June 14, 2023 • 53 mins
You've heard of bigfoot -- but what about the frogman? Or the grassman? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel dive into the strange cryptozoology of Ohio.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Tonight's episode is one for the cryptid fans.
We're diving into some stories that might be unfamiliar to
a lot of our fellow conspiracy realist outside of Ohio.
You've heard of Bigfoot, you've heard of NeSSI and so on,
(00:52):
But what about the frog Man. We hadn't heard of
this until you. Noel sent along a link in a
group chat.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
I can't remember how I even stumbled upon it. It
was just, you know, and just your typical day of
googling like we do for the various things that we're
looking into, and rabbit holing and yeah, the Frogman. No,
I know what it was. It was a podcast that
I really like called Range Touch. It's these two you'd
like this one Toobin. They do a couple of different podcasts.
It's sort of like a mini network. One of them
(01:21):
is called Just King Things, where they go through every
Stephen King book in order of publication, and then another
one is about the webcomic Homestuck, which is like this
whole weirdo bizarro, you know world that's kind of sort
of Stephen King inspired. But another one is just their
more regular flagship podcast, Range Touch. And they were talking
about tabletop gaming and it came up some game they
(01:43):
were reviewing that was of like a bunch of different cryptids,
like a card game, and they were describing the drawings
and all of the different illustrations, and the Frogman, the
Loveland Frog or the Frogman of Ohio came up, and
I was like, I don't think we've discussed the Loveland Frog,
and he's such a cute little fella, and Ben, this
led you down more of a larger big picture cryptids
(02:06):
of Ohio rabbit hole, but we'll get to the frog.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
We will indeed get to the frog. There's a bit
of lovecraft in here. It's pretty cool. I've heard about Bigfoot,
but what about the grassman? What about the dog man?
It turns out Ohio has a ton of cryptids. Legal
requires us to say allegedly has a ton of cryptids.
Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You may not know much about Ohio. Yeah, if you
don't live in the US. Oh but it's a big deal.
Ohio's awesome. I got a ton of family up there.
That's why it's a big deal. That's all you need
to know. Done, end of episode.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
It might be considered part of the country that sometimes
flies under the radar. You know, You've got your Cleveland,
which rocks, you know, and of course is home to
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But outside that,
there's not a whole lot of Ohio that really makes
the news on the regular.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Akron, Ohio's the best.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
The natty Cincinnati.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah, people forget about. Since a hip hop group, underground
hip hop group I like, is from Ohio, there's there's
quite a bit of good hip hop in Ohio. It's
also the seventh most populous state in the entirety of
the US. The population is nearing eleven point eight million,
even with all the brain drain that happens in as
(03:28):
you called them earlier, the so called flyover states. And
here's a dumb fact if you want to if you
want to be awkward at parties, if you consider yourself
an amateur vexillologist, a word we never get to use.
Ohio is the only state in the Union with a
non rectangular flag, So good luck on your trivia.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Is it just more squarish? Is it tropezoid? Arambas?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
It's a circle?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Man, They really get some trippy stuff going over there.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Now.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I did not know this, Ben, and I also was.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Literally about to ask you what vexillologist was, and then
you got to it in short order. But wow, I thought,
is it like not the rules that you have to
have a perfectly rectangular flag, that all flags have to
just it's one of those things that I think people
just typically just do out of decorum and a sense
of just like this is how it's always been done,
that you take for granted the fact that maybe you
(04:23):
don't have.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
To m uniformity.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Uh, it looks it's very strange because I'm not sure
of the name for it. It's a triangular with a tail.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Like a bird.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
It's like one of those baseball flags like pant not pendant.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yes, thank you, that's exactly what it looks.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Like it's like a pennant with the with the abbreviated
or attenuated edge cut out. There's a triangle shape, so
it's like it's like a tail feather for a bird. Anyway,
you are going to be amazing at a trivia game
later sometime in your life, and we wish you the best.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Like a study of flags or of shapes flags?
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Okay, yes, sorry, study of flags? I would geometry be
the study of shapes.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I don't know. That's fine.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
It's certainly the science of shapes, which is not necessarily
the same as just like the study and cataloging of them.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
So I'm a bit of a shapesman myself. Yeah, well
we could just say we're shapes shapes folk anyway. Also unrelated,
apparently the new word to hate in the English language
is the word folks. People don't like folks anymore. It's
it's now fast approaching the level of disapproval that people
(05:45):
used to hold for moist.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Whether I think it's too folksy, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Maybe disingenuous, insincere, yeah, disingenuous, But I always I think
the way we use it is fine. We're certainly not
politicians trying to pretend like or not from Connecticut anyway.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
I can see that when a politician uses it, they
usually are using it in such a way as to
make them seem like the common man.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Listen here, folks, we're all on the same page, you know, right.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
I mean, we all can read, we can all agree
that faberge egg depreciation is one of the prime issues
of our great nations, part of them for all of us.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yeah, Like any other state in the US, for thousands
and thousands of years, there were tremendously sophisticated, entrenched native
populations that lived there and created empires all their own.
The earliest records of human habitation in Ohio date back
at least thirteen thousand years, and if we were betting
(06:51):
on the odds here, I would say probably further than that.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
It actually dates back much further to the Edena culture,
who domesticated plants there somewhere around one thousand and eight
hundred BC.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
This group was also responsible for.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Building something with an incredibly cool and metal name, the
Great Serpent Mound. And as the Adena people evolved into
they really took this mound thing and ran with it.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
They became was.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Referred to historically as the Hope Well Mound builders. Modern
day Ohio became home to a lot of these kind
of earthen constructs.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
And you know, like we said, we don't know how
far back human presence in Ohio goes or modern day Ohio.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
What we call Ohio today.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
We know that the Adena culture came out of this
rich soil of pre existing communities, and they did a
lot of stuff that the early US ignored. These earth
works are I mean, look, folks, we are in the
(08:05):
US South and I would hazard a guess that Matt
Nole and Paul Mission Control and I have all seen
some Native American mounds in person.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
No, you're wrong, never seen the mounds.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
They have seen them and not known you know that
that's what they were, because there's certainly you know, this
just really doesn't Like you said, Ben, and your research,
you found the description for earthworks as being sort of
an overarching term for any man made earthly, you know,
change in elevation. It doesn't necessarily have to be for
artistic purposes, right, I mean it can be kind of
(08:44):
functional as well, right.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
It could be a dwelling, it could be often they
are sites of veneration, you know, and in some cases
they are like we did episodes earlier on Mound, on
mounds that were the foundations for these greats cities.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know, if you.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Are a fan of Bethesda the game company, if you
have played Skyrim, then mounds you have entered earthworks when
you fight Drager, that's what they're called, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
To lizard people. Right, for the lizard.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
People, they're the they're the dead, the Viking zombies, that's right.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Okay, Sorry, I'm thinking of a different class. It's been
a minute since I played that game.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Sorry, mat were you saying, oh, nothing, They're they're places
to bury the dead. That's what those tombs are, basically,
they're going into Some of the mounds were used as tombs, right,
some of them were not, which is a fascinating thing.
And the whole reason we're talking about this about the
ancient history of Ohio is because there are stories that
have that have existed, that have moved down by mouth
(09:49):
orally through years and years and years and years centuries,
and uh, that's why we're talking about this stuff today
because there is weird stuff that's happened in Ohio.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Matt, I have to say I love the concept of
carrying stories by mouth.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
It just pictures. I picture a bunch of people with
their mouths closed full of stories and then just regurgitating
them all at once.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
You know, Oh, it's a really cool image.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
And since the days of antiquity, what you need to
know is the human beings have been convinced the land
we call Ohio is home to strange and unusual things.
Is there any truth to these legends? Let's take a look.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
All right again.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Turns out Ohio, depending on whom you ask, is home
to many, many anomalous life forms, including one special returning guest.
No spoilers, but one hint. It's decrypted with a great butt,
serious abs, lots of cheeks. And before we get to
that returning guest, let's talk about the star of today's show,
(10:56):
the so called Frogman of Ohio.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But before we even.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Get into this, I just want to point out too
that the term frogman is one that holds a lot
of meaning in like spy culture too.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
We've talked about this in terms of.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Like sort of divers that are you know, spies or
associated with some sort of nefarious, clandestine activity, often wearing
these green kind of flippered suits and goggles, and you
see them in like Johnny Quest.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I think they appear in an episode of Johnny Quest.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
But just the idea of being a frogman was referring
to someone who was like a kind of a secret
agent diver type.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Oh, yes, it's kind of a terrifying concept, right, a
frog man. But this frogman, at least from the stories
that we have seen, and allegedly there are three main
stories of the Frogman or sightings. I guess let's say
that we're going to get into here, but it's not really.
It doesn't appear to be dangerous, right.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
It's passive. Yeah, it's passive creature. It's kind of like
when you see back when turtles were way more common.
It's like if you walk past the turtle, if it's
not a leather back, if it's not a snapping turtle
or something, you're totally fine.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
This the Frogman.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
In most stories, people run in, humans run into the Frogman,
and the Frogman is I kid, you not just vibing,
just hanging out doing frogman stuff, probably waiting to play
an extra in a hell Boy movie or graphic novel
or you know, show up in a Lovecraft adaptation for.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Though, like hiding under a bridge, or just chilling.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
But not demanding a toll of any kind, just sort
of hanging out and it's just people watching.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
You know, Frank Reynolds is probably more aggressive to the
average human than the average frogman.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
No question.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Little fella too, right, Yeah, if you look at the geography,
you made a great point when you say it's by
a bridge. This has this cryptid has been cited in
very very specific geographical areas, and only later did it expand.
