Bigfoot Society - Exploring the Fascinating World of the Frogman Festival - A Community Spotlight

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

In this episode I talk to Jeff Craig from the Map in Black about the upcoming Frogman Festival.Resource:https://frogmanfestival.com/Do you have an upcoming community event or individual that you would like me to spotlight and talk about? Nominate one by emailing me at [e-mail]_______Join the only Facebook group for Van Meter Visitor fans - “Van Meter Visitor Believers” - See you there!https://www.facebook.com/groups/vanmetervisitorbelievers/?ref=shareFOR MORE INFO ON THE VAN METER VISITOR FESTIVAL:https://www.facebook.com/vanmetervisitorfestival/_______Join us over on Patreon! Get access to extra audio content, exclusive merch like a membership card and stickers, watch me interview guests weekly live on video, a Patron-only Discord and more.https://www.patreon.com/thebigfootsocietyPick up a Bigfoot Society shirt to rep the podcast!https://www.etsy.com/shop/BigfootSocietyTune in for new episodes of Bigfoot Society!https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Qq45W6iaTU8FE9kelxT7QFor full links go to:www.bigfootsocietypodcast.com

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All right, Bigfoot Society, we've got another community spotlight episode for you. I've got the privilege talking to Mr. Jeff Craig. You may know him from the Map in Black, but he is also the organizer of the first Frogman Festival coming up very soon. How's it going, Jeff? Doing great, Jeremiah. Glad to be back. Yeah, we were able to chat. I mean, man, it's been quite a while back if listeners want to go back.

It might be like a year or so, yeah. I think it was last year. And we were on. It was, yeah. And then you were at the Van Meter Visitor Festival. We got to hang out there. That was a fun time. And now you are.

And then Cryptocon saw each other. Yeah, that's right. A crypticom was just a blur. There was a lot going on. Yeah. It was. And now you are organizing a cryptic festival, which is amazing. Tell me about the Frog Man Festival, Jeff.

The Frogman Festival is the first ever Frogman Festival, the inaugural edition, I guess you could say, the inaugural event. And it'll be March 4th, Saturday, March 4th, right near Cincinnati, Ohio, just up the river, the Little Miami River. And we're having it at the Great Wolf Lodge Conference Center, and that is technically in Mason, Ohio, right? next to Kings Island. A lot of people know Kings Island as the amusement park. It'll be closed for the season when we're there, but right next door is the Great Wolf Lodge, which is also like an indoor water park.

And so we've rented out the conference center, beautiful conference center, big, huge timbers, a big two-story lobby that you walk in and see. And we've got the ballroom. We've got another big room for speakers, and we've got a huge hallway. very wide and open that will be aligned with vendors as well. So got a big plan in store for everybody that can make it out.

And you can order tickets in advance at frogmanfestival.com, $10 for adults, kids are free. And you can also just show up that day and get their tickets at the door, same price, $10. That is awesome. For people that might not know, let's start with Jeff. What exactly, what's the, what's the, you must have a quick summary by now of what the frogman is, because you've probably had to talk to a few other people, I'm guessing about this. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, the frogman is a reptoid, you know, a reptilian type creature, a cryptid that has been seen in and around Loveland, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cincinnati on the Little Miami River. And it's only been seen a couple of times over the years. It's not a very high profile cryptid like Bigfoot or some of the other more popular or so-called famous cryptids. But it's really captured, you know, the imagination in the hearts of a lot of people that do find out about it. And once they know about it, it seems to just really kind of have a sort of adorable quality almost. You know, people aren't scared of it or have any sort of issue with. to just accept this almost lovable creature, half frog, half human. And it's come out of the Little Miami River a couple of times.

