Field Guide to Ohio Cryptids

This field guide provides information on some of Ohio’s most unusual and mysterious creatures. Find out what is known about them based on eyewitness testimony and shared lore that has been handed down across the generations. Today, it is extremely unlikely that you will spot one of these creatures in the wild. In the event that you do, this guide will impart everything you need to know — from appearances and behaviors to habitats and histories — about our state’s most elusive cryptids. 

Loveland Frog

The Loveland Frog is an unusual case, even among cryptids. The giant frog has only been spotted in Loveland, a northern suburb of Cincinnati that straddles Clermont, Hamilton and Warren counties. Sightings are limited to a few events that happened decades apart.

Appearance: A creature 2 to 4 feet tall with webbed hands and feet, leathery skin and a head and face like a frog.

Behavior: Hops like a regular frog and can stand on two feet. During the first sighting in 1955, an unidentified businessman reported seeing three of these creatures and noted one was holding a wand that emitted sparks.

Habitat/Range:Prefers an aquatic and marshy habitat in or near the Little Miami River. Range is limited to the Loveland area.

History: Ohio lore is all we have to back up the 1955 sighting when the unidentified businessman saw three large frogmen near the river, as there is no documented account. The Loveland Frog wasn’t officially reported until 1972, when local police officers Ray Shockey and Mark Matthews said they each saw it individually on separate occasions. Shockey saw it first, telling his supervisors that while he was driving along the river, he saw “an animal 2 or 3 feet tall with dark green or blackish, scaly skin,” the Cincinnati Post reported. A week later, Matthews saw the creature and told the Post it was irritated and “stuck its tongue out at [him] …” He said that he shot at it before it disappeared into the water. (Matthews told Dayton’s Journal Herald a few weeks later that he believed the creature was an iguana.) The most recent sighting was in 2016, when Sam Jacobs reported he and his girlfriend saw “a huge frog near the water” that stood up and walked on its hind legs, Fox 19 Cincinnati reported on Aug. 4, 2016. “I swear on my grandmother’s grave that this is the truth,” Jacobs told the TV station. “I’m not sure whether it was a frogman or just a giant frog. Either way, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

South Bay Bessie

Dogman of Defiance

Standing 7 to 9 feet tall and wearing jeans, the Dogman of Defiance is named after the city where it was reportedly seen, a community around 60 miles southwest of Toledo. Sightings are limited to about two weeks during summer 1972. Back then, it was referred to as a werewolf (and sometimes still is), but cryptozoology enthusiasts have since determined that it was more likely a dogman. Werewolves are humans who transform, whereas dogmen are of an unknown origin and are not known to transform.

Appearance: Described as very hairy with a dog’s head, fangs and large, furry canine feet. Regularly wears jeans, but no other clothing has been reported.

Behavior: Stands, walks and runs on two feet. One witness described it as carrying a stick or 2-by-4 in a menacing manner. Believed to be nocturnal because sightings have only been reported at night. There are no reports of it growling, howling or biting anyone.

Habitat: Prefers brushy cover near railroad tracks in a populated, residential area of a city.

Range: Seen on multiple occasions near the Norfolk & Western Railroad station, two blocks from downtown Defiance. Sightings of a dogmanlike creature were also reported in the same 1972 timeframe in Toledo, Tiffin and Bucyrus. It is unclear if the Dogman of Defiance is related to these other northwest Ohio reports or additional ones that have been made in Michigan and Wisconsin.

History: Railroad worker Ted Davis was the first to report seeing the dogman at the Defiance rail yard just after midnight on July 25, 1972. He told coworker Tom Jones, who didn’t believe Davis until he saw the dogman for himself while working in the rail yard on July 30 of that same year. Jones told a reporter for Toledo’s newspaper, The Blade, “At first, I thought the whole thing was a big joke, but when I saw how hairy and woolly it was — that was enough for me.”

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