It's also a pretty new legend. The first sighting, or
(13:09):
the first one that's universally reported, occurs in the marshes
near Loveland, Ohio, along the banks of something called the
Little Miami River. To set the stage, there's this place
called Hamilton County and Hamilton County as a place called
Lake Isabella in Loveland, and Lake Isabella is part of
(13:31):
a big, big park where people go to camp to
go fishing, to get on their boats and have a
nice boat weekend. One day back in well, one night
back in nineteen fifty five, an unnamed traveling salesman happens
by and he's going by this bridge and he sees
(13:51):
three disturbing creatures just again sort of hanging out by
the side of the road under a bridge, and many
other stories, and he says, hang on way a tick.
Why these guys are short and they're all hunched over.
They're three to four feet tall, and they're naked. They
have leathery skin, and I've seen frogs before. These things
(14:17):
are like part human, part frog. They've apparently he had
enough time. He's either a really great eyewitness or he
slowed down and stared at them for a while, because
he said they have webbed hands and feet and deep,
deep wrinkles on their heads.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
I mean, presumably a whole people, these frog people more
than frog man. I mean, I'm picturing like a Smurfs
type scenario or they you know, there's like a ring
leader and then they each have their own individual personalities
and perhaps nicknames.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But yeah, little fellas.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Three to four feet tall, like you said, Bend, just
sort of hanging out doing froggy stuff. He described them
as standing upright, being bipedal, having you know, the hea
and face of frogs, at least in terms of the shape.
And he also described like he said web feet and
completely hairless.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
And also, I mean he says.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
Naked, which I think is interesting because you know, frogs
don't really have visible like butts or genitalia. Well frog
all they do have butts, but not genitalia, so the
idea of them being naked is sort of funny. But yeah,
they're sitting on around and under this bridge, according to
our conspicuously nameless traveling salesman.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, we should point out that that story is a
little different depending on where you find it, right, Sometimes
they're underbridge, sometimes they're on the side of the road.
Sometimes you know, just it depends on where you read
the story.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, sometimes they're in the middle of a game a cornhole.
It's just nuts.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Because I heard that one.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
It's folks, Well, we just made it. That's the beauty
of folklore gathering. Say, yeah, this wouldn't like any good
cryptid origin story is light on specifics. Like you said, Matt,
we do not know the identity of this apocryphal salesman.
We don't know the names of specific roads or bridges
(16:14):
for this story, but we do know the local lore
argues this guy was in the vicinity of a community
called Branch Hill. Branch Hill. If you look on you know,
Google maps or your favorite orwellian surveillance service of choice,
you'll see that it is on the southern side of
Loveland and for a very long time in the modern
(16:37):
day as well. The side roads in that area, you know,
like your little two lanes and so on, they're not
very well lit. So it's completely possible that the guy
saw something. Maybe he even saw three odd looking but
very human people and misidentified them. But this the weird
(16:58):
thing about the story is this cylical nature. So it
happens nineteen fifty five, right, or that's when. That's the
providence of the stories. It's always reported and it becomes
kind of local campfire lore, you know. Boy Scout groups
tell each other this. Youth groups tell each other this
when they're camping or when they're at their summer camp.
Until nineteen seventy two, when things get real.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Yeah, you know, I felt it was inevitable before one
of these was going to get smashed by a car
or you know, shot by a hunter. I also picture
them riding unicycles for some reason. I don't know the
oh what up? That's the one that's the reasoning. Casey
Pegwin's favorite yeah, oh yeah, it's a good one. Nineteen
seventy two, a Loveland police officer enters the chat Mark
(17:47):
Matthews shot and killed some sort of creature of unknown origin.
It appeared to resemble something along the lines of a
humanoid frog, and WCPO Cincinnati summarize the story. Vusly Matthews
explained that the first officer to encounter the purported frog man,
(18:07):
Ray Shaki, called him one night in March of nineteen
seventy two after spotting something strange on Riverside Drive and
Kemper Road near the Tote's boot factory.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
And the Little Miami River. And then he's quoted as saying, naturally,
I didn't believe him, but I could somehow tell from
his demeanor that he did see something.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
These guys know each other, they've worked together for a while,
and so they can tell when something is off. They
can tell when something anomalous has occurred to one or
the other. So it's worth going into check it out
in person or clocket. In this case, when Matthews hears
(18:49):
this report, he doesn't immediately go to the sea. They
have other stuff to do.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
This is also way before X files, so he did
what He didn't have a Fox Mulder archetype to play with,
but he was probably familiar with the Twilight Zone. Later
this month, he's driving in the same area. He's near
Tote's boot factory, and he sees something skitter across the road.
I shouldn't say skiter, skidder's a little bit fast and
(19:17):
a little bit lighter. He sees something booking it across
the road. In his case, it's not walking upright, and
it didn't climb over the guardrail. That's the urban legend
of the frogman. The frogman usually runs away and hops
hops the rail back to more amphibian friendly territory. This
creature crawled under the guard rail, and Matthews is probably
(19:40):
thinking you he's got a very stressful job. He's probably thinking,
I have no idea what this is, and so this
is a true story. So he thinks, I'm gonna sound
crazy if I tell people I saw this strange thing.
I need evidence, which is one thing that always Bedevil's
cryptozoology in general. So his quote at WCPO Channel nine
(20:04):
Cincinnati is I know no one would believe me, so
I shot it, and he shot it successfully. He got
the body he put it in the trunk of his car.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Bagged and tagged. It.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Isn't that so American?
Speaker 5 (20:17):
Though?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
It's like, I don't know what it is. I don't
understand it, so I'm gonna shoot it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah, that's not as likely it came at him or anything,
or it was any imminent threat.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
It was just fear of the unknown equals let's murder
the thing.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah yeah, Well, should we talk more about this story, guys,
or do we want to move on to the third
the third one that was like the primary.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
I think it's important to point out that he did
bring this body to his colleague Shaki, who had seen
who said, who confirmed? Yes, this is the creature I saw,
and it's a physical body, the holy grail of cryptos, right,
second only to a living specimen. And now that we
(21:04):
put that down, let's pause there.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Matt.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I think you're right. The first part of the story
is something here reported pretty often. But as you set
up so beautifully, there are there's one other story that's
much more recent that people point to when they talk
about Frogman. This story, an encounter with not one but
(21:29):
two working law enforcement officials, is often touted as the
most compelling circumstantial evidence for something like the frogman. However,
that may not be the entirety of the story. If
you read this in paranormal blogs, if you read this
(21:49):
in your favorite coffee table compendiums of strange events, you
might not have heard the second half. And we'll tell
you about that after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
All right, and we're back. So let's talk about that body.
That that holy grail of a thing that was in
the trunk of the officer's car. It was a huge,
four foot tall frogman.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
It was definitely it was definitely not human. The second
part of officer Matthew's story is that he discovered a
large iguana and a big boy too, a real chonker,
about three to three and a half feet long. And
he said he recognized it once he had shot it.
(22:38):
Once he had the body was looking at it in
his trunk. But this iguana had had a real crap
life before it got shot by a cop. It was
missing its tail, because if you're familiar with iguana, one
of the things they do as a defense mechanism is
they'll shed their tail, right, So something had scared this
(23:00):
poor creature or frightened it. He said, it was half
dead when he saw it anyway. And then we've got
another couple of quotes we pulled from the w CPO interview.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Matthew 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 there released water
that was used for cooling the ovens in the boot
factory as a way to stay warm in the cold
marked weather. This is smart, I mean, that's just that
level of like specificity about sort of the perfect conditions
(23:34):
for such a creature to survive, right.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Mm hmmm, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. But here's the thing.
Both officers knew it was an iguana. But this is
not how stories go. When you're telling a story. Depending
on who's writing it down or listening, or you know, whatever,
that person's lens looks like it might change the story
(23:58):
that you're telling them, right, Because these officers ended up
recounting this story to somebody and then it got a
little altered.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Or cut full time, right like how a television channel
will cut a film to remove things that it deems inappropriate.
In this case, the paranormal authors clearly decided that they
wanted to keep it in the realm of speculation. It's
kind of like, you know what they did. It's kind
(24:27):
of like if you were to if you were to
be in charge of cutting a movie and you said,
we're going to cut out the part of the movie
where the murder is solved.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Hmm, that'd be a bummer eternal cliffhanger.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
I mean, I think what a lot of these stories
have in common too, is just like a thing that
is out of place, right that people are not expecting
to see, usually under shadowy literally dark circumstances that allows
the imagination to kind of run wild. I mean, certainly
this account differs from our traveling salesman who saw practically
(25:06):
a group of tiny frog people having a tea party.
But I just wanted to mention I found out about
a neat story when I was in Philadelphia this past week.
I went to an Asian kind of outdoor street fair
kind of thing in a park at FDR Park, and
a friend of mine told me that recently a exotic
(25:26):
lizard called a kimen or a cayman had they found
living in this lake.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
A creature that you know, could easily.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Be confused for an alligator, and there had been like
these kind of urban legends of like an alligator living
in this area. But it turns out that it was
like something pet, perhaps an exotic lizard that somebody abandoned there.
And this is very similar, you know, and without information
and with something that's unfamiliar, it can really cause people
(25:56):
to kind of just have their imaginations run wild when
you start spreading in before you know what, you got
frog people having tea parties.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Great exotic animals are a huge, huge factor in misidentification
of things that later become touted as cryptid cases. But
for all the true believers out there, you may be
it may buoy your hopes to learn that misidentification of
non native animals cannot explain one hundred percent of the sightings.
