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In Loch Ness, a 24-mile-long bottomless lake in the highlands of Scotland, it’s a creature known as the Loch Ness Monster.
Monster Talk.
Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
I’m Blake Smith.
And I’m Karen Stollznow.
In 1954, the last of the great universal film monsters was born when a scaly gill man emerged from the swampy waters of the Black Lagoon to terrorize Julia Adams in 3D.
Science couldn’t explain it.
But there it was, alive in the deep, deep waters of the Amazon.
A throwback to a creature that had existed a hundred million years ago.
Immensely strong and destructive.
A woman’s beauty, the bait that brought it out of its lair.
In 1955, two peculiar American water monsters appeared.
In Evansville, Indiana, a mysterious green-clawed beast was alleged to have attacked Naomi Johnson.
She never saw the furry thing that grabbed her, but it stained her leg green.
Was it a mossy limb combined with a misunderstanding of what was happening beneath the water?
It made the papers, but a week later, all the monster fuel went to the Kelly Hopkinsville Goblin attack, which had guns and UFOs and a carnival-like atmosphere that might be more than coincidence.
The other watery monster appeared earlier in 1955 when Robert Honeycutt said he saw three humanoid figures beside the road off the Madeira Loveland Turnpike.
The encounter has an eerie dreamlike quality as Honeycutt first thinks the beings are praying and then realizes they’re not even human.
And he’s curious, not much afraid for much of the encounter.
And there’s lots of details to this story, all captured by investigator Lynn Stringfield and written up in the book, Close Encounters at Kelly and Others of 1955.
Look, I have a lot of monster books on my shelves, but authors Isabel Davis and Ted Bledger really did incredible amateur journalism work on this volume, and it’s a pity that their efforts aren’t more widely recognized or cited in places like Wikipedia.
The Loveland Frog entry for Wikipedia is decidedly bare of details and focuses much more on the quite strange 1970s sighting, which, in my opinion, has a lot of the hallmarks of tomfoolery.
But the Davis and Bletcher book is an account of the Kelly Hopkinsville case, yet has extensive context about the incredibly diverse but widespread sightings of little men all around the world in this 1950s flying saucer scare context.
And the thing that I find fascinating is the way this little spaceman idea was rampant.
It was in the air.
And with radio shows like Long John Neville’s Party Line, I guess you could say it was on the air as well.
As a culture, America was primed for little men from outer space, or maybe from fairy lore, or even from other dimensions, as Jacques Vallée and John Kill would later suggest.
Well, that was 70 years ago, and we still haven’t turned up frogmen, or gillmen, or goblins, yet these monsters live on in our cultural memories and our social behaviors.
Today, we’re going to talk with Sydney Davidson, a student of my friend and colleague, Dr. Jeb Card, who did some anthropological work looking at the people who come to monster festivals inspired by these stories.
Monster Talk.
Our guest tonight is Sydney Davidson, who did some research into the Loveland Frog and the Loveland Frog Festival.
And we’ve asked her to talk about an anthropological look at this monster and how the community of Loveland has engaged with the story culturally.
But you’re not really just talking about one festival, are you?
And we should also probably let you introduce yourself.
So why don’t you tell us who you are and then talk about festivals around the Loveland Frog?
Yeah, so I’m Sydney Davidson.
I recently graduated.
I did my senior research project on the Loveland Frogman.
So this is…
kind of exciting to get to talk about it on this kind of a mode.
I’m in grad school right now.
I’m getting my Master’s of Library Science.
Sydney, can you tell us a little bit about your interest in this topic, how you discovered this topic and what led you to research Frog Boy, Frog Man?
So it’s like not like a very straight, you know, answer because I’ve always kind of been interested in this.
My parents watched Finding Bigfoot when I was a kid and had me sit in the room with them.
So I always kind of knew about this stuff.
But it was just like I met Dr. Card, Jeb Card, who you do in research of with.
Blake does.
And I don’t know why we would just talk sometimes and we talk about cryptids.
