| Thomas Eddie Bullard
was born in North Carolina in 1949 and developed an early interest in
flying saucers thanks to Friday and Saturday nights at the movies, where
he saw such classics as "Earth Versus the Flying Saucers". Sputnik inspired
him to begin reading the newspapers and he no sooner started than the
Levelland sightings piqued his curiosity. He began to read all the UFO
publications he could find--Keyhoe's books, Dick Hall's "The UFO Evidence",
Fate, Ray Palmer's Flying Saucers--and he eventually joined NICAP and
APRO in the 1960s.
After spending his
undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina, Bullard went
to graduate school in Folklore at Indiana University, and wrote his dissertation
on UFOs, completing his doctoral degree in 1982.
During his research
he scanned a great many newspapers for reports of the 1896-97 airship
and other pre-1947 sightings. He continued this work by traveling to state
archives and began issuing collections of this material as The Airship
File in 1982. When the Fund for UFO Research called for someone
to catalogue and carry out a comparative study of abduction reports, he
took on the job and completed "UFO Abductions--The Measure of a Mystery
in 1987." The literature up to that time included some 300 reports,
and comparisons demonstrated that reliable reports had many details of
sequence and content in common.
Following up on this
abduction research, Bullard published articles in the Journal of American
Folklore, Journal of UFO Studies, IUR, the MUFON UFO Journal, and the
2000 MUFON Symposium, arguing that abduction reports maintain a surprising
consistency. This sameness contrasts with folk narratives, urban
legends, and products of fantasy, where narrators
readily exploit opportunities
for variation in the subject material.
Bullard contributed
several articles for the Abduction Study Conference held at MIT in 1992.
One such article, treating a comparison of abduction investigators' findings,
he later expanded into "The Sympathetic Ear", published by the Fund for
UFO Research in 1995.
His ongoing interest
in the historical and cultural aspects of UFOs led to an article in "UFOs
and Abductions", edited by David M. Jacobs and published by the University
Press of Kansas in 2000. He is currently working on a UFO book for
the same press. Over the years he has served on the board of CUFOS
and the advisory board of the Fund for UFO Research.
Sample of papers published
"UFO Abductions--The
Measure of a Mystery" (1987)
"The Sympathetic Ear",
Fund for UFO Research (1995)
"UFOs and Abductions",
University Press of Kansas (2000)
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