(26:27):
Matthews gets kind of burned for this, you know, he
felt betrayed, obviously by an author. He says, this was
all a big hoax. The way people handled the story
probably for book sales, that's the implication. He no longer
does interviews, and he moved to Florida eventually, where people
(26:47):
still try to contact him. For many years about this,
because keep in mind's nineteen seventy two, right, and the
issue is the story is so good that people redd
it the way we treat all folklore. He said, let's
not let facts get in the way of a good story.
And the local community has embraced frogmen to a degree.
(27:11):
Also sighting still to my earlier point about cycles, sightings
still pop up. In twenty sixteen, there was a couple
playing Pokemon Go, a game I will never trust, and
they were in the area Loveland Madeira Road and Lake
Isabella And while they were playing Pokemon Go, Sam Jacobs
(27:32):
and his girlfriend spot something they think is Frogman. At
this point, it's twenty sixteen, so are they not primed
to think of frogmen when they see something unusual in
this area? There also props to Sam. Sam is adamant
that this was not something on the Pokemon Go screen.
He said, it's a real thing, not something he was
(27:53):
trying to collect.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I know the difference between a cartoon and an ar
game and a real thing.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, yeah, there are you talking about priming. There's stories
of Frogman. You're playing a game that features creatures that
are based on you know, creatures we know of that
are altered. Its a lot of coincidence there. But we
do have a quote from Sam Jacobs. Just read it
for you here quote. We saw a huge frog near
the water. Not in the game Pokemon Go. This was
(28:21):
an actual giant frog. I took a couple of pictures
in a video because I've never seen one that big.
Then the thing stood up and walked on its hind legs.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
And he continues, this is, by the way, credit whords
do this is from Fox nineteen. Now they broke the
story in twenty sixteen. But I love like he is
exercising objectivity here when he says, I swear on my
grandmother's grave that this is the truth. I'm not sure
whether it was a frog man or just a you know,
(28:53):
a giant frog.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Either way, I've.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Never seen anything like it. So Sam is being as
objective as possible. And you guys had a chance to
look at the at least a still photo of this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
It looks like a big ass hoax to me. Yep,
with the with the eyes and somebody in a suit.
Come on, the eyes are clearly they're not reflective or
you know, they're lights.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Yeah, agreed, it is diplomatically put not conclusive proof of
the existence.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Of a humanoid frog.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
However, just like countless other communities that enjoy and celebrate
their local legends, Frogman is super popular in Ohio. There
was a musical about the creature called Hot Damn It's
the Loveland Frog, which references again one of my favorite memes.
(29:50):
It's that boy what up?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Uh this?
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Or here comes that?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Here he's rolling.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
It's that boy, yeah up, And he'd be rolling down
the street.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
He'd be rolling to the beat. That's all I remember.
I just know he rolling.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Yeah, it's very important. It's part of modern American literature.
So I just want to give a shout out to
the fantastic Fringe festival, which occurs around the world. The
Frogman musical, Hot Damn It's Loveland Frog was performed in
twenty fourteen at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and Cincinnati loves
(30:28):
the Frogman to this day.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, this year there was a Frogman Festival just outside
of Cincinnati, and it was put on in March of
this year, and I just we ended up speaking to
two of the guys, the two guys that organize the thing,
and both of them are just fascinated by it. But
the cool thing is that there there are so many
people in Ohio that just want to talk cryptids and
(30:52):
want to I mean, because there's so many. We're just
scratching the surface here with Frogman. And Frogman is cool
because of its specific and it's you know, it's unique
to this area. But there are so many stories about
weird things going on out there.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
But fellas, what if we had another type of man,
you know, not not a frog variety, but some other
one with a similar ring.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Like a lizard, like a lid man.
Speaker 5 (31:20):
No, no, no, no, something a little more hairy, perhaps
a little furry, you know, perhaps the man of man's
best friend.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Oohoo, dog Man.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Yeah, the dog Man, which is kind of a cryptid franchise.
The dog Man of Ohio first comes to local attention
in nineteen seventy two. For those of us playing along
at home, you'll see the early seventies, seventy two in particular,
big year for cryptids in Ohio. According to the true believers,
(31:53):
this is kind of like a werewolf.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, werewolf since for sure.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Yeah, that's a way to put it. Canine like humanoid
nocturnal stands upright, So it's bipedal, and it is much
more agro than either Frank Reynolds or the Frogman. Also,
I just realized in the lore of Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
Frank Reynolds deals with the ongoing trauma of being called
(32:19):
a frog boy, right or Donkey Brain his friend Froggy
White spoilers.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
Not to mention the day Man and the night Man
other varieties of men. But I love this detail you
found about the dog Man. Like you mentioned, it'd be more.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Agro, but the idea that it's agro.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Comes in the form of brandishing pointed sticks, you know,
or rough hewn weapons.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
I guess, mmmm, yeah, yeah. The stick is the most
popular story. And I guess if we look at it
from just a as objective as possible without debunking things immediately.
If we look at it from that way, then it
proves that this creature is not just by but possessing
of at least on its fore limbs. It has something
(33:05):
like a thumb digits that allow it to grasp, which
dogs do not, you know, so the dogs that I
have met do not.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
But it's a big world.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
So the dog Man is not as popular as a bigfoot,
but the legend does live on and this is where
we want to shout out another thing to Matt's point
about the tremendous interest in anomalous organisms throughout Ohio, there
are a lot of Ohio residents who are part of
(33:36):
the North American dog Man Project or nad PUT.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
That's pretty awesome. Yeah, and they're really cool bragtag group
of characters. A lot of them are, you know, ex
police officers, people who are just down to like take
care of some dogmen. And if you've got a dog
man sighting, they're going to come out there and they
will help you, I guess capture footage or an actual
(34:03):
dog man.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Like David Bikera, whom we interviewed a number of years
ago and continues to run Expedition Bigfoot here in Georgia.
Their team is available twenty four to seven all year round.
Just reach out. They would love your reports of sightings.
They're kind of like a moof on for dog man specifically.
(34:25):
And also found a Google map overlay that shows a
ton of alleged or suspected dog man sightings throughout the
North American continent and down into bit of Central America
as well. It's worth checking out if you're interested. It's
(34:45):
also a little more popular now than an older cryptid
that is in Ohio, in Delaware ranging up to Massachusetts.
The puck Wedgie, which is unfortunately not a name for
girl Scout Cookie because it sounds very much like the
name for a girl Scout cookie.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Just immediately condras images of a squat, little duck like creature.
I don't know why, And I know we've talked about
the puckwudgie before. Was that no, you know what it was?
It wasn't it our our metaverse thing? Did we talk
about the puck Wedgie in the in the game for certain?
For Sutain, Yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Do Yeah, these things are weird. These things are weird, Ben,
I've seen them describe a couple of different ways. But
how would you describe a puckwodgee.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Having not knowingly seen one myself. The tricky thing about
these this is common a lot of Native American folklore
as well, is that they are shape shifters. I want
to give a shout out to author Teresa Bain in
her work Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore Mythology. Definitely
definite must read if you're a fan of folklore. She
(35:55):
notes the puck wedgie is a two to three foot
tall goblet, your Grimlin esque thing. It's a shape shifter,
but it often assumes the form of sort of a
human porcupine, a porcu man.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
That's pretty awesome puck watching.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
See.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
They seem to sort of possess siren like qualities, you know,
and and their ability to sort of lure people to
their death. But also occasionally I ascribe the ability to
whether it's organic or through some weapons I guess, launch
poisonous arrows mm hmm charts.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, porcupines also can't launch their quills.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
What that's a myth again. I'm playing Diablo for right now, guys,
and there are definitely puckwodgy like creatures in there that
shoot their spiky spikes at people. Okay, And Diablo four
is just, you know, kind of take that as fact.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's the paragon of reality.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
It's basically this generation's Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Last Day, have you guys seen you know, obvious.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
So there's all this air quality issues in New York
because of the wildfires in Canada, and it's been making around.
Somebody posting a billboard that says welcome to Hell New
York and is the Diablo.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Image in the background.
Speaker 5 (37:12):
It just looks like a nightmarish hellscape horizon.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yep, yeah, I saw that one as well, and at
first I didn't get it. But boy, good luck to
everyone in New York in Canada, most particularly in Norway,
where the fires consequences are also reaching across the Atlantic.
What would the puck wedgie make of this? Well, the
(37:39):
puck Dodgie probably wouldn't care too much because, as so
often happens in these ancient stories of running into near
human creatures, once upon a time, relationships between the humans
and the puck wedgies were pretty dope until humans did
some sort of trans and the puck wodgie soured on them.
(38:03):
So if you meet a puckwodge in the wild, it's
probably not gonna help you. There aren't a ton of
these sightings in the modern day, but you'll find no
shortage of amateur archaeologist or cryptozoologist or authors claiming to
have encountered them numerous times. Again, the tricky thing is,
this is an entity that can change its shape. So therefore,
(38:27):
if we're playing the thought experiment, it's completely possible if
you are listening to Tonight's show around other people, the
things sitting next to you appearing to be a person
is in fact a puck dodgie.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Be cool, Be cool.
Speaker 5 (38:43):
Shape shifters are neat but like really untrustworthy, you know
what I mean?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Come on, just be yourself.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
And the thing is, this is something we've talked about
in the past, with Austerrolopithecus and with the legends of
wild Harry Hamani's that are around in almost every culture
on every continent except Antarctica. It's the theory that fascinates,
at least me so much. I want to speak for everyone.
(39:11):
What if these stories somehow date back to actual encounters
with early Homo sapiens and early relatives of Homo sapiens.