Over the last several decades, the big story is two police officers that shot at it in the early 1970s, two police officers from Belovedland, Ohio. And there was a story before that that is often kind of put in with, with the Loveland Frogman lore back in the 50s when a businessman from the neighboring town of Milford saw this creature or creatures. And the more you delve into that story, the more it almost could be construed as aliens

or an alien encounter, kind of a grayish, humanoid person, and it had a wand or some kind of stick. It emitted an energy or some sort of light, and people interpret that as possibly a weapon or something for mind control or zapping his memory. So sometimes in the Frogman fan art, you see the Frogman holding a wand or stick,

and that's probably from that early story. And then there's been a sighting or two in the 2000s, when Kate was playing Pokemon Go along the Lom River captured as a photo and that kind of made the internet rounds there

when that happened. It's a little tenuous, of course. I mean, all the stories are a little tenuous, but there's one thing for sure the Lovelin Frog Man is a legend and it's one that we just want to celebrate here in Cincinnati.

and give our local cryptid at stew with a festival. I think it's long overdue. Absolutely. And so, you know, I've been going around to these festivals for over a decade, selling my maps. And now that I have Map in Black, which is a map of the entire country, that pinpoints on in places and cryptids and UFOs, I've been able to travel outside of Ohio to these other festivals like Fan Meter, or the Wethwell UFO

Fest and I may go into Mothman for years but these other festivals and Kexburg UFO Fest so over the last couple years I've just really seen these other festivals doing these cool little things in their town and there's nothing like it

anywhere close to Cincinnati. I mean Mothman's probably the closest that's two and a half hours up the river from us and that's like the godfather of festivals You know, that's what everyone just looks at as an amazing model for a great festival, cryptid festival. And I'm not trying to replicate that at all.

Mine is an indoor festival, obviously much smaller. And I think that's a good, it's good size, and it'll be a good experience for people. Just a one-day show on Saturday. doors will probably open. We're going to open at 10, but if you're a VIP, you can get in early. If you get a VIP ticket, and then we have speakers going all day as well. And they'll start at 10 o'clock in the morning. Going through, the last speaker starts at 5.

You've got eight, although the lineup is really impressive. It's eight speakers. That's incredible. I do. I do. I know. And I, you know, I had to really. just kind of stopped there.

I was so excited just to, you know, contact all these great people that I know. And I'd actually lined up Chad Lewis. And, um, oh, really? He was, he was willing, he was willing to come out. But, um, I think we're going to hold off and wait for, uh, Chad to come out. Hopefully next year, assuming we do it again, which I would love to do.

But yeah, you know, he was, he was definitely interested and was willing to do it. But we, um, he's busy right now. Like I said, he was going to do it. But he's like, you know, if you want to wait a year, that's cool. And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, let's wait a year. So, but, you know, Chad, Chad's a great guy that I met at Van Meter. And we went on the tour afterward.

Oh, yeah. Got to chat, you know, you and I and him and a bunch of us other folks after the festival and after the tour that he led. So that was great to get to know him more. So I'm looking forward to, you know. you know, maybe a future event with him. But the people you have this year are just fantastic. They're really good, dude. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Reesis with Matt Rogers and Bowen-Yang.

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I reached out to the people I know and I just, you know, the people that I knew would come and give a great presentation that I think

the people of Cincinnati would enjoy. And of course, the people from well outside of Cincinnati to attend as well. But yeah, you know, I wanted, you know, certain people to be there that I thought of immediately when I started springstorming the Frogman Festival. So, you know, big names, Heather Mosier will be a speaker of course from Small Town Monsters

and in other books and research that she does. So she'll be talking about folklore and the importance of storytelling and keeping these traditions alive. And I've got James Willis, who is an author and paranormal researcher from Ohio from Columbus. And he's written several books on various goings on in Ohio and beyond. And I've known James for, gosh, going on two decades now. Wow. I joined. He was one of the first people I met when I really.

kind of delved into the paranormal world back in 2005 when I started researching for my first map in Ohio and joined his ghost hunting group called, it's called Ghosts of Ohio and

goo, for short, G-O-O. Nice. So we spent years having monthly meetings and going to private houses for people that wanted us to investigate their residence for possible ghosts.

And just all under the radar, all, you know, no charge or anything like that. It's all volunteer stuff. And, you know, James just really showed me. It was a great model for how a paranormal group could and should be run. And they're still very active. I'm kind of on hiatus, but they've got the website there if you want to check out, Ghosts of Ohio. And then James had several books out in his most recent book is called Southern Ohio Lauren Legend. So cover Cincinnati all the way across the southern part of Ohio, some Appalachian stories.

