on his front door. Hunnicutt, who was a short order cook, happened to know Chief Fritz. He looked “as if he had seen a ghost,” Fritz told Bloecher. Hunnicutt had told Fritz that at about 3:30 am while driving northeast through Branch Hill, in Symmes Township, on the Loveland Madeira Pike, he had seen on the side of the road “strange little men.” These little men had their backs to the bushes.
Fritz added that Hunnicutt had seen fire coming out of their hands. Fritz knew him but doubted his story and got close enough to check his breath. Upon doing so he was sure no drinking was involved. He added the man was “scared to death” and that “the man had seen something there’s no argument to that.” Fritz got dressed in uniform, armed with a gun and camera. Upon investigating the area he had no evidence of anything having had taken place. He “made four or five passes along the road.” After not finding anything Fritz said he “might be the biggest fool in Loveland.”
Fritz gave Hunnicutt’s address and number, telling him that his story would “make your hair stand on end.” The next day an interview was set up alongside Stringfield. Like Fritz had, the date of the incident was placed in March or April of 1955. Fritz tried to find the police report but was unable to. This was something Bloecher said Fritz didn’t attempt to do with the Flannigan case. Bloecher noted Hunnicutt “impressed us with the cautious manner in which he reconstructed all the details he could recall.” Stringfield said of him:
“my first glimpse of R.H. was reassuring. For obvious reasons, in such abstract investigations one always beforehand always conjures up the worst type of individual, but here was a man in a responsible position, well dressed, well mannered, his voice soft, undramatic, his eyes steady, never shifting.”
Together, the pair spent an hour interviewing Hunnicutt. Under his supervision, Stringfield sketched out an impression of what the creatures looked like. Hunnicutt said he was on his way home from work at about 3:30am. He was driving north of the Loveland Madeira Pike near Hopewell Road, in Symmes Township, in the Branch Hill neighborhood. As he was driving downhill, he saw what looked like three men kneeling on the side of the road.
“My first impression was that there were 3 crazy guys praying by the side of the road.”
He stopped his car out of curiosity. In his words:
“to see what gives.”
Hunnicutt soon realized, whatever those beings were, they were certainly nonhuman. He said they were about three and a half feet tall and stood together in a triangular position facing the opposite side of the road. One of them was standing in front of the other two and it was closest to him. They then noticed Hunnicutt. The one closest to him raised his arm about a foot above his head. He showed what looked like a rod or a cylinder that was metallic. This rod then emitted blue white sparks. Two at a time, they jumped from one hand to the other. Hunnicutt noticed that their attention had previously been fixed on something on the opposite side of the road. Contrary to what many would have done, Hunnicutt then got out of the left side of his car.
Upon getting out of his car the creature lowered his arm. He let go of the object he was holding. It looked to Hunnicutt as though the being tied it to his ankles. As he stood the three beings turned toward him. As they did this it gave Hunnicutt a clearer view of what these humanoids looked like, with his car parked but 10 feet away. The creatures had grey skin and what could have possibly have been garments were the same color as well. There was no discernible nose or eyebrows. Their chests were lop-sided with a bulge on the right side. It seemed to begin in the armpit and end on the waist. Their arms were uneven with the right longer than the left. He couldn’t see feet due to that section of their bodies being obscured by grass. Interestingly, he noted that their mouth was like that of a frog due to it being straight with no lip muscles.
After standing for a minute and a half he gathered the courage to walk toward the front of his car. As he did this though the creatures, almost in unison made a swift unnatural move that seemed to be warning him not to come any further. He described it as a “peculiar motion” and “definitive and graceful,” adding that no words were needed to convey the message they were trying to get across. After standing for three minutes, in too much amazement to even be afraid, Hunnicutt got into his car to find a witness to see what he had seen. It wasn’t until getting into his car that he realized how horrible the creatures smelled. He described it as:
“fresh cut alfalfa with a slight trace of almonds.”
He then got into his car and drove right away to Fritz. He thought that he stumbled upon an operation of some kind and that maybe the rod-like device, aside from warning him away, could’ve functioned as a type of signal. Maybe an ET phone home type of situation I can imagine. Months later while driving along the same area with his girlfriend, also late at night, he smelt that same horrid smell but didn’t see anything. His girlfriend also noticed. Hunnicutt even claimed that the night of sighting there had been a UFO spotted by the Loveland GOC.
Loveland GOC UFO Sighting May 25, 1955
While the dynamic duo of Stringfield and Bloecher interviewed Whitecotton, he mentioned several UFO sightings. However there was one instance that had a great deal of detail behind it. His wife and another woman were stationed in an observation tower in spring 1955. That night they both spotted several UFOs in the sky. An official report was made to Columbus and fighter jets were sent out to intercept the potential threat. Bloecher even managed to track down a copy of the newspaper, The Loveland Herald, which had an article written about the story. It noted that Whitecotton’s wife had more hours in the observation tower than anyone else, that she was qualified in plane identification. The article said the sighting took place at 7:48 pm where four UFOs were witnessed.
Bloecher inferred from this that it confirmed Hunnicutt’s story, believing that this dated the event to May 25, 1955. He believed this explained why Fritz could not find the police report, because he had looked at the wrong months. There’s no doubt that this tale was truly amazing and far less vague than most blogs or retellings would ever lead you to know. Yet, where does this really leave us in regards to evaluating the truth of Hunnicutt’s story?
A Summary and Conclusion
When we look into the investigation of Bloecher and Stringfield, it’s amazing how far events were distorted and merged over time. The idea of a prominent businessman being involved was due to an error in the ORBIT newsletter. There wasn’t one. Just a 19 year old volunteer policeman. There was never a report of frog people. There were reports of strange creatures being spotted. They were not frog people. In Hunnicutt’s encounter, the mouth reminded him of a frog. So in a sense the Flannigan encounter and Hunnicutt encounter were merged together with the idea of frog people added. Now that is truly an amazing phenomenon of itself.
In regards to Mrs. Magone’s case, it was all just hearsay, second and third hand accounts. While it’s a cool story there’s no proof. In regards to the Flannigan encounter, there’s no way to validate what he saw or if he saw anything at all. Even though he is a sympathetic witness, we still can’t confirm anything for sure. I take issue with Bloecher’s dating of the case. It seems strange to me that such a thing happened, that you wouldn’t remember what month it happened in. It’s not impossible I suppose. However, he seems to have chosen the most fantastical GOC sighting and chosen that one in comparison to the other sightings without any real reason besides it being the one that stood out most.
Is Hunnicutt’s story true? It does at first glance seem convincing. He seemed, through the accounts of the interviews to have been reasonable and of sound mind. He gave a very detailed testimony of the events that happened from when and where he was to the description of the creatures’ bodies and movements. He went straight away to a police Chief whom he was friends with to investigate. Fritz said he didn’t seem drunk by smelling his breath. Fritz himself set off to investigate in uniform armed and equipped with a camera to capture anything extraterrestrial.
In the end though there’s still no concrete proof and the possibility of a joke being played by Hunnicutt on Fritz. Which would seem a bold move though considering he was a cop, but still not impossible. It could have been a joke being played by both parties on Bloecher even. Although at first Fritz seemed very uneasy about entertaining conversation with Bloecher only seeming to open up once he understood what he was about and the things he investigated. He even went out of his way to take Bloecher to Flannigan’s house and to help set up the interview with Hunnicutt. Ultimately there’s no way to authenticate the validity of the Hunnicutt case but no doubt it’s an amazing story. So what do you think readers? Was it merely a myth, or much more,…..something Phenomenal.
Sources
Davis, I., & Bloecher, T. (1978). Close Encounters at Kelly and Others of 1955. Center for UFO Studies.
Stringfield, L. H. (1957). Inside Saucer 3-0 Blue.
Wikipedia contributors. Loveland frog. In Wikipedia. URL
WLWT Digital Staff. (2021, october, 5th). The Loveland Frogman. WLWT. URL
Haupt, R. “The Loveland Frog.” Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, 30 Jun 2015. Web. 17 Sep 2023. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4473
Wayland, T., & Wayland, E. (2017, November 9). The Loveland Frogmen. Singular Fortean. https://www.singularfortean.com/singularjournal/2017/11/8/the-loveland-frogmen
Legatte, Jim (5 August 2016). “Officer who shot ‘Loveland Frogman’ in 1972 says story is a hoax”. WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, Cincinnati. WCPO.com. Retrieved 20 November 2017.