The geography here might appear super wrong, right, because most
of those reliced populations of mixtapes or relatives of Homo sapiens,
(39:32):
they were in the African continent, the Middle East, parts
of Europe, and Central Asia. But I don't know, did
you guys see the news about the new stuff discovered
just recently Homo nalati. They're called Nalletti.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It's pretty awesome, isn't It's just like one of the
oldest versions of a pre Homo sapien population that was
creating art. Is it art or what were they?
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yeah, they were purposely carving symbols, so purposely carving with
meaning one hundred thousand years before what we call humans
even picked up the brush or the you know, crush
the bugs to make the de So the point is
we are learning as a society more and more about
(40:20):
the ancient past, and DNA research already kind of proves
that there are a couple of other relatives of Homo
sapiens have yet to be discovered. So maybe that's part
of the explanation for the puck wedgie. But if we're
talking about these weird primates, excuse me, I don't want
to denigrate them. If we're talking about these near human,
(40:41):
non human primates, then of course we have to intro
another one. Ohio, you see, has its own version of Bigfoot.
It's not the dog man, it's not the frog man.
It's the Grassman. We'll pause for a word from our sponsors,
and then let's go into the deep grass and see
(41:02):
what we find.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
And we're back. So grassman, is it like a pucklodgee?
Is it a grass that walks around.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
That would be so cool.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
A walking marijuana plant, or like a he who walks
behind the rose kind of children in the Corn things.
I always loved the mythology of the Children of the Corn.
I found it genuinely chilling and listened to the audiobook
of the story recently. But that's one of those ones
that the franchise just kept on franchising when it should
have stopped long ago.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
They spent a lot of time the sketching out the
character Malachi. But you know, short stories make for great adaptations.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I really I love that one.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
I love the lore of sort of a weekly godlike entity,
which is a way you could describe something like Cutulhu,
you know, Cthulhu. Excuse me, so, the Ohio Grassman aka
the Minerva Monster is sort of a one to one
description of bigfoot lore with a few key differences.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, what I've heard is that it's got longer hair,
and it smells worse. Yeah, it smells worse, and it
was found in grass. So rather than seeing but bigfoot
in the woods, which is highly common, or things that
would be described as bigfoot, the landscape has changed. That's
one of the main things that Jeff One of the
(42:32):
guys I spoke to who who did the frogman festival.
He said, it's really just a landscape thing, and the
longer hair is the only, really the only discerning factor
between this grassman and Bigfoot sightings.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
And interesting in comparison to another possible subspecies of Bigfoot,
the skunk ape. The grass the grassman doesn't smell as
bad as the skunk ape, but the skunk ape or
swamp ape has adapted to its environment.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
Also, well, once again, I'm gonna bring up the walking
marijuana plant thing.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
I mean skunk people refer to.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
That's a that's a term that gets thrown around a
lot for weed that smells really.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Strong, you know, the grass man. Sorry, I yield my time.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I think these are all just hippies and ponchos. They're
smoking a lot of weed hiding out either in grass
or in the woods.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Gilly suits, maybe a good gilly suit would one hundred
percent make you look like look like something is some
kind of cryptis similar to this.
Speaker 5 (43:33):
Also one of those like Luau type grass like a
like a suit version of a grass skirt kind of
it's a specific type of camo. Got it looks really yeah, yeah,
picturing it, yep, picturing it, so you see it in fiction.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
Hopefully you never see them in real life, folks, But
in fiction, in in action movies, you'll see snipers wearing
gilly suits so that they can lay around for hours
until they need to get that shot one hundred yards
away or something. But also, how about cannabis chimp. We'll
see if that works out. A chimp would be a
(44:06):
little too short for this, but still, this is almost
like this goes back to Native tribe, native community folklore
about wild, hairy, humanlike creatures dwelling deep in the wild.
It wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that reports of sightings
(44:28):
began to get more attention from the United States at large. Okay,
I think we should pause for a second here to
say we know, especially for our fellow conspiracy realists who
consider themselves a bit more skeptical, we know that this
might all sound silly, but you have to remember we
(44:50):
were able to trace down the origins of a couple
of other things that were treated like myths. I'm thinking
particularly Matt Noll of the se Ka remember that one.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
Oh yeah, another another reason to redheads get a bad rap.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah, we have a whole episode on that.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
Right, mm hmmm, yeah, we're in that episode. We were
able to trace back through the folklore to some archaeological
discoveries that appear to confirm not all the rumors about
Sea Techa in the legends, but we're able to confirm
there was a population that is more than likely the
(45:33):
origin of those legends, and they were regular people.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Yeah, and speaking back to like folklore, often in fairy
tales and horror science fiction fantasy, giants are often depicted
as being cannibalistic. I mean, you think about Jack and
the Beanstalk. That giant is going to grind your bones
to make his bread. You know, that is part of
the legend of the sea see five fo FuMB Indeed.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, there's another version of Grassman and these types, a
bigfoot called the wild Man of enon enon Enan, I
think is how you'd say it. And it's in Ohio. It's
a very similar on longer hair does kind of the
same thing, lives in the same places, but it's only
an Enan, and I think the specificity of it is
(46:20):
what makes it feel special, especially to a small town.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Like that, and also the idea for lasting with the Grassman.
The idea of creating nest or habitations in tall grass
is quite similar to the sleeping patterns of gorillas, which
also create nest right lowland gorillas in particular, I'm thinking of.
(46:46):
We know that the answers to these things, the origins
for these things are out there somewhere. We just can't
assume the answers are one hundred percent what we expect.
There is a returning guest here for everybody who was
treating this like a trivia gabe. Who is the cryptid
with the best butt around? Who is the cryptid with
(47:09):
abs for days? You know them, you love them? He
is Mothman. Yeah, And according to true believers, Mothman took
some time and traveled to Ohio.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
Boy that he ever cometh, he's got like a nine
pack man. Seriously serious business in that region.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Well, it's really interesting to me, like talking about Ohio
and Mothman, because the primary thing, right, the event that
started the whole Mothman sightings was the collapse of the
Silver Bridge, right and which which is a bridge that
crosses the Ohio River. So it goes from Point Pleasant,
(47:51):
West Virginia into this small town in Ohio. So I
guess if you if the bridge is the primary place
of the event, then it makes sense that both I
guess sides of the river would have sightings if there
really was something going around there. And there are a
ton of sightings on the Ohio side. There's even because
of that bridge collapse. The names of the people who
(48:15):
died in that horrible accident are on the Ohio.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Side, right.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
Yeah, And this is something that you can you can
see in action the next time you're in that part
of the world. Now, will people universally say, yes, I
believe wholeheartedly a mothman? No, almost certainly not. But will
they all be familiar with it? Yes, And it's always
(48:42):
worth the time if you can to get out in
the field and check out that stuff firsthand. We'd love
to hear if you have some insight a mothman or
any of these cryptids. And as we said at the top,
we are not getting to all of the very fertile
cryptid soil here in Ohio, so we want to hear
(49:05):
your experiences. Shout out to Bessie, shout out to any
other number of urban legends and local folklore. We didn't
get to with any cryptid episode. We want to end
by pulling together a few incredibly important threads actually finding
these organisms. Yes, okay, it's true that cryptozoology is not
highly regarded in the world of academia. That's not us,
(49:27):
that's just how other scientists treat this pursuit. And it's
true that we often look at folklore being confused for
hard science, you know, as we ask all the time,
where the bones, where's the feces? How do they interact
with other creatures in a given biome? But the cool
slash terrifying part. It's also true that now, more than
(49:49):
any other point in human history, we are as a civilization,
are best positioned to discover new species if we act
now TikTok.
Speaker 5 (50:01):
And yet one thing that I think we all run
up against with these things is why isn't there more evidence?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
You know?
Speaker 5 (50:10):
Why are these stories always so tenuous and vague and
come from multiple reports that all kind of di it.
It always seems more like a historical game of telephone
than actual species that are undiscovered. But I'm I'd love
to see, I'd love to find out about more.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Because that's kind of what it is, right, I mean,
they're just stories. That's why it's so fascinating and you
can't prove it, so you hope to prove it. I
think that's why people are so into going to these conferences.
Why there are things like the North Georgia Bigfoot Conference
that exists. I mean, that's just why.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
Or Monsterfest in Ohio, and TV producers of course love
a search for Bigfoot because it's guaranteed to go on
for seasons. I want to go back to earlier point
as attempting to make the human populations everywhere. Surveillance technology
is growing ubiquitous. If something has not been discovered yet,
it is more likely now to be discovered, and this
(51:09):
moment will pass. It is a brief moment. We are
coming to you amid Earth six mass extinction. If you
are a cryptid hunter, now is your time. Get out there,
find what you can, and please, please please tell us
about it again. Shout out to Monsterfest in Ohio and
shout out to North American dog Man Project. Shout out
(51:29):
to you. We can't wait to hear what you think
about this. Are their cryptids out there? On previous shows,
we've said they're most likely to be discovered in the
depths of the ocean at this point, maybe some relic
populations in very very small corners of remaining wilderness. But
(51:50):
what's going on in your local neck of the woods
when you walk into your local restaurant or your VFW,
your hangout spot. What's the monster they talk about?
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Let us know.
Speaker 5 (52:02):
You can find this all over the internet, or conspiracy
stuff on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, conspiracy stuff show on
Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yes, well, you've got a phone number. You can call
us one eight three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail.
You've got three minutes. Give us a cool nickname. Please
let us know if we can use your name and
voice on the air. A quick shout out here to
that Jeff Craig guy who makes a thing called Map
in Black that is an entire map of the United
(52:31):
States with cryptozoological sightings on it pinpointed and then on.
If you flip the thing over, you can look at
it and see, like in alphabetical order, where all these
cryptives have been seen, and what type of cryptos? Really
really cool stuff, and uh yeah, if you don't want
to give us a call, why not instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Tonight's episode is one for the cryptid fans.
