TRUMAN BETHURUM’S CALL TO CLARION
by Skylaire AlfvegrenIn late July of 1952, 54-year-old Truman Bethurum was taking a nap in his truck on Highway 91, about 70 miles north of Las Vegas.
The Redondo Beach, California resident worked as the night shift maintenance mechanic at an asphalt mixing plant, and maintained the trucks which hauled water from the Muddy River to the construction site. He had driven out to Mormon Mesa around 3:30am to search for shells left by the ancient sea which once covered the area.
Bethurum drifted to sleep after his search, realizing that the first rays of daylight would serve as his alarm clock. After about an hour, he bolted upright, thinking his co-workers were playing a trick on him, and found himself surrounded by what he described as “a mumbling, low talking in an unintelligible tongue.”
He looked out the window and saw eight to 10 men, fully-formed but all under five feet tall. The beings were olive-skinned, clean shaven and had black hair. Their skin seemed to be stretched tightly over their bones, and Bethurum thought they looked to be “of Latin extraction.” They wore “jackets like cowboys” and blue-grey pants, which reminded him of a Greyhound bus driver’s uniform. Swallowing his fear, Bethurum got out of his truck to shake hands as a “friendly gesture.”
As he got out of his truck, Bethurum saw “about 15 yards away a monstrous disc-shaped flying saucer… 300 feet across and six yards deep in the center.” A metal rim encircled the craft, which hovered weightlessly above the ground.
Although all of the beings fell in line, military-style, to shake his hands, only one of the men attempted to communicate. Asking his name, Bethurum was aghast. “My God, you can speak English, too?” The man replied, “We have no difficulty with any language.”
Bethurum asked to meet their captain. He was taken aboard the saucer, which had the appearance of burnished steel. The being who spoke to him took hold of his right arm “with a firm pressure” and introduced him to the ship’s female captain, a bewitching creature named Aura Rhanes (who Bethurum claimed the men of Earth would rate as “tops in shapliness and beauty.”) She wore a beret over short black hair, had a sumptuous complexion which Bethurum described as “a beautiful olive and roses” and spoke to Bethurum in rhyming couplets.
site by
