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
(International UFO Reporter),
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)
Source:
http://www.nicap.org/bios/bullard.htm