We're diving into some stories that might be unfamiliar to
a lot of our fellow conspiracy realist outside of Ohio.
You've heard of Bigfoot, you've heard of NeSSI and so on,
(00:52):
But what about the frog Man. We hadn't heard of
this until you. Noel sent along a link in a
group chat.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
I can't remember how I even stumbled upon it. It
was just, you know, and just your typical day of
googling like we do for the various things that we're
looking into, and rabbit holing and yeah, the Frogman. No,
I know what it was. It was a podcast that
I really like called Range Touch. It's these two you'd
like this one Toobin. They do a couple of different podcasts.
It's sort of like a mini network. One of them
(01:21):
is called Just King Things, where they go through every
Stephen King book in order of publication, and then another
one is about the webcomic Homestuck, which is like this
whole weirdo bizarro, you know world that's kind of sort
of Stephen King inspired. But another one is just their
more regular flagship podcast, Range Touch. And they were talking
about tabletop gaming and it came up some game they
(01:43):
were reviewing that was of like a bunch of different cryptids,
like a card game, and they were describing the drawings
and all of the different illustrations, and the Frogman, the
Loveland Frog or the Frogman of Ohio came up, and
I was like, I don't think we've discussed the Loveland Frog,
and he's such a cute little fella, and Ben, this
led you down more of a larger big picture cryptids
(02:06):
of Ohio rabbit hole, but we'll get to the frog.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
We will indeed get to the frog. There's a bit
of lovecraft in here. It's pretty cool. I've heard about Bigfoot,
but what about the grassman? What about the dog man?
It turns out Ohio has a ton of cryptids. Legal
requires us to say allegedly has a ton of cryptids.
Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You may not know much about Ohio. Yeah, if you
don't live in the US. Oh but it's a big deal.
Ohio's awesome. I got a ton of family up there.
That's why it's a big deal. That's all you need
to know. Done, end of episode.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
It might be considered part of the country that sometimes
flies under the radar. You know, You've got your Cleveland,
which rocks, you know, and of course is home to
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But outside that,
there's not a whole lot of Ohio that really makes
the news on the regular.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Akron, Ohio's the best.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
The natty Cincinnati.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah, people forget about. Since a hip hop group, underground
hip hop group I like, is from Ohio, there's there's
quite a bit of good hip hop in Ohio. It's
also the seventh most populous state in the entirety of
the US. The population is nearing eleven point eight million,
even with all the brain drain that happens in as
(03:28):
you called them earlier, the so called flyover states. And
here's a dumb fact if you want to if you
want to be awkward at parties, if you consider yourself
an amateur vexillologist, a word we never get to use.
Ohio is the only state in the Union with a
non rectangular flag, So good luck on your trivia.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Is it just more squarish? Is it tropezoid? Arambas?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
It's a circle?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Man, They really get some trippy stuff going over there.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Now.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I did not know this, Ben, and I also was.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Literally about to ask you what vexillologist was, and then
you got to it in short order. But wow, I thought,
is it like not the rules that you have to
have a perfectly rectangular flag, that all flags have to
just it's one of those things that I think people
just typically just do out of decorum and a sense
of just like this is how it's always been done,
that you take for granted the fact that maybe you
(04:23):
don't have.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
To m uniformity.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Uh, it looks it's very strange because I'm not sure
of the name for it. It's a triangular with a tail.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Like a bird.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
It's like one of those baseball flags like pant not pendant.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yes, thank you, that's exactly what it looks.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Like it's like a pennant with the with the abbreviated
or attenuated edge cut out. There's a triangle shape, so
it's like it's like a tail feather for a bird. Anyway,
you are going to be amazing at a trivia game
later sometime in your life, and we wish you the best.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Like a study of flags or of shapes flags?
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Okay, yes, sorry, study of flags? I would geometry be
the study of shapes.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I don't know. That's fine.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
It's certainly the science of shapes, which is not necessarily
the same as just like the study and cataloging of them.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
So I'm a bit of a shapesman myself. Yeah, well
we could just say we're shapes shapes folk anyway. Also unrelated,
apparently the new word to hate in the English language
is the word folks. People don't like folks anymore. It's
it's now fast approaching the level of disapproval that people
(05:45):
used to hold for moist.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Whether I think it's too folksy, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Maybe disingenuous, insincere, yeah, disingenuous, But I always I think
the way we use it is fine. We're certainly not
politicians trying to pretend like or not from Connecticut anyway.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
I can see that when a politician uses it, they
usually are using it in such a way as to
make them seem like the common man.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Listen here, folks, we're all on the same page, you know, right.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
I mean, we all can read, we can all agree
that faberge egg depreciation is one of the prime issues
of our great nations, part of them for all of us.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yeah, Like any other state in the US, for thousands
and thousands of years, there were tremendously sophisticated, entrenched native
populations that lived there and created empires all their own.
The earliest records of human habitation in Ohio date back
at least thirteen thousand years, and if we were betting
(06:51):
on the odds here, I would say probably further than that.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
It actually dates back much further to the Edena culture,
who domesticated plants there somewhere around one thousand and eight
hundred BC.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
This group was also responsible for.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Building something with an incredibly cool and metal name, the
Great Serpent Mound. And as the Adena people evolved into
they really took this mound thing and ran with it.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
They became was.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Referred to historically as the Hope Well Mound builders. Modern
day Ohio became home to a lot of these kind
of earthen constructs.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
And you know, like we said, we don't know how
far back human presence in Ohio goes or modern day Ohio.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
What we call Ohio today.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
We know that the Adena culture came out of this
rich soil of pre existing communities, and they did a
lot of stuff that the early US ignored. These earth
works are I mean, look, folks, we are in the
(08:05):
US South and I would hazard a guess that Matt
Nole and Paul Mission Control and I have all seen
some Native American mounds in person.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
No, you're wrong, never seen the mounds.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
They have seen them and not known you know that
that's what they were, because there's certainly you know, this
just really doesn't Like you said, Ben, and your research,
you found the description for earthworks as being sort of
an overarching term for any man made earthly, you know,
change in elevation. It doesn't necessarily have to be for
artistic purposes, right, I mean it can be kind of
(08:44):
functional as well, right.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
It could be a dwelling, it could be often they
are sites of veneration, you know, and in some cases
they are like we did episodes earlier on Mound, on
mounds that were the foundations for these greats cities.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know, if you.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Are a fan of Bethesda the game company, if you
have played Skyrim, then mounds you have entered earthworks when
you fight Drager, that's what they're called, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
To lizard people. Right, for the lizard.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
People, they're the they're the dead, the Viking zombies, that's right.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Okay, Sorry, I'm thinking of a different class. It's been
a minute since I played that game.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Sorry, mat were you saying, oh, nothing, They're they're places
to bury the dead. That's what those tombs are, basically,
they're going into Some of the mounds were used as tombs, right,
some of them were not, which is a fascinating thing.
And the whole reason we're talking about this about the
ancient history of Ohio is because there are stories that
have that have existed, that have moved down by mouth
(09:49):
orally through years and years and years and years centuries,
and uh, that's why we're talking about this stuff today
because there is weird stuff that's happened in Ohio.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Matt, I have to say I love the concept of
carrying stories by mouth.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
It just pictures. I picture a bunch of people with
their mouths closed full of stories and then just regurgitating
them all at once.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
You know, Oh, it's a really cool image.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
And since the days of antiquity, what you need to
know is the human beings have been convinced the land
we call Ohio is home to strange and unusual things.
Is there any truth to these legends? Let's take a look.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
All right again.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Turns out Ohio, depending on whom you ask, is home
to many, many anomalous life forms, including one special returning guest.
No spoilers, but one hint. It's decrypted with a great butt,
serious abs, lots of cheeks. And before we get to
that returning guest, let's talk about the star of today's show,
(10:56):
the so called Frogman of Ohio.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But before we even.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Get into this, I just want to point out too
that the term frogman is one that holds a lot
of meaning in like spy culture too.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
We've talked about this in terms of.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Like sort of divers that are you know, spies or
associated with some sort of nefarious, clandestine activity, often wearing
these green kind of flippered suits and goggles, and you
see them in like Johnny Quest.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I think they appear in an episode of Johnny Quest.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
But just the idea of being a frogman was referring
to someone who was like a kind of a secret
agent diver type.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Oh, yes, it's kind of a terrifying concept, right, a
frog man. But this frogman, at least from the stories
that we have seen, and allegedly there are three main
stories of the Frogman or sightings. I guess let's say
that we're going to get into here, but it's not really.
It doesn't appear to be dangerous, right.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
It's passive. Yeah, it's passive creature. It's kind of like
when you see back when turtles were way more common.
It's like if you walk past the turtle, if it's
not a leather back, if it's not a snapping turtle
or something, you're totally fine.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
This the Frogman.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
In most stories, people run in, humans run into the Frogman,
and the Frogman is I kid, you not just vibing,
just hanging out doing frogman stuff, probably waiting to play
an extra in a hell Boy movie or graphic novel
or you know, show up in a Lovecraft adaptation for.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Though, like hiding under a bridge, or just chilling.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
But not demanding a toll of any kind, just sort
of hanging out and it's just people watching.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
You know, Frank Reynolds is probably more aggressive to the
average human than the average frogman.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
No question.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Little fella too, right, Yeah, if you look at the geography,
you made a great point when you say it's by
a bridge. This has this cryptid has been cited in
very very specific geographical areas, and only later did it expand.
