The Truman Show
Mormon Mesa, Nevada, July 1952. After relocating to Nevada from Redondo Beach, California, fifty-five-year-old Truman Bethurum spent his nights performing truck maintenance at an asphalt plant. He had free access to the trucks, so after wrapping up a shift he drove to the dry seabed at Mormon Mesa (about sixty miles north of Las Vegas), to look for seashells and relax before sunrise. He fell asleep in the cab and was awakened an hour later by a low murmur of voices. Dawn had not broken over the mesa, so Bethurum had to struggle to see who was speaking. He put his head out the truck’s window and then quickly pulled it back: eight to ten black-haired men, dressed in short jackets and blue-gray pants, surrounded the truck. They stood impassively, and Bethurum’s first absurd notion was that they were Greyhound bus drivers— except that each one was less than five feet tall, and conversed in a language Bethurum was certain he had never heard.
He gingerly stepped from the cab, and was relieved when one of the men took his extended hand. One spoke to him in English and directed Bethurum to a silently hovering, stainless steel flying saucer that Bethurum later described as “monstrous . . . three hundred feet across and six yards deep in the center.” Inside, the alien males introduced Bethurum to the ship’s female captain, who identified herself as Aura Rhanes. She wore a black beret over short black hair, and regarded Bethurum with bright, probing eyes. The Earthman admired Aura’s “olive and roses” complexion, as well as her form-fitting black velvet blouse and brilliant red skirt. (These aliens have not only evolved along lines very similar to humans—or vice versa—the women look like pin-ups.) Bethurum took pains later to emphasize Aura’s extraordinary attractiveness, saying she was “tops in shapeliness and beauty.” After Bethurum went public and described Aura in detail, many saucer buffs revisited the old pulp magazine trope of exotic and voluptuous female aliens. In August 1954, a beautiful, black-eyed fashion designer named Dolores Barrios caused a stir at a saucer convention at Mount Palomar, California. She had striking, vaguely exotic good looks, and whispers suggested she was an extraterrestrial. Truman Bethurum, George Adamski, and other contactees were guests, and a few in the crowd (which included FBI agents) assumed that Barrios was Aura Rhanes herself.
In early meetings, Aura explained to Bethurum that she and her companions had journeyed to Earth from the planet Clarion, a body perpetually hidden behind the Moon, and thus unnoticed by Earth astronomers. Clarion spaceships, Aura freely explained, were variously powered by “antimagnetic or gravitational” science; plutonic technology (apparently related to pressures harnessed from magma deep inside Clarion); or nutronic forces (sic; probably Bethurum’s innocent misspelling of “neutronic,” which suggests a method of bombarding chemical elements with neutrons to produce radioactive atoms). The Clarionites’ visit to Earth, Aura insisted, had peaceful intentions, but because a “retroscope” allowed Clarionites to observe the totality of Earth’s history and technology, Clarion had grown concerned about Earth’s burgeoning nuclear capability, and potential ability to disrupt the peace of the solar system, very much as in the 1951 SF-movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Bethurum remained hazy as to why the Clarionites chose him for contact, but he reasoned that his avocation as a spiritual adviser was a factor.
During subsequent audiences with Aura, Bethurum learned that the Clarion ship (which Aura referred to as the Admiral Scow) was made of superb Martian metal—Mars being home to brilliant metallurgists. Despite her apparent youth, Aura had grandchildren. Time and distance were irrelevant to Clarionites.
Illness, Aura said, was unknown on her planet, where the ethnically and philosophically homogeneous population attended church and believed in “a supreme deity.” Bethurum learned to pick out Clarion ships in starry skies, and came to expect the pre-landing “flashing light [that] followed the same color pattern—bluish- green, then greenish-yellow, then a yellowish red.” Following each meeting, Bethurum recorded details in his journal. “If I am found dead in my bed,” he wrote after the first encounter, it will be because my heart has stopped from the terrible excitement induced by seeing and going aboard a flying saucer!” Whether because of his inexperience as a writer, or Aura’s relative unfamiliarity with the nuances of English, some of the alien captain’s remarks are puzzling, even confounding. After revealing that she expected to live to be a thousand years old, and that she was a Christian, Aura segued into non sequitur when she added, “the water in your deserts will mostly be tears.” Aura informed Bethurum that Clarion and “other planets” were untroubled by “even minor controversies,” and that the toys given to Clarion’s children were wholesome, and quite unlike Earth’s endless selection of toy guns and miniature soldiers.
Despite these and other rather studied declarations of pacifism, Aura also let Bethurum know that “Our enemies fall and disappear before us. None of your Earth people have anywhere near the powers which we control.” The intimidating and contradictory undertone of that remark apparently did not bother Bethurum, but he was surprised and hurt later in the summer when he ran into Aura having lunch near his home, at a restaurant in Glendale, Nevada, where she took pains to ignore him. (She was munching on toast.) The friendship was on again a bit later, when Aura promised to take Bethurum and a few of his friends on a saucer ride to Clarion. Although Bethurum signaled with flares Aura gave him for that purpose, neither the saucer nor a trip to Clarion materialized. Aura had not seen the flares (unlikely, given Clarion technology), or simply elected to ignore them. Still, she left Bethurum with a precious memento: a letter written to him on Clarionite stationery. Understandably, Bethurum declined to release this prize for examination by UFOlogists or the media.
Bethurum’s experiences highlighted the debut issue of Saucers (published by UFOlogist Max B. Miller) and led to Bethurum’s 1954 hardcover account Aboard a Flying Saucer. He quickly followed that one with two more, The Voice of Planet Clarion (1957) and the defiantly titled Facing Reality (1958).
Like George Adamski (who was actively supportive of his fellow contactee), Bethurum enjoyed the attention his accounts generated, and became a guest at saucer conventions, on the mainstream lecture circuit, and even on NBC’s The Betty White Show (a music-and-chat program; 1954). His wife Mary eventually became fed up with Truman’s mooning over Aura and filed for divorce. Cut loose by Mrs. Bethurum and apparently persona non grata with Aura, Bethurum remarried in 1960. But Aura was not done with him. In a final visit via projected image, the Clarionite captain suggested that Bethurum shift his life to a new course. Bethurum obeyed. He left construction and maintenance for good and established a peace group, the Sanctuary of Thought, near Prescott, Arizona. He passed away in 1969; his final book, The People of Planet Clarion, appeared the following year.