Truman Bethurum and Captain Aura Rhanes of Clarion

In the summer of 1952, Truman Bethurum was a maintenance mechanic on a highway crew, working on Highway 91 "about 70 or 80 miles out of Las Vegas toward Salt Lake City." After a night shift, he drove up onto Mormon Mesa, Nevada, to hunt for fossil seashells. He parked his pickup and fell asleep.

He woke to find eight to ten small men around the cab of his truck. They stood 4 feet 8 inches to 5 feet tall, with olive complexions, coal black hair and dark eyes. They wore uniforms "similar to those worn by Greyhound bus drivers." At first they spoke a foreign language. Then perfect English.

They led him to their craft. A disc of burnished steel, 300 feet across and six yards deep at its center. No propellers, no rudders, no exhaust vents. It was not resting on the ground but "floating about three or four feet off the ground." As they neared it, the disc settled to a few inches and tilted toward them, revealing a landing step with a single hand rail. The crew called it the Admiral's Scow.

Its captain was a woman. Aura Rhanes. Bethurum called her "tops in shapeliness and beauty," with a complexion of "a beautiful olive and roses." She wore a bright red skirt, a velvety black blouse and a black and red beret.

They talked for about 30 minutes. She spoke of a civilization with "no wars, strife, or class distinctions." Her people came from Clarion, a planet in our own solar system that the Moon always hides. They were worried about Earth's atomic weapons. When the saucer left, "it made no sound at all as it drifted toward the clouds then vanished suddenly, without leaving so much as a vapor trail."

He counted eleven meetings over about three months. Then, in the early hours of 27 August, at an all-night diner in Glendale, Nevada, he saw a tiny woman in a black and red beret sitting with a small man. "I beg your pardon, Lady, but haven't we met before?" She denied it repeatedly. He turned to pay. The pair were gone. His workmate Whitey reportedly said: "Not a blessed soul passed through that door until you came out."

Weeks later, outside a barber shop in Las Vegas, a woman in the same outfit turned straight toward him through a noisy crowd. A "stone-cold, evil look." A shake of the head. Then she was gone.

There were no photographs, no physical traces. Bethurum said he held a paper from Clarion but refused to submit it for analysis. He refused lie detector tests too. No Project Blue Book file on him has surfaced, though former Blue Book head Edward J. Ruppelt visited the Giant Rock gatherings where Bethurum spoke.

James W. Moseley of Saucer News believed him a liar. Scientific analysis rejected a planet hidden behind the Moon. His wife Mary divorced him, citing jealousy over Aura Rhanes. Yet Bryant and Helen Reeve came away "favorably and very deeply impressed" by his "unimaginative sincerity." George Adamski backed his claims.

He told the story in Aboard a Flying Saucer (1954) and spoke often at George Van Tassel's Giant Rock conventions. In 1955, he said, Aura Rhanes told him to found the Sanctuary of Thought in Arizona. It died with him in 1969. The name Clarion lived on. Dorothy Martin's group borrowed it, and became the subject of When Prophecy Fails. Bethurum remains a founding voice of the 1950s contactee movement.