It's also a pretty new legend. The first sighting, or
(13:09):
the first one that's universally reported, occurs in the marshes
near Loveland, Ohio, along the banks of something called the
Little Miami River. To set the stage, there's this place
called Hamilton County and Hamilton County as a place called
Lake Isabella in Loveland, and Lake Isabella is part of
(13:31):
a big, big park where people go to camp to
go fishing, to get on their boats and have a
nice boat weekend. One day back in well, one night
back in nineteen fifty five, an unnamed traveling salesman happens
by and he's going by this bridge and he sees
(13:51):
three disturbing creatures just again sort of hanging out by
the side of the road under a bridge, and many
other stories, and he says, hang on way a tick.
Why these guys are short and they're all hunched over.
They're three to four feet tall, and they're naked. They
have leathery skin, and I've seen frogs before. These things
(14:17):
are like part human, part frog. They've apparently he had
enough time. He's either a really great eyewitness or he
slowed down and stared at them for a while, because
he said they have webbed hands and feet and deep,
deep wrinkles on their heads.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
I mean, presumably a whole people, these frog people more
than frog man. I mean, I'm picturing like a Smurfs
type scenario or they you know, there's like a ring
leader and then they each have their own individual personalities
and perhaps nicknames.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But yeah, little fellas.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Three to four feet tall, like you said, Bend, just
sort of hanging out doing froggy stuff. He described them
as standing upright, being bipedal, having you know, the hea
and face of frogs, at least in terms of the shape.
And he also described like he said web feet and
completely hairless.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
And also, I mean he says.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
Naked, which I think is interesting because you know, frogs
don't really have visible like butts or genitalia. Well frog
all they do have butts, but not genitalia, so the
idea of them being naked is sort of funny. But yeah,
they're sitting on around and under this bridge, according to
our conspicuously nameless traveling salesman.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, we should point out that that story is a
little different depending on where you find it, right, Sometimes
they're underbridge, sometimes they're on the side of the road.
Sometimes you know, just it depends on where you read
the story.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, sometimes they're in the middle of a game a cornhole.
It's just nuts.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Because I heard that one.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
It's folks, Well, we just made it. That's the beauty
of folklore gathering. Say, yeah, this wouldn't like any good
cryptid origin story is light on specifics. Like you said, Matt,
we do not know the identity of this apocryphal salesman.
We don't know the names of specific roads or bridges
(16:14):
for this story, but we do know the local lore
argues this guy was in the vicinity of a community
called Branch Hill. Branch Hill. If you look on you know,
Google maps or your favorite orwellian surveillance service of choice,
you'll see that it is on the southern side of
Loveland and for a very long time in the modern
(16:37):
day as well. The side roads in that area, you know,
like your little two lanes and so on, they're not
very well lit. So it's completely possible that the guy
saw something. Maybe he even saw three odd looking but
very human people and misidentified them. But this the weird
(16:58):
thing about the story is this cylical nature. So it
happens nineteen fifty five, right, or that's when. That's the
providence of the stories. It's always reported and it becomes
kind of local campfire lore, you know. Boy Scout groups
tell each other this. Youth groups tell each other this
when they're camping or when they're at their summer camp.
Until nineteen seventy two, when things get real.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Yeah, you know, I felt it was inevitable before one
of these was going to get smashed by a car
or you know, shot by a hunter. I also picture
them riding unicycles for some reason. I don't know the
oh what up? That's the one that's the reasoning. Casey
Pegwin's favorite yeah, oh yeah, it's a good one. Nineteen
seventy two, a Loveland police officer enters the chat Mark
(17:47):
Matthews shot and killed some sort of creature of unknown origin.
It appeared to resemble something along the lines of a
humanoid frog, and WCPO Cincinnati summarize the story. Vusly Matthews
explained that the first officer to encounter the purported frog man,
(18:07):
Ray Shaki, called him one night in March of nineteen
seventy two after spotting something strange on Riverside Drive and
Kemper Road near the Tote's boot factory.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
And the Little Miami River. And then he's quoted as saying, naturally,
I didn't believe him, but I could somehow tell from
his demeanor that he did see something.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
These guys know each other, they've worked together for a while,
and so they can tell when something is off. They
can tell when something anomalous has occurred to one or
the other. So it's worth going into check it out
in person or clocket. In this case, when Matthews hears
(18:49):
this report, he doesn't immediately go to the sea. They
have other stuff to do.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
This is also way before X files, so he did
what He didn't have a Fox Mulder archetype to play with,
but he was probably familiar with the Twilight Zone. Later
this month, he's driving in the same area. He's near
Tote's boot factory, and he sees something skitter across the road.
I shouldn't say skiter, skidder's a little bit fast and
(19:17):
a little bit lighter. He sees something booking it across
the road. In his case, it's not walking upright, and
it didn't climb over the guardrail. That's the urban legend
of the frogman. The frogman usually runs away and hops
hops the rail back to more amphibian friendly territory. This
creature crawled under the guard rail, and Matthews is probably
(19:40):
thinking you he's got a very stressful job. He's probably thinking,
I have no idea what this is, and so this
is a true story. So he thinks, I'm gonna sound
crazy if I tell people I saw this strange thing.
I need evidence, which is one thing that always Bedevil's
cryptozoology in general. So his quote at WCPO Channel nine
(20:04):
Cincinnati is I know no one would believe me, so
I shot it, and he shot it successfully. He got
the body he put it in the trunk of his car.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Bagged and tagged. It.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Isn't that so American?
Speaker 5 (20:17):
Though?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
It's like, I don't know what it is. I don't
understand it, so I'm gonna shoot it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah, that's not as likely it came at him or anything,
or it was any imminent threat.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
It was just fear of the unknown equals let's murder
the thing.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah yeah, Well, should we talk more about this story, guys,
or do we want to move on to the third
the third one that was like the primary.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
I think it's important to point out that he did
bring this body to his colleague Shaki, who had seen
who said, who confirmed? Yes, this is the creature I saw,
and it's a physical body, the holy grail of cryptos, right,
second only to a living specimen. And now that we
(21:04):
put that down, let's pause there.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Matt.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I think you're right. The first part of the story
is something here reported pretty often. But as you set
up so beautifully, there are there's one other story that's
much more recent that people point to when they talk
about Frogman. This story, an encounter with not one but
(21:29):
two working law enforcement officials, is often touted as the
most compelling circumstantial evidence for something like the frogman. However,
that may not be the entirety of the story. If
you read this in paranormal blogs, if you read this
(21:49):
in your favorite coffee table compendiums of strange events, you
might not have heard the second half. And we'll tell
you about that after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
All right, and we're back. So let's talk about that body.
That that holy grail of a thing that was in
the trunk of the officer's car. It was a huge,
four foot tall frogman.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
It was definitely it was definitely not human. The second
part of officer Matthew's story is that he discovered a
large iguana and a big boy too, a real chonker,
about three to three and a half feet long. And
he said he recognized it once he had shot it.
(22:38):
Once he had the body was looking at it in
his trunk. But this iguana had had a real crap
life before it got shot by a cop. It was
missing its tail, because if you're familiar with iguana, one
of the things they do as a defense mechanism is
they'll shed their tail, right, So something had scared this
(23:00):
poor creature or frightened it. He said, it was half
dead when he saw it anyway. And then we've got
another couple of quotes we pulled from the w CPO interview.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Matthew 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 there released water
that was used for cooling the ovens in the boot
factory as a way to stay warm in the cold
marked weather. This is smart, I mean, that's just that
level of like specificity about sort of the perfect conditions
(23:34):
for such a creature to survive, right.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Mm hmmm, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. But here's the thing.
Both officers knew it was an iguana. But this is
not how stories go. When you're telling a story. Depending
on who's writing it down or listening, or you know, whatever,
that person's lens looks like it might change the story
(23:58):
that you're telling them, right, Because these officers ended up
recounting this story to somebody and then it got a
little altered.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Or cut full time, right like how a television channel
will cut a film to remove things that it deems inappropriate.
In this case, the paranormal authors clearly decided that they
wanted to keep it in the realm of speculation. It's
kind of like, you know what they did. It's kind
(24:27):
of like if you were to if you were to
be in charge of cutting a movie and you said,
we're going to cut out the part of the movie
where the murder is solved.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Hmm, that'd be a bummer eternal cliffhanger.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
I mean, I think what a lot of these stories
have in common too, is just like a thing that
is out of place, right that people are not expecting
to see, usually under shadowy literally dark circumstances that allows
the imagination to kind of run wild. I mean, certainly
this account differs from our traveling salesman who saw practically
(25:06):
a group of tiny frog people having a tea party.
But I just wanted to mention I found out about
a neat story when I was in Philadelphia this past week.
I went to an Asian kind of outdoor street fair
kind of thing in a park at FDR Park, and
a friend of mine told me that recently a exotic
(25:26):
lizard called a kimen or a cayman had they found
living in this lake.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
A creature that you know, could easily.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Be confused for an alligator, and there had been like
these kind of urban legends of like an alligator living
in this area. But it turns out that it was
like something pet, perhaps an exotic lizard that somebody abandoned there.
And this is very similar, you know, and without information
and with something that's unfamiliar, it can really cause people
(25:56):
to kind of just have their imaginations run wild when
you start spreading in before you know what, you got
frog people having tea parties.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Great exotic animals are a huge, huge factor in misidentification
of things that later become touted as cryptid cases. But
for all the true believers out there, you may be
it may buoy your hopes to learn that misidentification of
non native animals cannot explain one hundred percent of the sightings.
