Truman Bethurum

Truman Bethurum (August 21, 1898 – May 21, 1969) was one of the well known 1950s UFO or alien "contactees"- individuals who claimed to have spoken with people from other inhabited planets and entered or ridden in their spacecraft. Bethurum was born in Gavilin, California, and in the early 1950s worked as a truck driver and a mechanic on a desert road-building crew. He later became a self-proclaimed spiritual advisor. In 1953, Bethurum first published magazine and newspaper (Redondo Beach Daily Breeze, September 25, 1953) accounts of being contacted on eleven separate occasions by the humanoid crew of a landed space ship in the Nevada desert, and repeatedly conversing with its beautiful and voluptuous female captain, Aura Rhanes.[1] Saucer and crew, who spoke colloquial English, came from the unknown planet Clarion, allegedly on the other side of our Sun,[2] and thus cannot be seen from the Earth. Bethurum's 1954 book, Aboard a Flying Saucer, gave many details of his suffering at the hands of skeptics and a great deal of information about Captain Rhanes, Clarion and its people.[3][4]

Truman Bethurum
Truman Bethurum c. 1955
Born	(1898-08-21)August 21, 1898
Died	May 21, 1969(1969-05-21) (aged 70)
Known for	Alleged contact with extraterrestrials

Most serious UFO researchers and investigators dismissed Bethurum and the other 1950s contactees as charlatans and con-artists. The majority of contactees of this period became (or already were) leaders in new paradigm movements to, in their view, inform and educate people about extraterrestrial intelligent life; in addition to Bethurum, some of the better-known contactees of the 1950s included George Adamski, Daniel Fry, George Van Tassel, Gabriel Green, Orfeo Angelucci and George King. Bethurum made it known that the space people had asked him to consider creating a place of learning for those who were interested in considering the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent life, with Bethurum as facilitator. The Sanctuary of Thought, a philosophical group, was subsequently created near Prescott, Arizona. Bethurum claimed to possess physical evidence of extraterrestrial existence (which he apparently never produced) such as unique items given to him by Captain Aura Rhanes.

Some of Bethurum's later books include The Voice of the Planet Clarion (1957), Facing Reality (1958), and The People of the Planet Clarion (1970), published after his death in Landers, California in 1969. The first 44 pages of the posthumous book are an autobiography of Bethurum covering his life up to 1953. Artist Columba Krebs, who assisted Bethurum in writing three of his books, wrote the afterword. Krebs claimed that Bethurum was so obsessed with Captain Rhanes, that he hired a secretary who resembled the sexy alien.

Bethurum's second wife, Mary, divorced him in 1955 citing jealousy over Captain Aura Rhanes in the divorce petition. Bethurum often remarked in his later lectures that his wife divorced him due to jealousy over the beautiful Captain. In 1960, Bethurum remarried a third time, the wedding taking place at George Van Tassel's popular annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention near Landers.