On a cold March night in 1972, Loveland, Ohio police officer Mark Matthews was on patrol along Riverside Drive near the Little Miami River at about one in the morning. His routine shift took an unexpected turn when he spotted a crouched figure on the side of the road. At first, he believed it was a wounded animal, but the figure stood upright on two legs and possessed skin with a dark, leathery appearance, along with a frog-like face that he had never encountered in his law enforcement work. It also had webbed hands and moved swiftly toward the guardrail, disappearing down the embankment toward the water. This incident drew significant attention in the community, becoming tied to an entity that locals had come to call the Loveland Frogman.

Two weeks earlier, another officer named Ray Shockey encountered a similar figure along the same stretch of road. Driving near Twightwee Road at around three-thirty in the morning, he saw a large frog-like creature squatting by the pavement. When the headlights illuminated it, the being stood, climbed over the guardrail, and vanished down toward the Little Miami River. Shockey’s description closely matched that of Matthews, noting a bipedal stance, a face with amphibian features, and quick movement toward the water.

These two accounts paralleled stories from 1955, when a local businessman driving along the river late at night claimed to have seen three such creatures. They stood about four feet tall and weighed between 50 and 75 pounds, with skin resembling that of a frog. The consistency among these sightings created a foundation that sparked local discussions stretching across decades. The Loveland community, located about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati, found itself linked with these unusual incidents, and many long-time residents began sharing their own stories of odd sounds or silhouettes near the river.