(26:27):
Matthews gets kind of burned for this, you know, he
felt betrayed, obviously by an author. He says, this was
all a big hoax. The way people handled the story
probably for book sales, that's the implication. He no longer
does interviews, and he moved to Florida eventually, where people
(26:47):
still try to contact him. For many years about this,
because keep in mind's nineteen seventy two, right, and the
issue is the story is so good that people redd
it the way we treat all folklore. He said, let's
not let facts get in the way of a good story.
And the local community has embraced frogmen to a degree.
(27:11):
Also sighting still to my earlier point about cycles, sightings
still pop up. In twenty sixteen, there was a couple
playing Pokemon Go, a game I will never trust, and
they were in the area Loveland Madeira Road and Lake
Isabella And while they were playing Pokemon Go, Sam Jacobs
(27:32):
and his girlfriend spot something they think is Frogman. At
this point, it's twenty sixteen, so are they not primed
to think of frogmen when they see something unusual in
this area? There also props to Sam. Sam is adamant
that this was not something on the Pokemon Go screen.
He said, it's a real thing, not something he was
(27:53):
trying to collect.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I know the difference between a cartoon and an ar
game and a real thing.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, yeah, there are you talking about priming. There's stories
of Frogman. You're playing a game that features creatures that
are based on you know, creatures we know of that
are altered. Its a lot of coincidence there. But we
do have a quote from Sam Jacobs. Just read it
for you here quote. We saw a huge frog near
the water. Not in the game Pokemon Go. This was
(28:21):
an actual giant frog. I took a couple of pictures
in a video because I've never seen one that big.
Then the thing stood up and walked on its hind legs.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
And he continues, this is, by the way, credit whords
do this is from Fox nineteen. Now they broke the
story in twenty sixteen. But I love like he is
exercising objectivity here when he says, I swear on my
grandmother's grave that this is the truth. I'm not sure
whether it was a frog man or just a you know,
(28:53):
a giant frog.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Either way, I've.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Never seen anything like it. So Sam is being as
objective as possible. And you guys had a chance to
look at the at least a still photo of this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
It looks like a big ass hoax to me. Yep,
with the with the eyes and somebody in a suit.
Come on, the eyes are clearly they're not reflective or
you know, they're lights.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Yeah, agreed, it is diplomatically put not conclusive proof of
the existence.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Of a humanoid frog.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
However, just like countless other communities that enjoy and celebrate
their local legends, Frogman is super popular in Ohio. There
was a musical about the creature called Hot Damn It's
the Loveland Frog, which references again one of my favorite memes.
(29:50):
It's that boy what up?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Uh this?
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Or here comes that?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Here he's rolling.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
It's that boy, yeah up, And he'd be rolling down
the street.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
He'd be rolling to the beat. That's all I remember.
I just know he rolling.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Yeah, it's very important. It's part of modern American literature.
So I just want to give a shout out to
the fantastic Fringe festival, which occurs around the world. The
Frogman musical, Hot Damn It's Loveland Frog was performed in
twenty fourteen at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and Cincinnati loves
(30:28):
the Frogman to this day.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, this year there was a Frogman Festival just outside
of Cincinnati, and it was put on in March of
this year, and I just we ended up speaking to
two of the guys, the two guys that organize the thing,
and both of them are just fascinated by it. But
the cool thing is that there there are so many
people in Ohio that just want to talk cryptids and
(30:52):
want to I mean, because there's so many. We're just
scratching the surface here with Frogman. And Frogman is cool
because of its specific and it's you know, it's unique
to this area. But there are so many stories about
weird things going on out there.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
But fellas, what if we had another type of man,
you know, not not a frog variety, but some other
one with a similar ring.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Like a lizard, like a lid man.
Speaker 5 (31:20):
No, no, no, no, something a little more hairy, perhaps
a little furry, you know, perhaps the man of man's
best friend.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Oohoo, dog Man.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Yeah, the dog Man, which is kind of a cryptid franchise.
The dog Man of Ohio first comes to local attention
in nineteen seventy two. For those of us playing along
at home, you'll see the early seventies, seventy two in particular,
big year for cryptids in Ohio. According to the true believers,
(31:53):
this is kind of like a werewolf.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, werewolf since for sure.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Yeah, that's a way to put it. Canine like humanoid
nocturnal stands upright, So it's bipedal, and it is much
more agro than either Frank Reynolds or the Frogman. Also,
I just realized in the lore of Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
Frank Reynolds deals with the ongoing trauma of being called
(32:19):
a frog boy, right or Donkey Brain his friend Froggy
White spoilers.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
Not to mention the day Man and the night Man
other varieties of men. But I love this detail you
found about the dog Man. Like you mentioned, it'd be more.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Agro, but the idea that it's agro.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Comes in the form of brandishing pointed sticks, you know,
or rough hewn weapons.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
I guess, mmmm, yeah, yeah. The stick is the most
popular story. And I guess if we look at it
from just a as objective as possible without debunking things immediately.
If we look at it from that way, then it
proves that this creature is not just by but possessing
of at least on its fore limbs. It has something
(33:05):
like a thumb digits that allow it to grasp, which
dogs do not, you know, so the dogs that I
have met do not.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
But it's a big world.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
So the dog Man is not as popular as a bigfoot,
but the legend does live on and this is where
we want to shout out another thing to Matt's point
about the tremendous interest in anomalous organisms throughout Ohio, there
are a lot of Ohio residents who are part of
(33:36):
the North American dog Man Project or nad PUT.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
That's pretty awesome. Yeah, and they're really cool bragtag group
of characters. A lot of them are, you know, ex
police officers, people who are just down to like take
care of some dogmen. And if you've got a dog
man sighting, they're going to come out there and they
will help you, I guess capture footage or an actual
(34:03):
dog man.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Like David Bikera, whom we interviewed a number of years
ago and continues to run Expedition Bigfoot here in Georgia.
Their team is available twenty four to seven all year round.
Just reach out. They would love your reports of sightings.
They're kind of like a moof on for dog man specifically.
(34:25):
And also found a Google map overlay that shows a
ton of alleged or suspected dog man sightings throughout the
North American continent and down into bit of Central America
as well. It's worth checking out if you're interested. It's
(34:45):
also a little more popular now than an older cryptid
that is in Ohio, in Delaware ranging up to Massachusetts.
The puck Wedgie, which is unfortunately not a name for
girl Scout Cookie because it sounds very much like the
name for a girl Scout cookie.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Just immediately condras images of a squat, little duck like creature.
I don't know why, And I know we've talked about
the puckwudgie before. Was that no, you know what it was?
It wasn't it our our metaverse thing? Did we talk
about the puck Wedgie in the in the game for certain?
For Sutain, Yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Do Yeah, these things are weird. These things are weird, Ben,
I've seen them describe a couple of different ways. But
how would you describe a puckwodgee.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Having not knowingly seen one myself. The tricky thing about
these this is common a lot of Native American folklore
as well, is that they are shape shifters. I want
to give a shout out to author Teresa Bain in
her work Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore Mythology. Definitely
definite must read if you're a fan of folklore. She
(35:55):
notes the puck wedgie is a two to three foot
tall goblet, your Grimlin esque thing. It's a shape shifter,
but it often assumes the form of sort of a
human porcupine, a porcu man.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
That's pretty awesome puck watching.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
See.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
They seem to sort of possess siren like qualities, you know,
and and their ability to sort of lure people to
their death. But also occasionally I ascribe the ability to
whether it's organic or through some weapons I guess, launch
poisonous arrows mm hmm charts.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, porcupines also can't launch their quills.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
What that's a myth again. I'm playing Diablo for right now, guys,
and there are definitely puckwodgy like creatures in there that
shoot their spiky spikes at people. Okay, And Diablo four
is just, you know, kind of take that as fact.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's the paragon of reality.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
It's basically this generation's Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Last Day, have you guys seen you know, obvious.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
So there's all this air quality issues in New York
because of the wildfires in Canada, and it's been making around.
Somebody posting a billboard that says welcome to Hell New
York and is the Diablo.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Image in the background.
Speaker 5 (37:12):
It just looks like a nightmarish hellscape horizon.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yep, yeah, I saw that one as well, and at
first I didn't get it. But boy, good luck to
everyone in New York in Canada, most particularly in Norway,
where the fires consequences are also reaching across the Atlantic.
What would the puck wedgie make of this? Well, the
(37:39):
puck Dodgie probably wouldn't care too much because, as so
often happens in these ancient stories of running into near
human creatures, once upon a time, relationships between the humans
and the puck wedgies were pretty dope until humans did
some sort of trans and the puck wodgie soured on them.
(38:03):
So if you meet a puckwodge in the wild, it's
probably not gonna help you. There aren't a ton of
these sightings in the modern day, but you'll find no
shortage of amateur archaeologist or cryptozoologist or authors claiming to
have encountered them numerous times. Again, the tricky thing is,
this is an entity that can change its shape. So therefore,
(38:27):
if we're playing the thought experiment, it's completely possible if
you are listening to Tonight's show around other people, the
things sitting next to you appearing to be a person
is in fact a puck dodgie.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Be cool, Be cool.
Speaker 5 (38:43):
Shape shifters are neat but like really untrustworthy, you know
what I mean?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Come on, just be yourself.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
And the thing is, this is something we've talked about
in the past, with Austerrolopithecus and with the legends of
wild Harry Hamani's that are around in almost every culture
on every continent except Antarctica. It's the theory that fascinates,
at least me so much. I want to speak for everyone.
(39:11):
What if these stories somehow date back to actual encounters
with early Homo sapiens and early relatives of Homo sapiens.
The geography here might appear super wrong, right, because most
of those reliced populations of mixtapes or relatives of Homo sapiens,
(39:32):
they were in the African continent, the Middle East, parts
of Europe, and Central Asia. But I don't know, did
you guys see the news about the new stuff discovered
just recently Homo nalati. They're called Nalletti.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It's pretty awesome, isn't It's just like one of the
oldest versions of a pre Homo sapien population that was
creating art. Is it art or what were they?
