Folklorist Thomas E. Bullard is best known for his scholarship on the place of UFO reports in popular culture. In particular, he contends that stories of aliens visiting Earth did not become common until the modern age, when advances in scientific knowledge had lessened people’s belief in such beings as fairies and ghosts.

Bullard suggests that aliens simply took the place of these supernatural beings in the popular imagination. A staff member for the Indiana University library system, Bullard is also the author of UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery, and he often lectures on UFO-related topics. He has also argued that alien abduction stories uncovered through hypnosis are just as valid as those recalled without any such assistance. Hypnosis, he contends, cannot produce false memories with the richness and consistency that these abduction accounts feature.

SEE ALSO:

• alien abduction experiences

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning