TRUMAN BETHURUM’S CALL TO CLARION
by Skylaire AlfvegrenContinued...
Accompanied by Edwards, he later ran into Rhanes at a resturant in Glendale, Nevada, but she snubbed him. Bethurum learned to distinguish Clarion scows high up in the atmosphere from standard shooting stars: “The flashing light followed the same color pattern… bluish-green, then greenish-yellow, then a yellowish red.”
According to Rhanes, Clarion is an utopian paradise, where there are no wars or strife, no traffic jams or hustle-bustle. She stated that education is a top priority and “improving our own lives… is a full time job.” No child plays with toys “in imitation of death” and weddings are much like our own, but celebrated like Americans “celebrate Independence Day.”
Clarionites believe in a “Supreme deity who knows, sees and controls all,” and go to churches “which are always filled.” (In a letter written by request of a waitress in Glendale, Rhanes referred to her people as “Christian.”)
Clarionites had learned to harness gravitational force, and according to Rhanes, employ three kinds of power: “The first is antimagnetic or gravitational; the second, plutonic and the third nutronic.” Rhanes claimed Clarionites could watch any time any place in the history of the universe using a device called a retroscope. Rhanes promised to take Bethurum and a few close friends on a visit to Clarion, and left him special flares with which to signal the scow. Sadly, they ignored his last attempt.
Following George Adamski, Truman Bethurum became the second most well-known contactee of 1950s America. Accounts of his 11 meetings with the “Clarionites” were first published in Max B. Miller’s inaugural issue of Saucers, and couldn’t be reprinted fast enough.
Intrigued, Adamski recorded Bethurum relating his experiences, which resulted in Aboard A Flying Saucer (1954). As Saucer Smear’s Jim Moseley put it, he had “done better than most contactees by making the close aquaintance” of a hot space babe. So close, in fact, that Bethurum’s wife Mary divorced him as a result of his interstellar daliances and named Rhanes as a correspondent in their divorce proceedings.
Saucers’ parent company, Flying Saucers International, sponsored the first Giant Rock Convention held in August of 1953 and organized by George Van Tassel near Joshua Tree, California. Alongside the likes of Daniel Fry (whose 1950 account of riding aboard a saucer from the White Sands Proving Grounds to New York in half an hour effectively kicked off the contactee movement), George Hunt Williamson, Orfeo Angelucci and Giant Rock organizer, George Van Tassel, Bethurum spoke at most of the conventions, which attracted between 2,000 and 10,000 saucer enthusiasts each year.