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yeah, they were purposely carving symbols, so purposely carving with
meaning one hundred thousand years before what we call humans
even picked up the brush or the you know, crush
the bugs to make the de So the point is
we are learning as a society more and more about
(40:20):
the ancient past, and DNA research already kind of proves
that there are a couple of other relatives of Homo
sapiens have yet to be discovered. So maybe that's part
of the explanation for the puck wedgie. But if we're
talking about these weird primates, excuse me, I don't want
to denigrate them. If we're talking about these near human,
(40:41):
non human primates, then of course we have to intro
another one. Ohio, you see, has its own version of Bigfoot.
It's not the dog man, it's not the frog man.
It's the Grassman. We'll pause for a word from our sponsors,
and then let's go into the deep grass and see
(41:02):
what we find.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
And we're back. So grassman, is it like a pucklodgee?
Is it a grass that walks around.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
That would be so cool.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
A walking marijuana plant, or like a he who walks
behind the rose kind of children in the Corn things.
I always loved the mythology of the Children of the Corn.
I found it genuinely chilling and listened to the audiobook
of the story recently. But that's one of those ones
that the franchise just kept on franchising when it should
have stopped long ago.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
They spent a lot of time the sketching out the
character Malachi. But you know, short stories make for great adaptations.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I really I love that one.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
I love the lore of sort of a weekly godlike entity,
which is a way you could describe something like Cutulhu,
you know, Cthulhu. Excuse me, so, the Ohio Grassman aka
the Minerva Monster is sort of a one to one
description of bigfoot lore with a few key differences.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, what I've heard is that it's got longer hair,
and it smells worse. Yeah, it smells worse, and it
was found in grass. So rather than seeing but bigfoot
in the woods, which is highly common, or things that
would be described as bigfoot, the landscape has changed. That's
one of the main things that Jeff One of the
(42:32):
guys I spoke to who who did the frogman festival.
He said, it's really just a landscape thing, and the
longer hair is the only, really the only discerning factor
between this grassman and Bigfoot sightings.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
And interesting in comparison to another possible subspecies of Bigfoot,
the skunk ape. The grass the grassman doesn't smell as
bad as the skunk ape, but the skunk ape or
swamp ape has adapted to its environment.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
Also, well, once again, I'm gonna bring up the walking
marijuana plant thing.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
I mean skunk people refer to.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
That's a that's a term that gets thrown around a
lot for weed that smells really.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Strong, you know, the grass man. Sorry, I yield my time.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I think these are all just hippies and ponchos. They're
smoking a lot of weed hiding out either in grass
or in the woods.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Gilly suits, maybe a good gilly suit would one hundred
percent make you look like look like something is some
kind of cryptis similar to this.
Speaker 5 (43:33):
Also one of those like Luau type grass like a
like a suit version of a grass skirt kind of
it's a specific type of camo. Got it looks really yeah, yeah,
picturing it, yep, picturing it, so you see it in fiction.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
Hopefully you never see them in real life, folks, But
in fiction, in in action movies, you'll see snipers wearing
gilly suits so that they can lay around for hours
until they need to get that shot one hundred yards
away or something. But also, how about cannabis chimp. We'll
see if that works out. A chimp would be a
(44:06):
little too short for this, but still, this is almost
like this goes back to Native tribe, native community folklore
about wild, hairy, humanlike creatures dwelling deep in the wild.
It wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that reports of sightings
(44:28):
began to get more attention from the United States at large. Okay,
I think we should pause for a second here to
say we know, especially for our fellow conspiracy realists who
consider themselves a bit more skeptical, we know that this
might all sound silly, but you have to remember we
(44:50):
were able to trace down the origins of a couple
of other things that were treated like myths. I'm thinking
particularly Matt Noll of the se Ka remember that one.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
Oh yeah, another another reason to redheads get a bad rap.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah, we have a whole episode on that.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
Right, mm hmmm, yeah, we're in that episode. We were
able to trace back through the folklore to some archaeological
discoveries that appear to confirm not all the rumors about
Sea Techa in the legends, but we're able to confirm
there was a population that is more than likely the
(45:33):
origin of those legends, and they were regular people.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Yeah, and speaking back to like folklore, often in fairy
tales and horror science fiction fantasy, giants are often depicted
as being cannibalistic. I mean, you think about Jack and
the Beanstalk. That giant is going to grind your bones
to make his bread. You know, that is part of
the legend of the sea see five fo FuMB Indeed.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, there's another version of Grassman and these types, a
bigfoot called the wild Man of enon enon Enan, I
think is how you'd say it. And it's in Ohio. It's
a very similar on longer hair does kind of the
same thing, lives in the same places, but it's only
an Enan, and I think the specificity of it is
(46:20):
what makes it feel special, especially to a small town.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Like that, and also the idea for lasting with the Grassman.
The idea of creating nest or habitations in tall grass
is quite similar to the sleeping patterns of gorillas, which
also create nest right lowland gorillas in particular, I'm thinking of.
(46:46):
We know that the answers to these things, the origins
for these things are out there somewhere. We just can't
assume the answers are one hundred percent what we expect.
There is a returning guest here for everybody who was
treating this like a trivia gabe. Who is the cryptid
with the best butt around? Who is the cryptid with
(47:09):
abs for days? You know them, you love them? He
is Mothman. Yeah, And according to true believers, Mothman took
some time and traveled to Ohio.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
Boy that he ever cometh, he's got like a nine
pack man. Seriously serious business in that region.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Well, it's really interesting to me, like talking about Ohio
and Mothman, because the primary thing, right, the event that
started the whole Mothman sightings was the collapse of the
Silver Bridge, right and which which is a bridge that
crosses the Ohio River. So it goes from Point Pleasant,
(47:51):
West Virginia into this small town in Ohio. So I
guess if you if the bridge is the primary place
of the event, then it makes sense that both I
guess sides of the river would have sightings if there
really was something going around there. And there are a
ton of sightings on the Ohio side. There's even because
of that bridge collapse. The names of the people who
(48:15):
died in that horrible accident are on the Ohio.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Side, right.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
Yeah, And this is something that you can you can
see in action the next time you're in that part
of the world. Now, will people universally say, yes, I
believe wholeheartedly a mothman? No, almost certainly not. But will
they all be familiar with it? Yes, And it's always
(48:42):
worth the time if you can to get out in
the field and check out that stuff firsthand. We'd love
to hear if you have some insight a mothman or
any of these cryptids. And as we said at the top,
we are not getting to all of the very fertile
cryptid soil here in Ohio, so we want to hear
(49:05):
your experiences. Shout out to Bessie, shout out to any
other number of urban legends and local folklore. We didn't
get to with any cryptid episode. We want to end
by pulling together a few incredibly important threads actually finding
these organisms. Yes, okay, it's true that cryptozoology is not
highly regarded in the world of academia. That's not us,
(49:27):
that's just how other scientists treat this pursuit. And it's
true that we often look at folklore being confused for
hard science, you know, as we ask all the time,
where the bones, where's the feces? How do they interact
with other creatures in a given biome? But the cool
slash terrifying part. It's also true that now, more than
(49:49):
any other point in human history, we are as a civilization,
are best positioned to discover new species if we act
now TikTok.
Speaker 5 (50:01):
And yet one thing that I think we all run
up against with these things is why isn't there more evidence?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
You know?
Speaker 5 (50:10):
Why are these stories always so tenuous and vague and
come from multiple reports that all kind of di it.
It always seems more like a historical game of telephone
than actual species that are undiscovered. But I'm I'd love
to see, I'd love to find out about more.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Because that's kind of what it is, right, I mean,
they're just stories. That's why it's so fascinating and you
can't prove it, so you hope to prove it. I
think that's why people are so into going to these conferences.
Why there are things like the North Georgia Bigfoot Conference
that exists. I mean, that's just why.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
Or Monsterfest in Ohio, and TV producers of course love
a search for Bigfoot because it's guaranteed to go on
for seasons. I want to go back to earlier point
as attempting to make the human populations everywhere. Surveillance technology
is growing ubiquitous. If something has not been discovered yet,
it is more likely now to be discovered, and this
(51:09):
moment will pass. It is a brief moment. We are
coming to you amid Earth six mass extinction. If you
are a cryptid hunter, now is your time. Get out there,
find what you can, and please, please please tell us
about it again. Shout out to Monsterfest in Ohio and
shout out to North American dog Man Project. Shout out
(51:29):
to you. We can't wait to hear what you think
about this. Are their cryptids out there? On previous shows,
we've said they're most likely to be discovered in the
depths of the ocean at this point, maybe some relic
populations in very very small corners of remaining wilderness. But
(51:50):
what's going on in your local neck of the woods
when you walk into your local restaurant or your VFW,
your hangout spot. What's the monster they talk about?
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Let us know.
Speaker 5 (52:02):
You can find this all over the internet, or conspiracy
stuff on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, conspiracy stuff show on
Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yes, well, you've got a phone number. You can call
us one eight three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail.
You've got three minutes. Give us a cool nickname. Please
let us know if we can use your name and
voice on the air. A quick shout out here to
that Jeff Craig guy who makes a thing called Map
in Black that is an entire map of the United
(52:31):
States with cryptozoological sightings on it pinpointed and then on.
If you flip the thing over, you can look at
it and see, like in alphabetical order, where all these
cryptives have been seen, and what type of cryptos? Really
really cool stuff, and uh yeah, if you don't want
to give us a call, why not instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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