One day, while chatting in a (rather creepy) library basement, two friends were talking about the natural world. One mentioned having attended a bear safety talk years and years ago, and how one part still haunted him.
There are three types of bear encounters, and you have had two of them dozens of times. First is incidental, where a bear and human happen to spot one another. In the second the bear takes the position of an observer, sitting from a distance away to watch a human. Both happen with some regularity, and are non-fatal provided the human does not act rashly. But the last, vanishingly rare possibility, the predatory encounter, involves a bear stalking a human, allowing itself to be seen several times before killing and eating it. This is the situation you find yourself in now, having seen the same grizzly three times...
"That would make a good short story prompt," they both said at the same time.
So they both set to writing stories on the theme, and sent the prompt to some friends, too. The resulting stories form this cache.