The town of Athens is in southeastern Ohio, home of Ohio University, not the Ohio State. University, but another college called Ohio University. And they've got this pentagram around the city if you connect the dots to five cemeteries. It created this pentagram with Athens right in the middle in Ohio University right in the middle. So I explored that when I was researching my maps. So James used my work and some of my research for that chapter of his book. and so that was great to be able to help contribute to that. So we've just, I've known him for years and years and we've just had a great,

you know, friendship. So when I kind of finally realized I was actually going to be doing this event last summer, he was like my first, my first ask for him to be involved. Oh, absolutely. So thankfully he said, yeah. So he'll be, he'll be given a talk, 45, they're all 45 minute talks, you know, go on the hour. Awesome.

Yeah. As a Bigfoot guy, I noticed you have B. Mills there. People might remember her from the comeback episode of Finding Bigfoot. That's a pretty big deal that she's going to be there. You've got Asher's talking about the Moth Man. That's incredible. But there's one thing I wanted to get your words on, Jeff, at the end here. Sure.

I heard through the Great Vine, well, actually it's on the website, but you're going to have a presence from MetaZoo there for some pretty special events, right? Yeah, Metazoo was involved as a sponsor early on when I asked that, and I was just so excited that they said that they would, you know, be a sponsor, which I just kind of thought meant, you know, they would, you know, we could, you know, use their name. as a sponsor and that would help promote it. And maybe they would show up with, you know, their stuff and their cards and have a booth to sell cards. You know, fingers crossed, maybe they would do a special Loveland Frogman promo card or something. And I'm still not sure what they're going to do with that. But what they did decide to do is what they call a tower tournament, which they only do a few every year around the country. And this is a huge prize.

tournament, $50,000 in prize money going out to the top eight winners, starting with 128 players on Saturday. They'll be playing all day. They're in one half of the ballroom. Half the ballroom is them playing their tournament. The other half is vendors. And then they'll just kind of whittle it down. And then Sunday, they'll have the finals with the final players to, uh, players to, uh,

to get the, I think, I think it's top eight. I know first prize is like $20,000 in cash. Wow. Something like $30,000 worth of Metazoo merch. Your travel is paid for. It's just crazy the prize money for this. So this is all kind of their thing. They're kind of doing their own little thing, but it's in the festival.

Right. That's wild, man. And they'll have their booths. there and they'll have yeah they'll probably have their blow up mothman inflatable because I think we can fit it inside because we've got a two-story lobby

and kind of like they had it at mothman festival yeah yeah and at crypticcon that's crazy man right exactly they did yeah so yeah it's just going to be an amazing thing and then you can come

and just probably kind of like they did at crypticcon You can learn how to play the game. Obviously, you have to qualify to be one of the players of the tournament. You have to pre-qualify one of their other qualifier rounds. And I think that it was through the 27th of January. So if you haven't done it yet, you can still go watch, but you can't participate. Yeah, we can come down and watch.

That's right. Maybe try to get in the next one or something. Yeah. But they'll have the cards for sale. and there's going to be a couple of vendors that are MetaZoo kind of affiliated. Immortal Workshop is one. And I'm sure they'll be selling cards. And I don't know if people trade them.

I'm sure they do. So there'll be a whole card thing going on with Metazoo. Oh, that's awesome. Jeff, this has been. This has been an awesome quick chat about Frogman Festival. I think Frogman Festival is going to be one of the top of them. of 2023 for sure in the cryptic community. Fingers.

No doubt. Thank you so much for hanging out with me tonight for a few minutes. Well, I appreciate, Jeremiah, and I wish you can make it down, but I understand, you know, travel. So let's look at the calendar for next March, so we all go as well. And, yeah, to anyone that can make it down, come on down to Cincinnati for the weekend. and join us at Frogman. Absolutely.

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Cashback is earned automatically. Just use your Venmo debit card and the rewards show up without extra steps. It's a simple way to get rewarded on things that. already buying, whether that's groceries, coffee, or your go-to online shops. Everything lives right inside the Venmo app so you can track your spending, check your balance, and see your rewards all in one place. The Venmo debit card works just like the app you already use, fast, flexible, and built around your day-to-day life.

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