And then he just came up to me one day and he’s like, are you doing anything next year?
And I was like, I mean, probably doing at least something.
And then he was like, well, they asked me to talk at the Loveland Frogman and I get a booth and like, I wouldn’t sell anything.
Like I don’t have anything to sell.
So you could do like research there.
And I was like, okay, that sounds good.
But I thought he would mention it and then like never talk about it again.
And then he was like, and he was like, and then like, like a month later, he’s like, okay, well, we need to start planning your research.
And I was like, okay, so they’re like, this is happening.
So and I live kind of near Loveland.
I honestly had never really heard that much about the Loveland Frogman before I started doing the research.
But because it’s like kind of like a niche, like it’s, it’s a niche cryptid, like not a lot of people know about it even.
like in Loveland or like in the bigger cryptozoological community.
But yeah, that’s just kind of how I got here.
And then it’s been a wild two couple of years trying to, you know.
bring everything together and kind of go into a bunch of different festivals um I went to one that was kind of it’s a like it’s on the leap year which is a fun pun right but it’s put on by the city of Loveland I know right it took me a minute I’m not not big on wordplay so
And it’s literally called return of the love, like return of the frog man.
So it’s a like put on by the city themed frog man festival.
And then I went to cryptid con, which is in, Oh, what is it?
Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky.
So I went down there and then I went, which was, and those were all kind of preliminary just to kind of get an idea of what these festivals might look like.
And the main one I did is the Loveland frog man festival that’s in March.
of every year.
It’s a weekend long event.
Well, you mentioned that it’s not a well-known cryptid.
And in fact, I think we’ve only really dedicated one episode to it.
And that was back in 2020 with Ryan Haupt, which I think also introduced me to Skyline Chili, which was, yeah.
So obviously really important findings.
Yes.
Well, I do think that we’ve name-dropped the Loveland Frog a few times.
And
Years and years ago I wrote an article about the Loveland frog.
I’m living in Denver, Colorado, and we’ve got a local legend.
There’s a Loveland around here.
So I’ve always believed that the Loveland frog story from Ohio was transplanted, transported here as a legend.
And, yeah, so that’s why I slipped up earlier and said the frog boy because that’s sometimes what our local version is called.
It’s the frog boy.
It’s this kind of hybrid frog.
boy or frog man depending on uh who’s telling the story but it’s been around for maybe about 40 years as as far as i know so yeah it’s inspired so it’s inspired lots of uh legends i think in in other places too
It spawned them, I think.
What are you going to do with me?
What are you going to do?
But do you want to briefly remind listeners what the Loveland Frog story is before we get into the festival stuff?
I realize your research was not about the monster.
It was about the festivals.
But what is the Loveland Frog story in Ohio?
So it all started in 1955.
So what, this is, yeah, it’s been 70 years.
So it kind of started there.
It’s a maitre d’ and he’s driving towards Branch Hill, which is like towards Cincinnati, which most people probably have no idea where Loveland, Ohio is, which is totally fine.
It’s Ohio, but it’s in Southwest.
It’s in the Southwest, Ohio.
It’s in the greater Cincinnati area.
So Branch Hill would be towards going south towards Cincinnati.
And so, of course, it’s at night because every sighting is at night.
And this guy, he’s he’s driving.
He stops.
He sees like this group of like three guys.
One of them has like a weird like lump on its back.
It’s holding a stick.
It, you know, puts the stick in the air, sparks fly out of the stick, he calls the stick a wand, and then they disappear into the night.
But the most important part is that when he was describing it, he said that their mouths were frog-like.
Who really knows what that means, but that’s what he called them.
And then nothing is seen until 1972 when a police officer is driving along the Little Miami River, which is a tributary of the Miami River.
And then and he sees the frog like creature on the side of the road and it kind of like is standing there.
It’s bipedal.
And then it kind of jumps over a barrier and goes towards the river.
And then two weeks later, a police officer sees a figure that looks like it, or it may be the same figure, we don’t know.
And he shoots it and they think that they’ve caught it.
It’s like a weird, we don’t even really know what he shot.
We don’t really know what he found, but he says that he shot it and got rid of the figure.
And now…
And there have been other sightings, but these are like the three big ones is all of like those three sightings.
And that’s really the story of the Loveland Frogman.
I wish it was like kind of more exciting.
It’s a little strange, but we got that bit of mystery.
Yeah.
so you’ve taken an anthropological approach to understand the Loveland frog.
Can you tell us a little bit about your research and how you engage with the topic and also the people who engage with this sort of thing as well?
Yeah.
So I, which is us too, right?
I mean, like, right.
Cause like, that was like, well, like to like do a branch off here, but like, that was like also part of the problem of like, or one of the hardest part was like, this is like kind of,
autoethnographical at the same time like dr card had to keep reminding me he’s like you’re interacting with this too like you’re going to the festival like so that kind of made it difficult to like trying to take an anthropological approach but i really was just kind of looking out like the people that went to these festivals and kind of why they went to the festivals um
And so I had like some surveys, which was like the basis of my research was I had people answer questions.
And mostly they were about they weren’t so much about the Loveland frog as they were about why like they’re there.
What got them into the paranormal?
How much do they know about the paranormal?
Like.
we use the Mothman, the infamous Mothman as kind of a branching off point too, of being like, this is what we consider to be like the pinnacle cryptid.
So how much do you know about this versus how much do you know about the frog man?
And why are you here?
What brought you here?
What are you most looking forward to?
And so by like kind of talking to people, we were trying to, you know, get the, the why, get to the heart of the why.
And yeah,
What else did we do?
We did all like it was there.
It was a lot to course through all of the data.
It was a lot of because it was mostly short answer responses.
So there was a lot hidden in there.
Well, I just really recently got back from I don’t know if you can see this or not.
This is from the Green Ice Festival, which is the second year they’ve done this in Georgia.
Similarly, tiny.
not well-known monster, but I want to say the kids who put it together, they’re young.
They’re in their, I think they’re in their twenties, but they, you know, it’s not a well-known monster, but it is a legit piece of folklore and has pulled together a really nice little festival at the North Georgia.
And there’s not much going on up there.
It’s a, it’s a very rural, just, there’s not a lot of people there.
Right.
But a lot of people come from around the area from all over to, to go to these festivals.
So I,
It’s like knowing why.
I mean, I know why I go, you know, but I may have different reasons than the average person.
So I think it’s interesting that you were trying to look at their motivations.
And you were also looking at how they got interested in this stuff at all, right?
Yeah.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
You divided it into their interest into media driven and impersonally driven, right?
When I was looking through, so I like literally just asked the question, what got you into the paranormal?
And it was like open ended.
People could write in anything and people did write in anything.
And so.
It’s a survey to an open event.
People always write crazy stuff.
So it was people mostly said TV shows.
I think The X-Files was the number one TV show that people cited being important to them.
But then also people said podcasts and YouTube, BuzzFeed Unsolved, those shows.
But then other people were like…
like I saw a ghost when I was six in my bedroom.
Like, so it was like people being like, I had personal experiences.
Like I’ve seen Bigfoot, like they’ve, I’ve seen a UFO.
Like they were like, I have a personal experience with the paranormal or with cryptozoology.
And that’s what got me into this.
So it was either they saw it on TV or they saw it personally.
And I thought that was like an interesting divide because it was literally like right down the middle.
It was like 50% of people that answered the question said.
I saw a TV show or I saw like something on YouTube or I listened to something.
And then 50 people were like, I saw it myself.
I saw it with my own two eyes, which was like, I, we thought was very interesting.
Your findings touch upon a paradox too, that the primary purpose of the event appeared to be purchasing merchandise.
And yet survey respondents expressed a strong interest in cryptozoology itself.
Yeah.
We thought, cause like the whole event, like there were speakers, of course,
There were like some like like events for kids to go to.
But like you walk in and it’s just like booth after booth of selling stuff.
And a lot of it wasn’t it was like T-shirts, like silly T-shirts that were like.
you know, I went, I saw the Loveland Frogman and all I got was this, you know, stupid t-shirt.
Like that was kind of like, like that kind of merch.
Like none of it was like what you would consider to be like serious.
Like it’s kind of like almost making fun of cryptozoology, which I thought was interesting because people spent real money to go to this event and you would think that they would want to take it seriously.
But then a lot of the survey responses, like merch was one of the things that people talked about.
But it wasn’t like the thing.
People were like, I wanted to come and I wanted to talk about this.
I wanted to learn more.
Like I am interested in the paranormal.
And so I kind of we kind of saw it as, you know, I kind of called it like a double edged sword when I was trying to describe it to people was like, you know, being into the cryptozoology is maybe not the most popular thing.
And some people there is a stigma associated with it.
And I recognize that.
And so by going there and saying, oh, well, I just wanted to buy like a silly T-shirt, it kind of makes it easier for people to actually go what they’re there for.
We talked a lot about like Baudrillard, which is like his idea of simulacra, where it’s something hidden inside of something else.
And so it was, I’m really interested in the paranormal, but I’m going to pretend that I’m only interested in the merch and that this silly T-shirt is the only reason why I’m here.
Yeah, that’s interesting.
Oh, did you question or did you survey any of the children?
I actually was not allowed to because IRB internal review board, because it was a university.
It’s okay.
But I was just thinking, if you ask the kids questions, it could be a tadpole.
Oh, I wish it would have been interesting because there were some people that came up and they were like 16.
And I was like, I want to know what you have to say.
Yeah, well, no, that’s true.
But yeah, the IRB puts limits on these things.
But so your contention is that they could all say they were there for the merchandise, but some people were there to engage with the monstery side of it.
Some people were there for the stories.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I find it interesting.
You mentioned the stigma associated with cryptozoology.
Did that kind of come out in the surveys at all?
Did people express that?
You know, some people said it to me, maybe not necessarily like…
in the actual survey they were just we were kind of like just chatting and they were like you know kind of talking about like you know like oh like i’m really glad you’ve asked about this people don’t ask about it very often but then i think one of the bigger like things was that like we did have quite a few people who didn’t answer seriously and based off of the things that they said i could tell that like they thought that my questions were
not to be taken seriously like I was like you don’t think that this like has value and that’s okay that happens with every survey but I kind of saw it more with the things that people said or rather than the thing than people saying like outright like oh like I get made fun of this but I get made fun of for believing in this and maybe a type of bravado too where they don’t want to be seen as being crazy for being interested in this sort of thing
Yeah, that’s probably not limited to just monster festivals.
I know like down in Atlanta, we have this big media event called Dragon Con, which is grown from being, let’s say, a Star Trek, Star Wars type fandom thing to being this mass media culture event or pretty much any type of show.
I think maybe they don’t have, you know, I was going to say maybe they don’t have like Spanish language soap operas.
But other than that, like they do have K-dramas.
So it’s really, I may just not know because they have so many things there.
But there will be people there who are like clearly engaging with this stuff in a deep level of fandom, you know, putting on cosplays.
And, you know, seriously, you know, trying to show not just their craftsmanship, but their their I don’t know, what would you call it?
Their tribe, you know, like who they represent.
But at the same time, there’s people who are like rolling their eyes.
I’m just here because my boyfriend’s here or my girlfriend’s here until they get to the merch room.
And then all of a sudden they’re buying all kinds of things conspicuously about one topic.
So it’s like they’re secretly fans of something, you know.
Right.
Yeah.
Don’t want to admit it.
We probably have not really covered this for Monster Talk.
We’ve lived it.
But, you know, being an enthusiast of the paranormal does put you on the outside in some ways.
Yet, at the same time…
weird stuff has this huge cultural footprint and clearly is a massive moneymaker.
So it’s like, but I, some people seem to like to mock it from the outside, even though clearly the world is living it.
We’re in it.
You know, when I was talking like Dr. Card was like, don’t forget, like you’re there too.
Like, even if you think that you’re like, not as weird and I’m putting weird in air quotes as other people, like you, you,
are here like you’ve dedicated a weekend of your life to going to this event and i think that’s something i’d like to remind some people while they’re there like i’m trying to think there’s a word for that in anthropology when you’re studying something from the outside versus the inside i can’t remember what it is
Emic is internal, etic is external.
You were kind of emic, right?
Yes.
And we in linguistics talk about the observer’s paradox.
So I think you probably would have experienced that too, where it’s one thing to go along and be a participant and just observe things.
But then if you start handing out surveys, people are going to react to you differently.
Yeah, no, it definitely was like because there would be some times where I would because I had like I had some like of my classmates there who agreed to come with me just to like, you know, have other people at the table.
And my mom was there, too, just because she’s also interested in this stuff.
But I when I would walk around like it was like I was like.
you know just a regular observer like i didn’t have anything on me saying like oh i’m like here as a researcher so like getting to talk to people outside of that like outside of the booth versus behind the booth was also very interesting yeah different perspectives yeah yeah i think that comes up uh a lot in religious studies where
Especially because there’s a orthopraxy side to religion.
So by being there, there’s a perception that you ought to be there as a participant and as a believer, you know, and then when you’re there studying it.
there’s a concern that maybe you’re in some way mocking it or deconstructing it, you know?
And, and I, I think that that’s really interesting to me how different fields of human study have to deal with this same sort of concept.
So also I like monsters and t-shirts.
So I, you know, I, I get it.
See things from both sides.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Coming up to my booth, you might be skeptical.
You’re like, oh, this is a college student.
She doesn’t care.
I could get it.
She’s doing this as a research project.
She…
you know, like she may make fun of me in this, but yeah, exactly.
But I did try to wear like, you know, frog related t-shirts.
So I hope people like you do.
Yeah.
You got to wear like, I was like, hopefully like I look like a little bit more in the crowd.
We’ve talked a little bit, and this is maybe a little open-ended, but we’ve talked a little bit on the show before about re-enchantment.
And you said in your paper, or what is that called, by the way?
I know what I see is a one-sheet PDF.
I don’t know what that’s actually called, though.
Like, is that…
That’s a graphic.
But is that actually like what what did you do with this?
How did you present this?
What have you done with this work?
I guess that’s a good question to ask.
Yeah.
So it was for my honors project, which meant that, you know, like I turned it into Dr. Card and he gave me a grade.
Gotcha.
So it was like an actual school project.
But then at Miami, we have it’s called the Undergraduate Research Forum, which is a poster presentation.
Oh, OK. That’s why it looks like an infographic.
OK. Yeah.
So like when I would stand in front of the poster and people would come up and ask me questions about the Loveland Frogman.
Oh, that was the most interesting poster there, of course.
Well, I would imagine so.
I mean, who’s going to compete with the Loveland Frog?
That’s right.
So re-enchantment.
So I think for a long time, I just sort of took the re-enchantment concept at face value that because it’s such a compelling argument, right, that we live in a world of materialism and science and that’s pushing out, you know, these other ideas and pushing out folklore.
And I think it was only fairly recently that we had on
um an author who kind of questioned that and said wait a minute maybe that’s not true you know i think was it weber i think who came up with this idea at the turn of the last century right yeah um but
It’s a great way of thinking about this because people want magic in their lives.
But at the same time, as we were just discussing, it’s everywhere.
It’s simultaneous.
People want to reject it, but it’s everywhere.
People have sort of categorized, I don’t believe in that.
I don’t believe in that.
But at the same time, the books sell, the movies sell, the stories are told.
So how did you…
engage with this re-enchantment concept here?
And what do you think about it ultimately?
Cause I mean, it seems to fit, but you know, where do you come down on that?
I’m really interested.
I, I think it would be interesting to listen to who you brought on your podcast.
Talk about how it may like, and I’m guessing, was it just about what you said?
Like that there’s enchantment like everywhere.
Is that kind of what their argument was?
I feel bad.
Let me, let me look his name up because I feel bad that I can’t.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I just think that’s really interesting.
Yeah, he wrote an entire book on this concept that re-enchantment itself is the myth of disenchantment.
I really like this guy, Jason Josephson Storm.
Cool name.
Totally goth professor, right?
That’s the most goth professor.
Yeah, that was back in, that was, golly, that was only a year ago?
2025 has been a million years.
But anyway, that was Season 3, Episode 31, The Myth of Disenchantment.
And basically, he made the argument that, yeah, this concept is really compelling, but also, look at the world.
There’s enchantment everywhere.
It’s all around us all the time.
And if people are struggling against it or trying to recapture enchantment, they don’t have to go very far because there’s stories of enchantment all around us.
But yet, again…
And the concept that people are pushing back and because I literally hear people saying it, talking about the ivory tower academics and how they reject everything.
And they all are these closed minded skeptics.
And, you know, they have got no magic in their life.
They’re godless atheists.
They’re baby eaters is what they are.
We all know this.
So, in fact, my baby’s almost done upstairs.
I got to get up there and eat.
But anyway.
So I just find it really interesting to engage with the concept.
But the model works so well because people do reject disenchantment and want enchantment.
So, yeah.
I may have lost the question at this point.
What do you think?
Like, like I see it like kind of both ways now, like it is everywhere, but I guess I was kind of looking at it like more on like an individual, like versus like in community level, rather than like a re-enchantment of the world.
It’s kind of like trying to tap in to your community because I find, and I mean, this is such like an anthropological way, like,
like thing to like way to look at community, but like folklore really makes a community.
And so I think that a lot of times, especially because now that we’re in such a digital age where everything feels so connected, that it’s kind of hard to separate yourself from other people.
And so having like a cryptid that’s like yours.
kind of brings you together, but then it also makes your community feel like just a little bit more magical.
And that it’s not so much that you want the whole world to feel magical or you want it to feel enchanted, but you want your life to feel enchanted.
And that may not look the same for everybody.
Like you may really believe in the Loveland Frogman, but you don’t think UFOs have a chance of existing.
And so I like to think of it more individually, I suppose.
Yeah, I think we see that a lot with blind spots where people believe in one thing and think something else is entirely preposterous when it’s really much of a muchness.
But I think your work is really interesting and has it whet your appetite to do more research into cryptozoology?
you know, yes.
And also no, just because like, you know, in my, like in my grad school work and I work at a library, so that doesn’t give me much option to kind of look into cryptids and then like library school, you don’t do really much research.
Look at this.
What are you talking about?
I know.
I like work at like a public library, like our shelves are not,
We have like one shelf dedicated to that.
It’s two, I think, but we have two shelves.
It’s your duty to fill those shelves with monsters.
I wish I had that kind of say, but I don’t.
But, you know, I do still like think about it a lot.
And I, you know, like I’ll be with Blake at the Gods and Monsters conference.
Oh, cool.
March 2.
Yes.
Yes, I will.
Yeah.
And Dr. Card will be there.
So I’ll be I’m still talking about it.
Like, I wish it could have gone longer.
And I think, um,
I think some of my classmates that were like a year younger than me, they may be going back to the Loveland Frogman Festival this year.
So I may like tag along with them, but I’ll probably just go for fun anyway.
Well, Sydney, it’s been wonderful to talk with you and to hear about your work.
We have a final question that we like to ask all of our guests on Monster Talk, and that is, what’s your favorite monster?
You know, I’ve been pondering this and I could only, is it okay if I say two and I give reasons why?
Oh, sure.
Okay.
So one, I’d have to say.
Are you using pondering?
Is that because it’s got pond and this is about frogs?
Oh, this was going to happen like months ago.
I’ve been pondering it since.
I was like, Oh my God, what am I going to say?
Um, so my first, my first one would have to be the Loveland Frogman, right?
Because like, who would I be if I didn’t say that?
But then, like, I feel like my real answer would probably be vampires, which is so completely outside of anything that I’ve talked about.
But it’s kind of what got me into the paranormal.
I watched Twilight way too young.
Wow.
Yeah.
And since then, I, you know, like, have, like, I’ve watched vampire things.
I’ve learned, like, I’ve been like, oh, I need to learn what a werewolf is.
Like, I need to, like, and that has led such a life.
And it just brought me here.
So your gateway to this monster world was Twilight.
Isn’t that just so sad?
Well, you know, no.
If it gets you to the right place, your first steps can be ignored.
I don’t, you know, it’s fine.
I still do love Twilight.
It holds a special place in my heart.
You read a book.
I mean, at this time and place, I’m just excited.
People are reading.
You know what I mean?
I’ve already said I worked at a library.
It’s not shocking.
I’ve read a book.
Well, not you in particular, but I mean, for all the joking and mockery for sparkly vampires, it got kids to read.
So it’s a big pass for me, even though I from what I’ve read of it without having read it, it doesn’t sound like it would be to my taste.
But, you know, I can’t imagine.
But reading is so important.
I’m just excited that, you know, whatever gets people there.
Right.
we try not to bag what other people like because people have different tastes individuals and and uh yeah it’s just cool that you found an interest in this at all and if you saw me at a twilight fan festival i’m just there for the merch i’m not i’m not a fan what are you talking about if you buy like a weird edward shirt i won’t say anything right no no exactly we won’t judge yeah
I mean, of course I’m team Jacob, but I mean, that’s not the point.
He knows the lingo.
Well, Sydney, it was so good to see you again.
Yeah.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
I look forward to hopefully seeing you in San Marcos in the future.
That’d be great.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Have a good night.
Yeah, you too.
See you guys.
Monster Talk.
You’ve been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
I’m Blake Smith.
And I’m Karen Stollznow.
You just heard an interview with Sidney Davidson about her field work looking at the Loveland Frog and other monster festivals.
A link to her report is in the show notes.
And if you’re a Patreon supporter, I’ve attached a copy of her report to the episode.
You know, it’s worth remembering that the Green Clawed Hand attack of Evansville happened just a few days before the Kelly Hopkinsville goblins’ case.
And the family at the center of that attack had members who worked in the carnival.
And I’m not mentioning that because I think they were pulling a hoax or trying to fleece the rubes.
I mention it because they had just left Evansville before the alleged goblins’ attack and surely must have been primed for monsters given all that was going on with UFOs and with little people in the news and in the zeitgeist.
In fact, several of the Goblin witnesses had to head back up to Evansville the next day after the events of that outrageous night.
And now, Hopkinsville has also returned to the Monster Festival business with GoblinCon as of October 2025.
So many monsters, so many festivals.
I’m glad people like Sidney are asking serious questions about what it might all mean.
There you’ll find links to our Patreon page, as well as a donate button if you’d like to just make a one-time contribution.
A great way to support the show is to buy books from our Amazon wishlist.
These are books that directly help with our monster research.
We love used books very much, so don’t feel compelled to buy new ones.
And we’re also very fond of Kindle editions because of their easily searched content.
And without spending any money at all, you can support and raise the profile of the show by leaving a positive review at iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
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You can help make Monster Talk the nightlight that keeps monsters away from someone you love.
Monster Talk’s theme music is by Peach Stealing Monkeys.
And as Stephen Fry likes to say, if you have been, thanks for listening.
This has been a Monster House presentation.
Yeah, because if you had pretended otherwise, I’m messing this up, but there was some solid you amphibian joke there somewhere.
I’m just going to have to clip that out.
Oh, yes, I am living.
I’m an amphibian, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s not going to make the final cut of anything.