What do people get out of claiming they've seen monsters?

Wikipedia says this: ”A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion.”.

So what do people, adults in particular, get out of claiming they’ve seen monsters, or claiming that they saw their friends all being eaten by a mythical monster and that’s why they all went missing? Some of these individuals have spent their entire lives revolving around their claims of seeing monsters. It seems disrespectful to claim you saw all of your friends get eaten by a monster if they did actually go missing on that day and were not seen again after the fact.

What exactly do they get out of this?