Bulk is a folder that up until now I had only heard used in yahoo mail accounts and those provided by ISP's that contracted with Yahoo to provide email. Having said that with AOL and Verizon in the same business, they could be adopting the yahoo peculiarities as well.

Perhaps you mail provider has changed suppliers.

The spam folder exists in my mail account on AOL.com where spam items are still being directed to that folder. The problem is that it does not exist in my account on Thunderbird.

I neglected to mention that my husband also uses Thunderbird to access AOL mail and his spam folder is where it is supposed to be.