Kevin Randle Interviews - DR.THOMAS EDDIE BULLARD - Abduction and UFO Myths

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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