| 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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