Well, people are pre-disposed to 'see' humanoid figures and faces, so it's not a stretch that a load of vague sightings informed by this mechanism, plus a certain amount of confirmation bias, results in a common 'sighting' format.
That's rather less outlandish, some might say.
Not all sightings are vague, some are very close up and some last a good while. For example...
A politician would risk extreme ridicule or even the loss of his job if he admitted to seeing a giant 'ape-man' in the Australian outback. But that is just what happened to Senator Bill O'Chee of the National Party back in October of 1977 when he was a boy. O'Chee had been part of a party of children from Southport School who had been on a two-day camping trip near Springbrook, Queensland. O'Chee was brave enough to tell the strange story in full. He was interviewed by legendary Australian cryptozoologists Tony Healy and Paul Copper. They also spoke to his friend Craig Jackson.
The camp was called Koonjewarre and stood on open grazing land close to a dense forest. There were thirty boys aged twelve to thirteen and two teachers. They were all stopping in cabins. At 12.30 pm Bill and Craig spotted something lying uphill from the camp, about 1300 feet away in an open area. After a while it stood up. The boys passed a pair of binoculars between them as they watched it. The creature was huge, about ten feet tall. It was covered in black, or dark brown hair about 2 inches long. It had no neck, the head sitting squarely on the shoulders. Craig said the creature reminded him of the character Chewbacca from the
Star Wars films except its fur was shorter and it had broader shoulderes and was bulkier. The thing swayed from side to side and seemed to be looking around. It has a stooped posture with long arms that fell down past the knees. Close by was a bush covered in whit flowers. The two lads noted that it came up to the creatures waist.
Other boys came over and a total of about twenty saw the yowie. Two boys stepped outside and the yowie noticed them and ran for the trees. The children told one their teacher, Kevin Brooks, an ex-soldier and he decided to lead a party up the hill to look for the monster. Craig said that when the camp caretaker heard this, he looked really frightened and urged them not to go up the hill. Craig thought that the caretaker had seen the monster before and was scared of it.
Later Healy and Cropper confirmed this by talking to the camps ' present caretaker who said that his predecessor had indeed encountered a yowie.
Ignoring the caretaker's warning Mr Brooks and four brave boys including Bill and Craig ventured up the mountain. They found that the bush that had been waist height on the yowie was five feet tall making the monster eight to ten feet high. Armed only with sticks, they entered the forest and found a trail of broken saplings and trampled bushes. They also found an area of compressed grass and twigs where the thing had apparently slept.
Back at the camp the other boys saw the monster emerge from the forest close to where the party had entered and it move dalong the edge of the woods. The beast was glimpsed intermittently all afternoon.
That night the yowie returned, making awful noises and coming as close as 33 feet to the cabins.Craig admitted to being 'shit scared'.
In the morning they found tracks and 3 foot high, deeply rooted shrubs that had been torn out of the ground by something far stronger than a man.
Back at the school the headmaster asked the boys not to talk about the incident and censored an article about it in the school magazine. Angered by this Bill contacted the
Gold Coast Bulletin and told them the whole story.