The following happened to me years ago when I was about 20 years old. I will skip the boring explanation of why I was where I was.
It was around midnight on a moonless night in Sonoma County, Northern California. I was alone walking along a road on this moonless night. It was dark as hell and all I could see was the edge of the road at my feet. The only structure was my friend's house about 100 yards behind me which I had just left "to go for a walk" (stupid me). The road was flanked by cow pastures on both sides for miles.
I blissfully walked along, thinking I'd go a mile or so and then return and go to bed. But, I began being aware of a foul smell that seemed to be coming from ahead and just to the left of the road.
As I continued, the smell got worse and worse. It smelled like sewage. A lot of it. I thought some animal must have died alongside the road and I kept walking. But, the odor grew even worse and now I began perceiving a feeling of fear and dread come over me. There was no reason for it. The smell was terrible but why was I feeling fear? No reason to be afraid of a bad smell, I thought, But, the feeling grew more intense as I continued walking.
Then, I stopped. Whatever this was -- the stink and this feeling -- just wasn't getting any better and I decided the thing to do was turn around and go back. So, I did just that at a brisk pace. By the time I reached my friend's house the smell and feeling were gone and I went to bed thinking I'd check out what was causing that smell in the morning.
The next morning I retraced my steps from the night before but there was no dead animal and no bad smell. Nothing that would explain what I experienced the night before. Just fresh country air, trees and grass. Whatever had caused that awful smell was gone.
Now, I never saw a thing so I can't say "I saw bigfoot," but the other aspects of the experience do match BF encounters that I have read and heard about. So, I strongly suspect that is what I encountered on that night, BF sightings have been reported in that area before and since.
So, anyway, to answer the question posed on this thread, I'd say it depends a lot on the details of the situation. My impression of my experience is that both the smell and the unreasonable emotion I felt were intentionally caused for the purpose of getting me to leave the area.
And, it worked.
