LOVELAND, Ohio — The year was 1972. The place was Loveland, Ohio.
That's the basis for the real legend of the Loveland Frogman: Two different police officers spotted the Frogman on two different nights in the March of 1972, according to weirdus.com.
Then, in 2016, two Pokemon Go players claimed to have spotted what they thought could have been the Frogman himself; one of those people stopped their quest for Pokemon to snap some photos of what looked like a very large frog in Lake Isabella.
"Then the thing stood up and walked on its hind legs. I realize this sounds crazy, but I swear on my grandmother's grave this is the truth," he wrote. "The frog stood about 4 feet tall."
But in an upcoming movie about the cryptid, the year is both 1999 and 2019 — but the place is still Loveland, Ohio.
"In the summer of 1999, a 12-year-old named Dallas Kyle captured footage of the mythical creature, but no one believed it was real," reads the summary of the movie. "Twenty years later, Dallas, now an amateur filmmaker struggling to turn his passion into a career, returns to Loveland with friends Amy and Scotty determined to obtain irrefutable proof that the Frogman exists."
The trailer for the film was released on February 3. The movie came out in 2023, but was purely featured at a film festival; it will release digitally for on-demand viewing on March 8, according to Rue Morgue, a blog dedicated to horror films and independent movies.
The movie's studio, Rotting Press, is also releasing a special collector's version of the movie on the spookiest of media formats: VHS.
That VHS releases on February 9, but has been available for pre-order since Feb. 3.
For those who truly love the Loveland Frogman legend, Rotting Press is also selling humorous merchandise bearing the image of the cryptid.
The movie is directed by Anthony Cousins from a script he wrote with John Karkso. It stars Nathan Tymoshuk as Dallas, Chelsey Grant as Dallas' friend Amy, Benny Barrett as Dallas' friend Scotty and Justen Jones.
While it doesn't mean the movie shouldn't be enjoyed, one of the original sources of the Loveland Frogman legend dispelled the cryptid's existence in 2016.
Mark Mathews, a former police officer who said he shot the original Frogman contacted WCPO after the story on the Pokemon Go sighting was published.
Mathews said the first officer to encounter the purported Frogman, Ray Shockey, called him one night in the March of 1972 after spotting something strange on Riverside Drive/Kemper Road near the Totes boot factory and the Little Miami River.
Later that month, Mathews was driving on Kemper Road near the boot factory when he saw something run across the road. However, it wasn't walking upright and didn't climb over the guardrail as the urban legend of the Frogman goes. The creature crawled under the guardrail. Matthews said he "had no clue what it was."
"I know no one would believe me, so I shot it," he said.
Mathews recovered the creature's body and put it in his trunk to show Shockey. He said Shockey said it was the creature he had seen, too.
The identity of the real Loveland Frogman? A large iguana missing its tail, said Mathews.
Mathews said he figured the iguana had been someone's pet and then either got loose or was released when it grew too large. He also theorized that the cold-blooded animal had been living near the pipes that released water that was used for cooling the ovens in the boot factory as a way to stay warm in the cold March weather.
"It's a big hoax," he said. "There's a logical explanation for everything."
You can watch the movie trailer below:
