I've found that a lot of people just don't want to talk about a sighting or encounter. It scared them to the point they won't go back into the woods. I knew of a guy who was a mountain of a man. You think there's nothing he would be fearful of. He, and another person, had a sighting at night as it watched the two of them. It took a few years before he would even consider hiking much less sasquatching.
Nowadays, the stigma that used to be attached to openly discussing it is gone. That's a good thing.